Tuesday 13^th November

For part of our trip to the Tasman Peninsula we were accompanied by a lone, and very beautiful, albatross, which made me sigh with great pleasure and admiration.  Apparently I missed another Attenborough Moment, says Pete, because I was sitting up the front of the boat going lalala in my head and ignoring his shouts to LOOK AT THE SEAL which was frolicking pleasantly right next to the 2XS.

Sailing right in to Port Arthur was quite extraordinary.  It all looked so very beautiful, green, lush, magnificent and just a bit forbidding.  We tied up to the jetty and Pete sauntered off to see if we were allowed to stay there.  Of course he made a new friend within a few minutes, a nice guide who has worked at the site for about ten years.  John was more than happy to let us stay on the jetty overnight, and he said we could walk around the grounds – it wouldn’t really be worth our while to get a ticket ($36 per person) because most of the places would be closing down within the hour.  We should really have paid $36 and more; the restoration is just fantastic, and we had a few hours walking around the beautiful gardens, admiring the cottages.  We were also able to get into the restored prison site which has been done to an extremely high standard – I imagine that tourists would be inordinately impressed.  The Broad Arrow Café memorial is also very appropriate; another bit of Port Arthur tragedy, beautifully evoked…

We had a drink at the Comfort Inn, in their cosy bar at the back of the hotel, totally devoid of view, and full of noise.  They had a jukebox going, also a TV – it looked like Little House of the Prairie, which nobody was watching – and as well as this the barman was having a lively conversation with a couple of mates. 

Happy with a drink or two and a successful four-way go at the Saturday Mercury quiz (I think nobody will be surprised to hear that I was the only person to know who Robert Pattinson’s girlfriend is…) we continued our exploration of the beautiful historic site.  I am a bit sooky so I started to feel overwhelmed with the sadness of it all and I tried to think more positively; how for many of the convicts coming to Port Arthur was an opportunity for a wonderful new life etc etc…but it is still a very sad place…

Dinner cheered me up no end – our friends concocted a feast of curry with couscous, followed by Eton Mess.  What more could we want?  Well I wanted (and got)…an early night…

India #16

And to get back to rats – I’m sure you were wondering… Pete and I had a little chat about rats, as you do, while sitting in our windowseats watching India roll on by.  He told me he HATES rats, ugh and yuck, can’t stand them.  Then we talked about other things.  A few days and a few train hours later he said, “Umm…You remember I told you how I hate rats?  Well I forgot to ask you how you feel about them.”  I gave him my onion of rats, which is quite high, actually.  Don’t mind them at all but do not want them running up my leg with sharp claws or biting me with rabies-infected teeth, but otherwise I find them quite personable.  “Oh good,” he said.  “Because one just ran over your feet and under your seat and is possibly burrowing into your pack right this minute.” 

We had to spend a bit of time over our weeks in India hanging around on railway platforms, and I would pace up and down – Miss Princess Backache – along the track.  What kept me fascinated and intrigued while pacing ten steps this way and ten steps that way was watching the large families of rats busily nesting and rushing about around the tracks, ignoring the humans only inches away from them, leading productive little rattish lives.  This was not an interest I shared, however, with Pete…