Chocolate and Beer

At the end of the day we found ourselves at a place with the delightful name of ‘Snug’.  The Snug Post Office was appropriately named, but the Snug Supermarket didn’t quite ring true!

Our camp site was probably one of the best we’d experienced, just a few yards from the beach set in a wide bay.  Waves gently lapped on the golden sand as the sun dipped towards the horizon.  It was so warm we were tempted in for a swim, most unusual for Mike who generally likes the water close to tepid before a foot is tentatively offered.  A swim was certainly refreshing, followed by a hot shower and a G&T with toes tucked into the sand.  It was difficult to think of a more perfect setting.

Snug wasn’t always so perfect.  On 7 February 1967, a massive bushfire swept through the town leaving 62 people dead and nearly three quarters of the buildings destroyed.  Black Tuesday, as it became known, was described by Prince Phillip as ‘the most vivid’ of his recollections of visiting disaster areas.  There’s a simple but moving garden and a memorial that outlines the shape of a devastated house, together with plaques describing the event and the parts played by key people in the recovery.

Wednesday 13^th March found us driving a Nissan X-Trail instead of the Land Rover.  Kim’s parents flew down from Brisbane to spend a few days with us in Tasmania and as Vin Rouge takes only two we hired a car and an apartment.  It was novelties all around with a different car to drive and real beds to sleep in.

The plan was to spend most of our time in and around Hobart, but a mandatory visit to the hop fields was high on the agenda as John and Molly both picked hops in their early years in Kent.

The sky was clear as we drove to the top of Mount Wellington (4,170 feet), but as elevation is gained, so the temperature drops and at the peak the wind chill made it feel close to freezing.  The views were great, although we didn’t stay very long.

Then it was away to the Cadbury factory where we discovered that although Australian chocolate tastes different to British chocolate, the recipes are the same.  Apparently the difference comes from the milk and the sugar.  Oddly, British Cadbury chocolate seems to be preferred, even amongst the Aussies.

Mike doesn’t like chocolate so next day’s visit to a brewery was more to his taste.  As he put it “we’ve checked out the hops, now we can check out the final product”.

The Cascade Brewery is Australia’s oldest and has a chequered history.  The founder, one Peter De Graves, after three attempts, finally made it to Tasmania in 1823.  He started a timber business, progressed into ship building, milling and finally brewing.  Something of a ‘character’, PDG left a mountain of debt when setting sail clandestinely from Ramsgate.  Finally tracked to Hobart, he spent five years in jail where he not only designed the new brewery and his house, but also a new jail.

One perk for the workers was that they could drink as much as they liked at the end of each day – for ten minutes that is when the tap remained on the whole time.  Start and stop times were signalled by the ringing of a bell.  This tradition remained in place until 1996 when the Health and Safety police finally put an end to the practice.  Workers now receive cases of beer to be drunk at a more leisurely pace.  They probably get much the same in quantity but the fun has gone.  Now there’s a familiar story!

We’ve noticed that Australian towns like to show off their botanic gardens.  Hobart is no exception and has very mature gardens that include everything including a rather elegant and beautifully presented conservatory,

rose gardens, parterre, avenues of trees, a television programme linked vegetable patch, a Japanese garden, a sub-antarctic plant house and a flower clock.

Although the capital of Tasmania, Hobart is quite a small city.  However, Saturday’s Salamanca market is large.  Stalls line each side of the street for nearly a mile and sell everything from fruit and vegetables to handicrafts, clothing, food and drink, jewellery, art and flowers.  Kim and her mum browsed enthralled until the heavens opened and we were forced into the nearest pub.  The rain lasted quite a while.

Pondering over four empty glasses seems to be a good place to stop this blog.  Tomorrow is Sunday, St Patricks Day, perhaps the weather will improve and we can celebrate with another glass of the black stuff.