Old Hobart Town

[khiemtran]

Not far from Hobart, in historic Richmond, you can see a miniature re-creation of Hobart in the 1820s.



The layout is painstakingly modelled and several of the streets and buildings can still be seen today. It was interesting to see how much of the modern shoreline has been filled in and which modern streets would once have been underwater.



Note the yellow and brown convict uniforms. These look quite different from most of the uniforms we learned about at school, but this was also before Port Arthur was established and there was a different convict system.



Road safety was a key issue in 1820.



And life was tough...



There was also a fun treasure hunt to try to find four particular figures (a Tasmanian tiger, a man skinning a kangaroo, a woman killing a snake and a boy falling out of a tree). We found them all, but I'm not going to include any spoilers here...

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh these are delightful! (Though the flogging's a little intense.)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, there were lots of little scenes tucked away in the background - prisoners escaping over walls, a stagecoach being bailed up, lovers hiding in a haystack. Someone obviously had a lot of fun making it all. The four hidden figures were actually very hard to spot because they were hidden way in the background behind everything else.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The lovers in the haystack is a nice touch :-)

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wasn't quite ready for the flogging scene, either... Some makers of films for kids (I'm thinking Narnia & The Golden Compass here) should take note - injuries=blood. Anything else is just plain SILLY!!!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe I'd better put a warning on that lj-cut. Lucky I cropped out the hanging scene from the same pic..

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Naw. It's a model! It's PAINT!!

If anyone can't handle that, then they should be boycotting the meat counter at their local supermarket.

It's just that I can safely say that I've never seen anything quite like it in all the little dioramas I've encountered during my museum visits through the years...

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't for the builder's cleavage centre-picture, the figures in the 2nd photo would be dead ringers for Camberwick Green figures - though the soldier boys from Pippin Fort never handed out floggings. ;)

Great perspective/depth of field, btw. Not easy with miniatures.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Presumably only the worst boys were sent to Van Dieman's land... Also saw an interesting ad for one of the convict exhibitions noting that we know far more about the convicts than the soldiers who guarded them. The convicts were carefully scrutinized as part of the system (and in the case of Port Arthur as part of an ultimately horrific though well-intentioned experiment) while the soldiers were just the gears that made the system work.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Camberwick Green with added floggings!!! What a thought!!

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

*snigger*

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I love the wonderfully detailed houses combined with the naive figures. It's a strange juxtaposition...