Trip to Hobart Day 4

Day 4.
The sunny weather was now replaced by cloud cover but we did some tours of Hobart. The first tour was around the old seafaring areas of Hobart then up to Mt. Wellington. On the way we passed the Cascade Brewery which is still making a popular range of beers and fruit juices in their original factory and it is the oldest in Australia. Nearby are the ruins of the old Cascades Female Factory which was a prison for the female convicts during 1828 to 1877.

Cascade Brewery

RH. Ruins of Cascade Prison

Over 3,700 female convicts stayed here, on sentence, waiting assignment/ hiring or waiting confinement. The more dangerous females were sent to Port Arthur. This area is now surrounded by trees, unlike the above photo. This area was badly burnt out in the bushfires of 1967 when 62 people died.

The road up passes through temperate rainforests through to sub-alphine flora at the top which is snow covered often in winter. When we reached the top of Mt Wellington (1273 Metres) it was still cloud covered so visibility was down to a few metres but it soon lifted for a short time.

Summit of Mt Wellington

However Hobart was covered by dense cloud below us. So some photos had to be lifted from other sites. Mt Wellington is an extinct volcano and in one part the road passes the Organ Pipes which are basaltic rocks formed from molten lava from the volcano. The surrounding rock has been eroded away over the millions of years. On a fine day the views are very extesive but it was not our luck today.

LH Photo of Hobart about half way down, below the cloud cover

The photo below is from my collection and was taken probably during the 1920s to early '30s. It is taken about three quarters of the way up overlooking the Northerm Hobart/ Glenorchy area. Out of view on the right hand side is where the city centre and port is.

That afternoon we visited Richmond which has many heritage buildings as it was originally a strategic military town between Hobart and Port Arthur but when the causeway at Sorrell was built, the town was bypassed so in the last century it has changed very little.

The Richmond Bridge still crosses Coal River and was built by convicts in 1823 and so it is the oldest road bridge in Australia. Nearby is the old Richmond Gaol which was built in 1825, 5 years before the penitentiary at Port Arthur. The goal had both female and males prisoners and since it was closed the goal has not been modified so it is still in the same condition as when it had prisoners.
Up on the hill is the 1836 St. Johns church, the first Catholic church in Australia and nearby are many other buildings from the same era. Some of the old residences are now used for Bed and Breakfast accommodation, others still function as shops selling antiques or local produce as there are many local vineyards and berry farms.

LH Inside quadrangle of the Richmond Goal