Nadines Travel Blog

Hobart Tasmania down below. It would have been an exhilarating drive up to Mount Wellington which overlooks Hobart and area of Tasmania which is the capital city.  But I don't like heights. For me it was a terrifying ride.  Imagine a single lane highway with no shoulders really to speak of and traffic coming your way where there's tons of curves and hairpin turns and looking straight down Mount Wellington.  Mount Wellington is 4,170 feet tall and utterly spectacular!! We stopped at over half way up the mountain. There was a pretty little natural spring waterfall leaking out of the side of the mountain with some Electric Green colored moss. After looking around for a bit it was time for us to leave once I saw this which was a site of a past landslide. It was an 11 km road uphill. This scary treacherous road was made even more uncomfortable because you're on the wrong side of the road and Aussies drive fast on on narrow roads.  There were even crazy people biking up th...

I had the opportunity while in Hobart Tasmania to visit the Cascades Female Factory historic site which is now a UNESCO world heritage site. Each one of these metal posts has the name of an Australian Penal Colony name on it.  I have now visited two and I am off to visit my third. It is one of 11 convict sites scattered throughout Australia where prisoners were transported from the UK or England, Ireland, Scotland for usually minor offenses.  7,000 women made it through the Cascade system or did not make it through the Cascade system and many returned numerous times.  Cascades Female Factory is the most significant site in Australia associated with the story of female convicts. It took decades for women to get this site recognized by the Australian government.  A female factory was not just a prison to house female convicts. It was also a hiring depot, a workplace, a hospital and a nursery.  A nursery where there was a 70% mortality rate for the babies.  C...