tin oxide

Happy New Year and the best of everything in 2018—Darcy, Bullet, and Pat.

Cruising Milford Sound.

Today I’m wrapping up my Down Under blog series and want to share a few parting photos that I hope you will enjoy. As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, I am not writing a travel blog per se. I only post about locations that will appear in future Darcy and Bullet thrillers. So yes, I do plan to set a novel Down Under, and many of the countries in my current posts will be settings for forthcoming books.

Cruising the Milford Sound

a glimpse into my 2018 blog posts: in the coming months I will post about my Canadian trip and my St. Barth’s visit, also settings for new Darcy and Bullet novels. After these travel posts, I will do a series on art and architecture. Why, you might ask, would I write about these? Because both subjects are dear to Darcy’s heart and mine. Watching a talented person create a work of art, design a structure, or write a book is inspiring unto itself, and art and architecture play a part in my thriller series.

KEAS

Let’s start with those cheeky keas, heralded as the world’s most intelligent birds. Dubbed “the clown of the alps,” and the only alpine parrot in the world, the kea is native to the forested and mountainous regions of New Zealand’s South Island. The screeching cries of “keeeaa” alert you to the presence of these highly social and inquisitive birds.

Although I haven’t had the privilege, I’ve been told that if you see a kea in flight you will never forget it. The birds transform from olive green to brilliant flashes of orange, scarlet, yellow, blue, and turquoise.

Keas are hardy birds that tolerate a range of temperatures, and they thrive on everything from berries, fruits, roots, and leaves to even carrion. They also loiter around picnic sites—an easy source of junk food. Insatiably curious, charismatic, and mischievous, these natural sleuths are bold, relentless, and downright destructive, but so cute. Easy for me to say when I haven’t experienced their fondness for rubber—destroying car door seals or chewing through wiper blades. I did get a kick out of seeing several board a bus during our tramping tour.

According to a British tourist, he had his passport stolen by a kea. The passport was stored in a brightly colored bag in the luggage compartment of a bus headed for a boat tour of Milford Sound. The kea struck when the bus stopped and the driver was busy in the luggage compartment. The driver startled the kea, which flew away with the passport.

Years ago, when a kea was spotted attacking a live sheep, the birds were branded as killers and a bounty was placed on their little green heads. Tens of thousands were killed, but today they are a protected species.

But why all the signs warning people not to feed them? Besides the bounty, their love for high-fat junk food very nearly killed them off. So for their sake and ours, do not feed the keas.

MELALEUCA

In the wilderness of Tasmania’s Southwest National Park, the history of its first inhabitants, and later its mining explorers, is being preserved at Melaleuca—renowned for its world heritage area and also for its mining history. A small mining settlement was established in the region in 1930s, where high-grade alluvial cassiterite (tin oxide) was mined.

While digging deeper into the history of tin mining during my research on Sir Henry Jones, I discovered the life and accomplishments of Charles Denison “Deny” King, an Australian naturalist, ornithologist, environmentalist, painter, and the first tin miner in Melaleuca. To read more about him and the Deny King Heritage Museum, http://tasminerals.com.au/news/news/about-deny-king-and-the-deny-king-heritage-museum,-melaleuca/

I also discovered during a conversation with one of the “birdies” from our tour of Melaleuca that they were not in search of “simply a green parrot” but were on a heated search to catch a glimpse of “the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot that breeds only around Melaleuca.”

The Melaleuca was originally part of the homelands of the Needwonnee Aboriginal people, and the Needwonnee Walk shares the stories of these original custodians of the land. Photo left: On the Needwonnee Walk.

Black swans at Melaleuca

Today’s Melaleuca is still virtually untouched, with only six thousand visitors each year. Due to the remoteness of the region and limited accessibility—by foot, plane, or boat—the area has maintained its wildness. Visitors’ facilities are intentionally rugged, catering to trampers, bushwalkers, day-trippers, and bird-watchers. As I wrote in a previous post, we flew into the small airstrip and then traveled on foot and by boat to tour the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Sadly, this wilderness area suffered a bad bushfire in 2016. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3429623/Tasmanian-World-Heritage-area-devastated-bushfire.html

SIR HENRY JONES

The infamous staircase at The Henry Jones Art Hotel

A last word on Sir Henry Jones. While Jones had a reputation for frugality, he was a very generous man who simply disliked spending money on “fripperies.” Rather than use first-grade timber to panel the Top Room at the Henry Jones hotel, Sir Henry preferred to reserve the high-quality wood for the crates that would be used to export his IXL jams around the world.

This grand staircase, also in the Henry Jones Hotel, has four carved newel posts, which support the handrail. Three have been decorated with stippling. When Jones walked by and saw a young lad from the factory floor working on the last post, he sent him back to work packing crates—an example of Jones’s abhorrence for needless expense.

LOVE LOCKS

From the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris to bridges in Melbourne and Sydney, love locks have been cut off footbridges, melted, recasted, and refiled. In some cases, they have become works of art with the proceeds donated to charity. From a previous post of mine: https://patkrapf.com//2015/06/18/europe-2013-the-notre-dame-bells/

My last shot of Australia as we flew back to the Unites States from Sydney.

For now, I will say a fond farewell to the land Down Under, but I will see you soon, Aotearoa—the Maori name for New Zealand, which translates as “the land of the long white cloud”—for we are already planning a repeat visit.

