Today I am asking myself this question, "What would be the percentage of people who come to Hobart as tourists, then leave without ever setting foot inside the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) building at Kingston, just a 15 minute drive from the CBD?".
I'll bet it is a HUGE percentage! And that's a great pity because in that building is one of the most outstanding collections of photographs, historical items, artifacts, memorabilia and interactive displays relating to Australia's long-term role in valuing, protecting and understanding Antarctica.
And the best part is that admission is comepletely FREE.
What surprises me is that it is almost impossible to find any tourist-oriented material publicising this venue. The only really worthwhile reference I could find after hours of searching the net was this from Australian Explorer.com
This short reference is all I could find in a search of the official "Tourism Tasmanian" web site:
"There is a rich collection of Antarctic memorabilia in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s Islands to Ice exhibition, and our Maritime Museum; and at a small museum in the Australian Antarctic Division Headquarters in Kingston"
Even a really exhaustive search of the AAD's own website (click on link above) failed to unearth a single reference to the museum and display area at Kingston.
Had we not moved our "base camp" from the caravan park at New Norfolk to the delightfully named little township of SNUG, we may well have missed visiting the place ourselves. But when driving back and forth on the Channel Highway to inner-city attractions, we just happened to see a sign on the AAD building advertising a cafe ... no mention of "a museum". It was only our desire to learn more about the giant ice-breaker, Aurora Australis, berthed in Hobart Harbour, that triggered our interest in visiting that cafe.
Ironically it was at the AAD cafe that we found this simple brochure advertising the venue:
All the images associated with today's edition of the blog that show items inside the building (including images by other photographers) were taken over a period of 90 minutes just before closing time. Our shots go nowhere close to revealing the many wondrous items on display.
To conserve space on this page, there are 20 more images in the slide show on the side panel to the right.
When you are visiting Hobart, do your senses a favour and head for the AAD building at Kingston.
Before we visited the AAD Display Centre, we had been to Harvey Norman, 171 Murray Street, Hobart, to buy an 8GB flash drive to save all the shots we have taken with our Canon EOS 1000D (almost 2500 of them). Here we were taken care of very competently by Kirsty in the camera department (damn, didn't get a shot of her. Sorry Kirsty, but we'll make sure Gerry Harvey gets to read this anyway!)
While talking with Kirsty, we were lucky enough to have a gentleman on our side of the counter introduce himself. He turned out to be Chris, a Canon representative, and for the next 10 minutes he passed on to me some of the best tips about using my camera I could have ever learned.
Thanks Chris ... and now you have proof positive to show your sales manager that you really were in Harvey Norman Hobart at around 11am on Friday 24th September, and not at the local pub!
Later I was able to use my newly learned skills at Kingston Beach to record some great shots of one of my favourite bird species .. the sea gulls. Here are just two of them:
"Jonathon Livingston" was a most co-operative model, happy to pose for many shots close to my feet, while Kae Harradine of Canberra was a very popular visitor with the locals ... they reckoned she was extremely "gullible"!
And tomorrow for two Tassie tourists at least, a new day dawns ... it has been promised thus:
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