Unpopular opinion: Hobart is more beautiful than Sydney.
Everyone loves Sydney Harbour with its boats and sparkling water. But if you were to ask which city I'd rather, it's absolutely Hobart. It's just breathtaking as you drive in, seeing the majestic Mt Wellington and the little bays and estuaries on which the city was built long ago.
We had stayed at Hobarts South Arm for a night with mates overlooking the water, but couldn't stay longer than that as we were stuck in the driveway chatting as Jamie is allergic to cats. We did have a lovely swim and a huge dinner of fresh Tassie pink eye potatoes and a vego ratatouille.
After that we killed time til my massage appointment at Battery Point in Hobart. We visited my mate at Hobarts famous recycling hiking clothes store on Elizabeth St in the centre. It's pretty cool. People who come hiking in Tassie often go there from the airport, buy hiking gear and sell it back when they leave. There was also a heap of great outdoors, travel and mountaineering books.
From there we headed to a beach just around from Battery Point called Nutgrove beach. It's a sandy beach that is good for swimming. Small board sailed to and fro and people walked their dogs and swam their children or jogged.
It's hard not to see these very liveable parts of Hobart right on the water without imagining colonisation. When British colonizers arrived in this Nutgrove Beach area, the Mouheneener people's lives were tragically and irreparably disrupted. Make no bones about it, this was an absolute invasion of ancestral land where they had lived sustainably for tens of thousands of years.
This is part of Tasmanias story - the tense and cautious encounters with the Indigenous people, often described in terms of European prejudices as "savages" or "primitives,". It wasn't long before conflict began as the settlers' farming, hunting, and building disrupted food sources, sacred sites, and entire culture. Violence, disease, and displacement followed just like everywhere else in Australia which led to the Mouheneener and their way of life becoming all but extinct.
Note the amusing WW2 bunkers. As my English husband said, they were far too busy in Europe to bother with this tiny town in the furthest reaches of the colonies, but such was the threat of the Nazi! Imagine if the colonisers had been colonized by the Germans. Mein gott!
In the sunshine, there's some gorgeous places to walk in Hobart, and it's a really liveable city and so easy to walk around. But it's hard not to think about it's darker history.
After our little walk I went for a massage which was delightful and hopefully will keep me going for another week as I've been in a helluva lot of pain. Still, at least my country isn't being invaded so I have nothing to much to complain about.
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