A short Jetstar flight took us to Hobart, the capital of Australia’s smallest state (Tasmania is about the size of Ireland), and it was immediately clear from the tiny ‘international’ airport and the drop in temperature that things would be a bit different to mainland Oz. Within a couple of minutes of collecting our luggage we were at the car hire office – no need for shuttle buses here – and it was again Bargain Car Rentals, the same company we’d used in Cairns. And with the same Oscar-worthy performance from the sales agent on why we really needed to purchase his expensive insurance! We’d already booked extra cover through our rental agent as we’d realised that our travel policy car hire excess add-on didn’t have sufficient cover for the high excesses charged in Australia, but he had a go at telling us all the things even that didn’t cover – “we have the highest roadkill rate in Australia” and “it doesn’t cover you off-road and half of our roads are unsealed”. That’s OK thanks mate, we’ll stay on sealed roads and we doubt that your damage insurance specifically excludes collisions with wombats & wallabies! Anyway, we got the keys to an almost brand new MG3 (without parting with another £300) – the same model as we’d had in Western Australia – and set off for the 10 mile journey into the city. There was hardly another car on the road, this looked promising for our road trip.

Crowne Plaza Hobart was our home for 3 nights, an excellent city centre hotel just a few years old, and as with all IHG places we’d stayed we got upgraded – this time to a fabulous junior suite with harbour view. The floor to ceiling windows with electronic blinds and curtains were great, as was the huge deep bath, but the designers hadn’t fully thought things through – from the bath/loo/shower there was a clear view out of those windows and presumably back through them too! It’s going to be such a shock when Debbie’s Platinum Elite status finally expires and we revert to the ‘cheap’ rooms that we’ve actually paid for, ditto her annual lounge pass as that got us complimentary evening canapés & wine and an excellent breakfast in the top floor club lounge with 360 degree views of the city, Mount Wellington and the harbour.

Hobart’s location is spectacular – a city where natural beauty and urban charm meet – Mount Wellington (1271m) proves a dramatic towering backdrop and the city sits on the River Derwent Estuary which opens out to the massive Storm Bay and the Tasman Sea. Hobart is framed by rolling hills and bushland which are reflected in the waterways – making a simple ferry ride very picturesque.

But we didn’t do a ‘simple‘ ferry ride – instead we took the MONA ROMA, a camouflaged catamaran with pink torpedoes on the bridge and sheep figures to sit on! There were 2 classes of travel – Standard or Posh Pit and the website description for the latter is “Same ferry but f*cking posh, escape the riff-raff, includes complimentary bevvies, tiny food and inflated egos!” Bizarre, yes, but only slightly odd in comparison to our destination – the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), located 10Km up the River Derwent from Hobart and Tasmania’s No1 tourist attraction (and often described as Australia’s most controversial museum).

MONA is a private collection, mostly 2-3 floors underground, founded by the professional gambler and art collector David Walsh – a guy who obviously has far too much money (as it loses around A$60million every year), strong principles and a warped imagination. Everywhere else we’ve been in Australia there’s been a token acknowledgement of the traditional custodians of the land, but at MONA there’s no such formulaic message designed to absolve real responsibility – instead they say that the settlers have no right to the land, it was never given by the Aboriginal peoples, and that it was taken by brute force and genocide. David Walsh certainly isn’t a conformist and his exhibits are eclectic – combining ancient, modern, and contemporary art – and often challenging, provocative or just downright strange. But what an utterly amazing place – we’d originally thought about spending 3 hours there, booked our return ferry to allow 4 hours, but changed that to the last boat of the day. And we could’ve easily spent longer.

There are no signs accompanying the exhibits or maps of the museum, instead everything is contained on a work of genius – ‘THE O’ – an app which knows exactly where you are and gives the details of the artworks in your vicinity. Alongside a picture, title, artist and brief summary of each piece, The O also provides what it delightfully calls ‘Art Wank”, hugely detailed information, opinion and critique, as well as audio and video interviews with the artists.

Its impossible to describe the artworks succinctly, but a selection included an oversized Porsche symbolising conspicuous overconsumption, a series of pictures based on quotes from suicide notes, vinyl records playing ‘I love you’ in various styles when you opened their box, a massive dystopian amphitheatre constructed from shipping containers, a room half filled with oil and reflecting the surrounding walls (it cost $1M apparently – not bad money if you can get it), a string quartet that played every day at 4pm a piece that the composer had written on the spot, a live representation of a human digestive system and so on – weird as f*** but utterly mesmerising…

As well as the permanent collection there are galleries devoted to visiting exhibitions. One of these was a collection of exhibits by Italian artist Arcangelo Sassolino. He is interested in materials changing state or about to break. The Paradoxical Nature of Life was a tempered glass plate supporting a 786Kg stone almost heavy enough to break the glass, but not quite, so the glass was slowly bowing under the weight, but could have shattered at any moment.

Other Saassolino pieces included a hydraulic ram that was slowly bending pieces of timber until they snapped, oil paint revolving slowly on a wheel, and a pitch dark room where drops of molten steel fell from the ceiling and exploded into sparks when they hit the floor. Very spectacular and Steve spent ages videoing it in slow motion.

MONA is not just a fabulous place to see some thought-provoking art, it’s also a great place to spend the day, with fancy restaurants, a wine bar, BBQ, bands playing on the lawn overlooking the river, and a shop which continues the controversy. We do wonder how many parents have difficult questions to answer after bringing their little ones for a nice day at an art gallery!!

We’d planned to spend our 2nd day in Hobart actually leaving the city to visit Port Arthur, but then found it was a public holiday (Hobart Regatta Day) – Dartmouth take note, local public holidays related to boating are a thing – so we decided to stay put and watch the yacht racing instead. A necessary plan as it turned out as Debbie needed to see a doctor – unlike in the UK, Australian pharmacists can’t prescribe antibiotics for simple ailments. She managed to get a 7am appointment, which was both out of hours and on a public holiday so $$$ but needs must. On arrival at the crack of dawn, Debbie, the receptionist and the doctor sat on the steps for half an hour making small talk as the receptionist didn’t have the main keys to the building and needed to wait for the coffee shop people to open up. It was quite priceless when the dippy girl said to the seemingly 12-year old doctor “at least you haven’t got a 7am appointment” – HELLO, Earth to Receptionist!!! Anyway, after parting with £75 (co-incidentally the same as the excess level on our travel insurance), with no discount for sitting around for half an hour, Debbie walked out with a prescription mumbling about how great the NHS was at times. At least the drugs weren’t too expensive at £12.

Hobart Regatta turned out to have pretty much finished the previous day – the evening fireworks which we watched from our hotel room had probably been a clue – so instead we had a seafood lunch by the water before watching the last of the yachts racing in the harbour. We did get to see the 9am fly-past of the Tasmanian equivalent of the Red Arrows from breakfast too.

We found Hobart to be a lovely little place, very obviously 20 years behind mainland Australian cities but not in a bad way – there’s some lovely old architecture and pubs, a very compact city centre and the most glorious natural setting.

Our Tassie adventure had started well, now to recover our car from the hotel valet parking and start the road trip…