My wife and I are in downtown Hobart standing in front of the wooden hut that once housed Australian explorer Douglas Mawson and his Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1912. (The hut is a replica. The original is still encased in ice and snow). Charged with mapping the northern part of the Antarctic continent, Mawson survived the elements – it killed two of his crew – and he returned to Australia a hero, lauded like his contemporary Ernest Shackleton, for his courage and endurance.
Kitchen utensils, outdoor gear and an old gramophone crowd the interior living space and I can visualize the team huddled together trying to survive. I feel humbled at our own feeble quest, the search for Sarcophilis Harrisii, otherwise known as the Tasmanian Devil, the pudgy marsupial with a fearsome reputation. It promises to be a simple task since many of the animals are now residing in local nature preserves – a walk in the park compared to slogging across the snow like Mawson’s crew. Overwhelmed with admiration for the Aussie explorers, we leave the replica hut and walk to the harbour from which the Expedition sailed over a hundred years ago.
Hobart’s harbour has been gussied up since Mawson’s day. The old stone warehouses that once served the port have been converted into galleries, boutiques and restaurants. The complex is called Salamanca Place. Battery Point, a charming neighbourhood of mansions and bungalows lies immediately above and behind Salamanca. A few cafés and restaurants have moved in, but the area still retains the feel of a cozy English seaside town.
The harbour is also a jumping off point for scores of tours, the most popular being a half-hour ferry ride to MONA, the Museum of New and Old Art, 12 kilometres up the coast. The museum is an eclectic collection of sculptures, paintings and crafts buried in a cliff three-storeys deep. We follow each work, its title and its history on a tablet (supplied as part of the admission price) as we navigate the underground labyrinth.
The following day, we’re off to see the devils. Or so we think. Our host, my sister, wants us to see those other devils first, those poor souls incarcerated in Tasmania’s famous penal colony, Port Arthur, 125 years ago. Port Arthur is a UNESCO Heritage Site, 60 kilometres southeast of Hobart. En route, we pass through Doo Town – yes, it’s a real place – a community of 30 homes, each one with the word “doo” in the nameplate above the door. Three friends started the trend in 1935, but the tradition lives on. Even newcomers join in. We chuckle as the car passes houses like Doo Drop In, Love Me Doo, Yabba Dabba Doo, Doo Love It and my favourite, Da Doo Ron Ron.
Port Arthur beckons. Surrounded by water on three sides, it’s the Tasmanian version of Alcatraz. Back in the mid 1800s, it housed hundreds of men and boys. Women went to a separate facility in Hobart.
We start our tour at the Visitors Centre, where we learn about 16-year-old William McColligan, sentenced to seven years for stealing a handkerchief. Older convicts worked in the forest, felling trees, working in the sawmill or in the tannery. McColligan and other boys, nine to 18 years of age, were sent to a special settlement adjacent to the adult prison called Point Puer (pronounced poor), where they went to school and learned a trade.
“You’ve got children nine to 18 chained up in a cage in the hold of a ship in the pitch black for up to six months not knowing what’s ahead of them,” says Claire Bond, our friendly and knowledgeable on-site tour guide. Claire paints a picture of the harsh conditions upon arrival – manual labour, sensory deprivation for those older men in solitary confinement and convicts in leg irons weighing up to nine kilograms each.
“If they were given a two-year sentence, that’s how long they’d be in them for. When those chains finally came off, it literally took them weeks to retrain themselves to walk properly,” she says.
Fortunately, it was a time of reform and the administration, at the time, eased up on cruel punishments. “Compulsory schooling in Australia started at Point Puer. That’s something good that came of it,” says Claire. The facility closed in 1877 and the remaining inmates were transferred to the mainland. Such a terrible place with such beautiful surroundings.
The next day, we’re driving past poppy fields (Tasmania supplies the pharmaceutical industry) and well-groomed vineyards. Valleys give way to rolling hills as we approach the Bonorong Wildlife Centre, 29 kilometres north of the capital city. Devils. Finally. The Centre houses scores of orphaned or injured animals. Kangaroos are lazing in an open field, indifferent to the many tourists mingling about. Alissa Bennett, a four-year veteran of the establishment, leads us to an enclosure and coaxes a devil from its hiding spot. Devils are shy, retiring creatures that feast on carrion as opposed to hunting and attacking prey. Nevertheless, she tells us to remain vigilant and keep our hands to ourselves.
“A Tasmanian devil’s jaw strength is about five times the strength of an American pit bull,” she says. “Good for chomping through bone. If you get bitten by them you will definitely lose a finger or a toe. They get their name devil because of their sound, not because of their demeanour,” she continues. “The devil’s howl is more of a high-pitched screech. When settlers arrived in Tasmania, they heard that screech in the middle of the night and thought that Tasmania was haunted by demons, banshees and the devil.”
Unfortunately, the devils aren’t doing so well. Facial cancer has devastated the population. Tumours around their mouths inhibit eating and breathing. “They’re starving and they’re suffocating,” says Alissa. The disease took root in 1996. “Since then, we’ve lost about 95 per cent of the population.”
There’s no cure, but scientists have developed a preventative vaccine, which is being tested at a lab in Hobart. I’m reminded that Nature dances to its own tune and not even the devil can escape its dictates.
Alissa tells us speeding cars have also reduced their numbers. The slow-moving marsupials feed at night and drivers can’t see them as they cross the road in the dark. Of 19 devils that the Centre released into the wild one summer, six were run over.
Those poor devils, I say to myself as I reflect on Bonorong’s unlucky marsupials, not to mention those unfortunates like William McColligan sent to prison in Port Arthur back in the 1800s. How fitting then that we end our Tasmanian tour at Devils Kitchen, a cauldron of froth and fury at the edge of the Tasman Sea. Waves pound the rocky shoreline in a fearsome yet mesmerizing cacophony of surf and wind. The violence continues further north at Tasmans Arch, another natural wonder created by the constant pounding and erosion of the Tasman Sea.
Our trip has been beset by devils, but that’s not a bad thing. We’ve come away with something positive. Thanks to Alissa at the Wildlife Centre, we’ve learned about the Tassie Rule of the Road and that is to slow down and remain alert between dusk and dawn when the devils and their ilk come out to feed. It’s a lesson we will apply on the next stop in our tour of the region, a road trip through Australia’s outback. A little vigilance will help preserve the kangaroos, echidnas, wallabies and devils tourists like us have come to see in the first place. While not as dramatic as conquering ice and snow like the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1912, it’s the least we can do to help preserve the continent’s unique wildlife.
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