OTR: Hobart to Port Arthur

OTR … simply means “on the road.” It’s the designation that I will use to identify those days where we are moving from one location to another … hopefully with sightseeing along the way … especially when the distance is short … as it was today.

We drove a mere 59 miles to get to Port Arthur from Hobart. Well, maybe a bit more since we made a few short detours … but nothing that really took us out of our way.

Our morning stops were all in the Eaglehawk Neck — the 330-foot wide isthmus that links the Forestier Peninsula to the Tasman Peninsula. What today is a “holiday town” was once the site of the infamous “Dogline.” I’ll explain about that in a minute.

Our first stop was the Tasman National Park Lookout on Pirates Bay Road. Beautiful scenery to whet our appetite for what’s to come as we hope to visit the park on our way north from Port Arthur.

I had read about Cubed, a roadside café at the lookout — operating out of a restored, solar-powered caravan. It was described as doling out “fastidiously prepared coffee and snacks. Definitely worth taking time out to enjoy a “coffee & brownie break with a view.”

From the lookout, a short drive took us to the Tessellated Pavement. From the parking lot atop the cliff, we enjoyed beautiful beach views before hiking the short trail down for a closer look at the Pavement … which my Lonely Planet guide described as “… a rocky coastal terrace that has curiously eroded into what looks like tiled paving — it’s geology as geometry.”

Signage on the trail explained this form of erosion … the tide comes in; saltwater penetrates cracks in the rock; the tide goes out; salt crystals form on and between the grains of the rock as the water evaporates; over time, the salt crystals grow and push the rock apart. A short and sweet lesson in geology.

Next, we stopped at the Eaglehawk Neck Historic Site … which is associated with Australia’s convict history. The site dates back to 1832 when the first convicts arrived in Port Arthur. Not much remains of the site today … the officer’s quarters are open as a museum … there are a couple of shacks, too. Except for the info panels in the museum, everything is pretty rundown unfortunately.

We stopped here not so much to see what remains of the military station. Rather, we were curious about the Dogline I mentioned above.

Back when Port Arthur was a convict penitentiary, a row of “ornery” dogs were chained across the isthmus to prevent convicts from escaping. Wooden platforms extended into the water and were stocked with more dogs to prevent convicts from wading around the Dogline. This, and rumors that the waters were teeming with sharks, were quite the deterrent. Nonetheless, a few men managed to make a successful bid for freedom. Of course, the Dogline doesn’t exist anymore. But there is a statue further installed in memory of the dogs that served on the Dogline.

Instead of retracing our steps back to the car park, we decided to brave the strong wind and return by way of the beach. It was definitely more scenic, even if it was sometimes hard to stand up against the wind.

Our next stop was to be a place described as not-to-be-missed. We did get there eventually. But first we stopped at a roadside eatery — Van Diemen’s Seafood Shack — for what we would describe as not-to-be-missed fish & chips … despite the wind that was blowing so hard that we thought our food was going to fly off the table any minute.Read more