Spending the last day

We had met old friends and collegues last night, so for today, we again went around in a a bigger group. With Angie, Benny and her son we went around the harbour and then ended up in an old muscle-driven ferry. A fairly large wooden craft, in former times rowed by a bunch of convicts. These days, convicts are hard to get, so the engine job was taken over by a local fan club. None of these fans was terribly young anymore, but they did a great job and I suppose they regard it as a personal fitness program. Anyway, it worked - for them and for us!

Also, as we found we had not seen the whole harbour from the water side, we took another boat rowed by Benny and Angie. Suzy and I had a nice comfortable day.

In the harbour, one sees more sights than one should think. Apart from real arts in bronze and wildlife of several kinds one sees boats worth remembering. Above, you see a floating band stand. They did not only play on a somehow floating raft - the raft also was driven somehow. As far as I remember, it was a simple outboarder. Anyway, the raft provided room and shelter for anything that might happen during a boat festival.

Then, we saw the Japanese boat, that formerly was on the quaiside, now sailing. And the view was something to remember. The oars did not seem to have any system, nothing that could remind to what we know as classic rowing. Still, it did not look chaotic, it was like the system was way more sophisticated than simple "two-six". But I wouldn't be sure at all. Maybe over there they had one big laugh about themselves, who knows?

The third one looked like a private initiative to add a personal contribution to the celebrations. It was a rowing boat manned with a man and a woman. He rowed her through the harbour, she played the piano meanwhile - equipped also with a bottle of red wine waiting on the piano.

Also, from the harbour we had the view to Mt. Wellington. We wanted to go up there in the afternoon. Or, to be honest: to drive to the top by car.

It is a long and winding drive up the mountain. Depending on road conditions, it's not always open to the public, especially not during the cold time of the year. But also during the warm season, one normally doesn't see much there. The coulds would be underneath or around you so all you see is grey fog. But our weather luck continued: the skies were blue as blue can be, it was fairly warm and the views were wide. All one ever could hope for. Great times for pictures of countryside and people.

It was a great place and a real highlight of our time in Tasmania. The next day, Suzy would drive all of us in Rosco's car to the airport and we had a Goodbye that was shorter than it otherwise would have been. Maybe that was better for us, otherwise it might have been way too sad.