Ohhhhhh MONA

With a kind of random start to the day we drove west for around half an hour to a town called New Norfolk. We visited the visitor  info centre and ended up at a place called Salmon Ponds. It's a Heitage Hatchery - go figure - there's history wherever you look!

The colonials brought the roe of Brown Trout and Atlantic Salmon especially packed in a box with moss, charcoal and crushed ice.

This is the outer box that did the job all those years ago........

and this is a model of how the inside looked with the layers of roe, ice, charcoal and peat/moss.  I just want to know how come the ice didn't melt?? It was along voyage in those days.

There were ponds full of fish here..... Atlantic Salmon, Rainbow Trout, Brook Trout, Albino Rainbow Trout (which were cream colored, but still has the grey and pink stripes).
Of course there was the oh so predictable fish food to buy and I must say feeding them all was very good fun!! As soon as the pellets hit the water there was a veritable feeding frenzy. These were the albino trout.

It was a lovely walk through the grounds. We found a cork tree.........

I'm not sure that it looks too much like cork in this photo, but it certainly felt like it.......

Here you can clearly see the thickness of the bark

It was a lovely shady tree and very pleasantly tactile.

After walking the grounds, feeding the fish, and touching the cork tree, we discovered the fishing museum. Unbelievable!!
I am not in any way enamoured of fishing but having once been married to a fisherman and given birth to another one I think I could judge fairly accurately that this place would be fisherman's heaven.
There were rods, reels, stuffed fish, and flies everywhere.

This poem took my fancy.

There was a very nice walking tracvk outside the grounds, along the Plenty River. the fish in the river were just as greedy (and plentiful) as those in the ponds. We searched for platypus as we walked along, but to no avail.

One thing that really impressed me was that there had been action taken to make fishing accessible to people with restricted mobility.
There were three of these platforms along the river bank.

After a nice lunch in the cafe overlooking the grounds we left for our next adventure.

Tasmania has a new #1 tourist destination. It is a place called MONA. that stands for Museum of Old and New Art. We were going to give it a miss, but have been told by so many people that it is and experience not to be missed that we decide we better give it a go. We've more or less been told that we wouldn't like everythingwe saw, but we should see it anyway.
The building defies description for a start, but some of the art is unbelievable. As I understand it it's been built by a rich dude who had a large collection and wanted somewhere to house it. I don't know if that's true or not, but if so then I'm pretty sure he has since gone looking for the weirdest stuff he can find. Kind of along the line sof " there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Nothing is labelled. You are provided with a device very like an Iphone, it finds your location by satellite (I assume) and tells you what "art" is nearby. You also get to vote if you 'love' or 'hate' the art. And you can "save" the things you viewed by entering your email address.
There were some antiquities - mummies etc, and some nice art, but then there was a crap machine! and some tattooed pig skins, with a film of the pigs while they were still alive in the next room!?!
Be your own judge http://mona.net.au/theo     and then my email address

We had a fantastic night. We had drinks, dinner, a flutter and saw a show at the Wrest Point Casino.
"The Sweet - The Band 40 Years On" Absolutely fabulous!! 
We were singing and clapping and dancing in the aisles!!
Ray bought 2 albums and their tour book and was first in line to get their autographs at the end of the show.
A good night was had by all!