More than one person told us along the way to be sure to stop at MONA —the recently opened museum of modern art located just outside of Hobart in the town of Berriedale.
MONA is the vision of a local fellow with Aspergers who's made the most of his condition by amassing a fortune playing and counting cards in Las Vegas (this is the story I was told, but it has yet to be fact checked — please verify). Blackballed from every casino in the world, David Walsh now trains his proteges to count cards, sends them out to the world's casinos and takes a healthy cut of their winnings— a real life Henry Sugar for the arts.
With his wealth, David's built MONA, a winery, restaurant, resort and free modern art museum that rivals all and any modern museum in the world. Consisting of his own collected artwork, it's displayed in an magnificent architectural labyrinth. The vision behind it is astounding. Visitors are handed iPhones when they arrive that provide information as you stroll about — on the artwork, the artist's statement, snippets of interviews with the artist. Very high-tech and brilliantly conceived.
But we get ahead of ourselves...
Awaking early in the fog at our Burbury campsite, we eat breakfast, pack up and drive along the west coast and Lyell Highway, through the Franklin-Gordon National Park. There are two short hikes to do — one into a very peaceful Nelson waterfall, the other a circuit that takes us to the meeting point of the Franklin and Surprise rivers. (Surprise, it's a river!) It gives us another good look at the near impenetrable and very wet rainforest and at the fast flowing Franklin river. The Franklin has a long and storied history in Tasmania. Several years ago, proposals were put forth to dam the Franklin in order to generate more hydro electric power for the state. This proposal produced a long and bitter fight between conservationists and hydro supporters — a fight that ended up in Australian Supreme court. The court ruled 4-3 that the Franklin River area should be designated as a world heritage site and thus no dam could be built. It remains today a pivotal moment in Tasmanian history, incapsulating the underlying tension between conservation ideals and those who would prefer to make the most of Tasmania's abundant natural resources.
Another hour of driving brought us to The Wall, just outside of Derwent Bridge. The Wall is a 10 year long project, still in progress. Created by Greg Duncan, the wall is a massive 3 metre high huon pine mural totally carved by hand and depicting scenes of Tasmanian Central Highlands history beginning with the toil and struggle involved while building Tasmania's hydro electric dams (wonder who funded that portion of the mural?)
The work is excellent, the detail astonishing, but most apparent is the commitment and vision for the project. The self taught artist is truly a gifted carver and when completed in four and a half more years, the result will be a Tasmanian treasure. No photos are allowed (apparently something to do with a broken eye socket after a recent altercation with a shutterbug?) but you can see some of it here on the website.
www.thewalltasmania.com
From there, we leave the mountains and rain forest behind and return to more of the dry, arid land we encountered making our way up the east coast. We stop in New Norfolk for groceries and almost get in the middle of a tense battle between a teenage truant and her mother. "Keep driving and don't make eye contact." — Jenn's very wise advice.
And then it's MONA. Words fail to capture this experience. Macabre. Surreal. Bizarre. Hilarious. Beautiful and poignant. Every turn in every room held something different and provoked some sort of reaction — the sign of a truly great exhibition. Jenn felt she could do so much with the artwork to educate children and began devising a curriculum based on the museum. Maybe we'll be coming back to Tasmania?
Here are a few photos to give a sense, but best visit the website to try and wrap your head around what's going on. Even after being there for a couple of hours, we couldn't. It defies head wrapping...
www.mona.net.au
Our minds reeling, we navigate our way back to Hobart, through rush hour traffic (a few tractors and wallabies) and down south to a place called Snug Harbour. It's raining, the weather despondent, but hopefully it will clear off for our ferry ride over to Bruny Island and our last few days in Tassie.
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