Hobart Town

Hobart, on the estuary of the River Derwent, is the capital city of Tasmania. It’s also the second-oldest city in Australia, established as a penal colony in 1804, when the initial settlement at Risdon Cove on the east bank was abandoned because of uncertain water supply. The Derwent, a deep river, rises from Lake St. Clair in the northwest and empties into the Great Southern Ocean at Storm Bay, some 17 kilometres south of Hobart.

The city now extends along both banks and across the lower reaches of Mount Wellington, known locally as The Mountain. The Mountain is a presence and a reference point. It rises 4,170 feet and when Charles Darwin stopped here in 1836 he made a laborious walk to its top. Today a tightly winding and wooded road leads up to an ABC transmission tower and a viewing platform that looks down on the city and off to the farther edges of the island.

Hobart and beyond from Mount Wellington

Hobart’s current population is somewhat over 200,000 and its commercial downtown is compact. The CBD, according to some people, is one block square, but in fact there’s interesting shopping beyond that block. And there’s more than shopping in, or within easy walking of, that block—the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG), the harbour area, and the Salamanca Market for instance, about which I will write in other posts.

I am staying in West Hobart with my friends the McGuires, who live on Poets Road. Poets Road ends a block west of the house at Knocklofty Reserve, a ridge of The Mountain with walking trails connecting to walks on the Mountain itself.

The house is built on the side of a steep hill and has a remarkable view looking southeast, away from the mountain, to the Derwent and Mount Nelson. On December 11, the day I arrived back in Hobart, a double rainbow arced up from the city and over the river like a welcome sign.  

Traffic on the river is varied and interesting—yachts and cruise ships, barges with material for the zincworks, sometimes Antarctic research vessels that are also icebreakers, an occasional seaplane. As last year ended we were on the watch for the arrival of the yachts in the Sydney to Hobart race. Only a few days ago we again watched a procession of them—the larger ones—heading down river, back to their original ports or on to other races.

A fleet of maxi-racers saying downriver

I spend a lot of time with the view—it’s one of the great pleasures of being here. I like the houses with their brightly coloured roofs, the way they dip up and down along their hillsides. Many of them have solar panels. Though the sun comes and goes here, when it shines it’s brilliant and the air is astonishingly clear.

The Derwent is wide as well as deep. Its surface captures the light and changes in colour with the time of day and the weather. At dawn on an overcast morning, when it shines like dull silver, it's especially beautiful--a fine river for dreaming on.