The closer you get to the South Pole, the longer the daylight hours are in summer. Officially sunrise was at 5:26am this morning, but first light was much earlier. Needless to say we woke early, with daylight streaming in the window of our hotel room slightly before 5:00am.
We took advantage of the breakfast buffet that was included in room rate, knowing we would be on our feet for much of the day. The MONA Roma ferry we were booked on was the first for the day, departing at 9:30am. It was an easy downhill walk to the departure jetty. The walk included a brief side-trip through Salamanca Place, which was just getting going for the day with few people about.
We had watched a cruise ship heading for the docks from our hotel and when we joined the queue to get aboard the MONA Roma it was clear we were going to share the day with many of the cruise ship passengers in town for the day. We subsequently heard that the cruise ship had traveled down from Sydney and was headed to Singapore.
The MONA Roma takes about 30 minutes to make its way up the Derwent, under the Tasman Bridge and past the large zinc smelter before arriving at its destination. The 99 steps from the jetty, through a sandstone cutting to the main entrance, challenged a few.
The main entrance delivers visitors to a circular staircase set in a vertical hole cut deep into the local sandstone. We spiralled down and down while a glass elevator travelled up and down the centre of the staircase.
MONA has an eclectic selection of art installations on display through a maze of rooms, passageways, staircases and walkways. Darkened rooms that often featured challenging lighting and sound effects presented at every twist and turn of the journey.
We signed a waiver before entering an artwork by James Turrell named Seen Unseen – a white sphere that had a central mat the two of us could lay back on to take in the perfectly concave surrounds. The door closed behind us as a sequence of strobe lighting effects filled the space and challenged the visual senses. Fifteen minutes later we stepped out into the real world, moving a little slower as our eyes adjusted.
A spell in a totally darkened room (also by James Turrell, and named Weight of Darkness) followed; it had a calming effect after the visual overload of the previous installation. We then wandered about from space to space, room to room and installation to installation.
The day had flown by and it wasn’t long before we were heading back to the Hobart CBD with sensory overload. We finished off our day in Hobart with a stroll along the docks and through the Salamanca Place historic precinct.
Tomorrow we start the Three Capes walk with the forecast for rain along much of the east coast of Tasmania.