Tasmania Part 5: A Day at the Royal Botanical Center and Back to MONA

Today was the most perfect day we could have asked for, and certainly the best we have experienced with the weather.  A bright sunny day with light wind, temps in the 60's.  A perfect day to wander the Botanical Garden.
I have just begun reading about the history of the garden.  Officially founded in 1818, the garden was actually started by an ex-convict who was granted some land to develop.  It sort of sounds like it was taken away from his family when the garden started looking nice.  I need to keep reading, I guess.

The garden seems quite large,(14 Hectares, if that means anything to you) larger in area than the San Antonio Botanical Garden (which is my point of reference).  We really enjoyed our time in it.  There was a beautiful Food garden, an orchid house, and even a sub-Antarctica garden display.  The Japanese Tea garden was beautiful even in mid-winter.  One can only imagine what it must be like in the fall when all the trees are in color.

Impressive entry gate to the garden.

This is a giant rhubarb plant.  It was an alien-looking thing, for sure.

A pink magnolia.

Part of the Japanese garden.

The tiniest of pine-cones.

The beautifully maintained food garden.

Here is a pano of the food garden.

And a wonderful cactus display.

I swear this is a cactus. See above.

This is an Empress Tree.  Here are images of such a tree in bloom.

Eventually, we drove back out to MONA and decided to have lunch outside one of the restaurants.  We enjoyed a delicious lunch and accompanied it with a glass of the Morilla sparkling wine.  The Morilla vineyard is on the property of the MONA museum.  Their pinot noir grapes are grown on property.  The other grapes are grown elsewhere on the island.  The pinot is quite good.

And because we could, we stayed and watched the James Turrell installation, "Amarna", 

through its sunset illumination.  Sigh.

Here are the (curly) heads of my daughters as they attempt to figure out which planet

we are seeing through the opening of the installation.  (Jupiter)

We were further rewarded with the most stunning moonrise over the water.

It was HUGE and bright yellow-orange.  Just a spectacular evening.

Tomorrow I made reservations for the family to fly over to the southwestern part of Tasmania.  There is a World Heritage site over there and I am psyched to spend time in it.  Stay tuned!  xo L

Tasmania Adventure part 2

I'm finding myself feeling better, with less jet lag each day.  Actually, I feel fine all day but I can tell the jet lag still has me in its grip when I want to face-plant at 8:30 each evening.  If you know me at all you will understand how extraordinary that is....
Today we drove out to MONA and spent the afternoon, even staying after the closing out under the James Turrell installation, "Armarna".  Oh my goodness it was gorgeous.   My first shot of the installation was taken as I approached it just before sunset.  I took many, many photos because I was entranced with the color of the installation as it contrasted with the sky color.  It is such a great example of how relative color is to others.  Apologies in advance for the stream of images that follows.... (sorry, not sorry)...you are seeing them in the order in which I took them.

Last night we attended Midwinter Fest,  a rather pagan affair out in the middle of nowhere.  Huge bonfires and the burning of what appeared to be some sort of huge scarecrow effigy.  I need to read up on the significance of it, but it was a great time.

We all went to Target and bought Wellies, or as they are referred to here, “gumboots”, for the occasion and it was very good we did.  Talk about a mud-fest.  It reminded me of a smaller sort of woodstock.  Loads of music, food, and drink.  People here are 

so friendly.  We even got to feed some interesting cattle (you would have loved it, Ellie):  Highlands and (I think) Swiss.  They had funky fur.  One had a rather unfortunate, Trump-esque looking comb-over.  She couldn’t help it, I guess.

Trump comb-over on cow....