Writers Walk in Sydney.

You will notice I use famous quotes in all of my Darcy McClain and Bullet thrillers and I’ll leave you with one now from Eleanor Dark. “Silence ruled this land. Out of silence mystery comes, and magic, and the delicate awareness of unreasoning things.” The Timeless Land (1941).

Sharing is caring!

Tasmania 2014: Hobart – Part 2

Hobart today

While David mapped out our plans for the day, I wandered the hotel to peruse the artwork and to fantasize about what life must have been like in Sir Henry Jones’s time. I found the following bit of history on the Hunter Street warehouses, framed and hanging on a wall next to an abstract painting, and wanted to share it with my readers. There is some overlap of information from last week’s post, but I hope you find this history as interesting as I do.

William Bunster built Numbers 33 and 31 Hunter Street in the 1820s as a residence and warehouse. He traded in sealskins from Macquarie Island, salt and sealskins from Kangaroo Island, and general merchandise between Hobart and Sydney. As his business expanded he acquired Number 35, and several country properties as well. Unlike many other merchants, he did not build his fortune on initial wealth or family connections. At a dinner given in his honor in the early 1850s he described himself as ‘a plain man . . . I have tried to steer an independent course. I owe nothing to Government nor to any man.’

For much of its life Number 31 was also a tavern. In 1827, it was the Commercial Inn, where Hobart’s first Chamber of Commerce was formed at a meeting of merchants in a room on the first floor, while sailors and wharf laborers drank up their meagre pay in the Shades Tap Room in the basement.

Between 1869 and 1882 Numbers 27–33 were bought in a dilapidated condition by George Peacock, a jam manufacturer. Peacock ran his firm on religious lines, with morning prayers, hymns, and sermons, and strict abstinence from alcohol. Despite these precautions, by 1892 his firm had fallen on hard times. Peacock’s son and two of his employees formed a partnership and bailed out the Old Wharf jam factory. One of his employees was young Henry Jones. Like Peacock before him, Jones lived in Bunster’s old house, Number 33. The other warehouses were the cornerstone of his empire, which grew far beyond Tasmania’s shores.

After the Great Fire of 1890 swept through the whole of Hunter Street from the Drunken Admiral to the site of the old gasworks, now home to the Federation Concert Hall, many of the burned homes were never rebuilt. Others were sold or demolished, and most of the area was replaced with commercial development—contributing to Wapping’s demise as a residential district.

Old Woolstore Apartment Hotel.

Today, Hobart’s seediest district sports one of the town’s tallest high-rise hotels and new walk-up yuppie apartments. But not far from the modern waterfront hotel, I discovered what I hoped to find—restored historical buildings preserved for a new use: the Mantra Collins Hotel, which appears to be part old and part new, and the Old Woolstore Apartment Hotel, which sits on land originally known as Wapping and later referred to as Sullivan’s Cove. Particularly intriguing was the top floor of the Woolstore building with its sawtooth roofline. This style of roofing allowed the maximum amount of natural light into the room, which benefited the wool weavers.

After learning about Henry Jones’s IXL jam factory, my first thought was, “Where did Peacock, and then Jones, get such an abundance of fruit for his jams?” So I did some research. As surprised as I was that the sugarcane industry is one of Australia’s largest and most important industries, I was even more surprised to learn that Tasmania grows an abundance of fresh fruit. In fact, the Tasmanian fruit industry was worth over $102 million in 2010. The major fruit crops grown are apples, pears, cherries, berries, and stone fruit. Although the apple industry has been in decline over the past decade, it still accounts for 25 percent of Tasmania’s fruit production, and the cherry industry is experiencing significant growth.

As an adolescent growing up overseas, it never dawned on me that jam didn’t come in a can. I’m sure I saw jam in a glass container when I lived in Maryland, but I never made a note of that. I also don’t recall ever seeing syrup in any container but a can. Pictured is my favorite syrup—in a can.

Tasmania also has a significant history of tin production. Tin was discovered in the late 1800s and was the metal of choice. George Peacock sourced his tin from local mines to make the cans for his jams.

IXL Long Bar at The Henry Jones Art Hotel

An hour later, David hunted me up and we set out to explore the surrounding area, starting at Battery Point, named after the battery of guns established on the point in 1818 as part of Hobart’s coastal defenses. Our goal was simply to walk, and we did—Battery Point, Sandy Bay, University of Tasmania, Cascades Female Factory, St. David’s Park, Salamanca Place and Salamanca Market, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, and finally the Old Woolstore Apartment Hotel at 1 Macquarie Street. And along the way, we passed the Queen Alexandra Hospital where Errol Flynn was born, and we managed to find time to see Maffra, the Victorian Gothic weatherboard house designed by noted architect Henry Hunter in 1885 and once home to the Hollywood actor.

In the hotel lobby, adjacent to the IXL Long Bar, we sank into one of the cushiony leather sofas, ordered drinks, and relaxed before dinner at the Peacock and Jones. I had the duck and foie gras and bitter leaf salad with truffle vinaigrette. David chose the Huon Valley beef with horseradish, smoked tongue, and pommes dauphine.

Lobby of The Henry Jones Art Hotel

Sharing is caring!

Hardwired