The wages of workers are low, mechanics receiving from $2 to $2.50 a day. Calling on one of the daily newspapers to see how things looked, when it became known that I was from the United States most of the composing room force stopped work, gathered about me, questions coming eagerly concerning conditions in America from every angle. I was to leave the city a few hours later, when two of the force left their work and saw me on the train.
Hobart, 135 miles south of Launceston, was the next stop. This is the capital of Tasmania, and has double the population of Launceston. Hobart is situated at the delta of the Derwent River, and has a splendid harbor, with Mount Wellington behind the city, water in front, and a large domain or park at one side. While showing little life commercially, there is a charm about the Tasmania capital that sticks to one.
Three women to one man is Hobart's unequal population. The wages are so small that any young fellow with an ounce of pluck will cross Bass Straits to the mainland cities, where his labor sells for more than a bare living wage, with opportunities for amounting to something later that Tasmania does not offer. A preserve or jam factory in Hobart furnishes girls and women with employment.
Food and house rent are cheap, and for these reasons, together with the splendid climate all the year round, a considerable number of ex-British army officers, who have a pension, go there to spend their last days.
No stale fish is eaten in Hobart. At the wharfs many fish dealers are found, and their stock is kept in barges or scows containing enough water for the fish to swim in. A customer points out the fish he wants to buy, when it is speared and handed to the purchaser alive. One fish found in that locality—the "trumpeter"—is as sweet as American shad, and it has fewer bones. Oysters do well also in Hobart waters, as that city is nearly as far south of the equator as New York is north of that line. Fish caught in a warm climate have not the same flavor as fish that inhabit the waters of a colder one. An angler is at home when lolling about the brooks and rivers that abound a short distance from the city.
A dollar a day was all I paid for accommodation at a tidy hotel. That sum included three meals and a room.
One will find here a good museum, creditable art gallery and splendid park system, also a good street car system, electric lights, gas and other utilities.
"Appleland" would be a suitable name for Tasmania, as upward of 3,000,000 bushels of apples are shipped from that island each year, and the shipments are increasing. The Huon district, some 20 miles from Hobart, is the great apple growing section of southern Tasmania. Apple trees grow in these parts where nothing else would thrive, and large tracts of orchards are seen on the sides of rocky hills. Trees are not allowed to grow over six feet high, which adds much to the convenience and cheapness of picking. They are trimmed each season, and the stumps are eight inches in diameter in some instances, but only the stump, which will not rise over six inches above the ground, is left. The sprouts grow from the stump, and these do not, as stated, exceed six feet tall. These apples do not hang only from the ends of the limbs, as they do from most apple trees in America. Blossoms bloom from the body of the limb, and the limb and trunks of the sprouts are entirely covered with apples. Apples grow from the limbs as freckles on an arm. Ten acres of apple land in southern Tasmania bring in a nice yearly income. The trees grow bushy, and as many as 20 bushels are often picked from one. Most of the apples shipped from Hobart go to England, the time of shipment being from February to June.
Fifty miles from Hobart stands the walls of the old Port Arthur Prison, as well as the walls of the church, cracked and ready to fall, covered with ivy vines, where the prison officers worshiped; the nice avenues of trees where the freemen enjoyed the shade on a hot day are very pretty, and the cozy bay, with Point Peur jutting into still and attractive waters, suggest nothing, so far as nature is concerned, as to the place having been one of the most inaccessible, impenetrable prisons of the world. What was known as the hospital building is in good condition, and serves the small community of Carnarvon as a town hall and public school.
Port Arthur has been changed in name—to Carnarvon—as most of the places that have had anything to do with the early prison days of Van Diemen's Land. The prison was located on a strip of land, 12 miles in length, called Tasman Peninsula. Water naturally borders both sides of the peninsula, and the narrow neck of land at the head—Eagle Hawk Neck—of the peninsula is less than a quarter of a mile wide.