Skip to main content

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.


Richmond is a town about 25 kilometres north-east of Hobart, and is the Richmond Bridge, built in 1823, around the time of the town's first settlement. It is Australia's oldest bridge still in use. Above you can see the view to the West, and below are two shots of the bridge itself.





I'll be honest with you people, it falls some way short of the Karlův most (Charles Bridge) in Praha, which is something like 466 years older. That said, chirpy chippy convicts built it (allegedly), and that makes all the difference to Australians!
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow. This is some gorgeous scenery.
25 January 2010 at 08:59
Chuck Pefley said…
Abe is right ...

That bridge must have been very well made to last that long.
25 January 2010 at 09:19
Kris McCracken said…
Abe, they get some good weather out that way.
25 January 2010 at 09:46
Kris McCracken said…
Chuck, it must have been the threat of hanging!
25 January 2010 at 09:54
Unknown said…
As usual, love the photos as well as your interesting and hilariously entertaining thoughts on things. :-) The boys are quite dashing! Happy 2010 to you and the family, Kris. From me, Mark, Smokey the cat and our thousands of bees!
25 January 2010 at 10:24
Megan said…
I love bridges. That's a really good one.
25 January 2010 at 11:11
Kris McCracken said…
Thiên, it is good to hear that some of the bees are doing well.

We won't mention that matter of some months ago...

;)
25 January 2010 at 11:25
Kris McCracken said…
Megan, it's bridges galore around these parts.
25 January 2010 at 11:26
Mary Stebbins Taitt said…
Well, it is a beautiful bridge, even if it falls short of the glory of the other. Very attractive bridge and scenery.
25 January 2010 at 13:24
Kris McCracken said…
Mary, it would have been hard work getting that up in 1823.
25 January 2010 at 14:17
Anonymous said…
Holy mackerel! This is a fantastic blog! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT! Going in my favorites! Thanks for stopping by mine as well. :-)
25 January 2010 at 14:54
Kris McCracken said…
Renee, that's some praise!
25 January 2010 at 15:10
magiceye said…
superbly composed and shot!
the caption is so true!
25 January 2010 at 16:24
paul said…
A very stylish bridge, beautifully captured and lovingly described - what more can one wish for. I'll have to travel to Tasmania sometime!
25 January 2010 at 16:54
ratatouille's archives said…
Hi! Kris,
Nice photographs,quote and info(rmation) about bridges.
Thanks, for sharing!
DeeDee ;-D
25 January 2010 at 17:06
Louis la Vache said…
hee hee
We also have a Richmond Bridge, not built by convicts, but convicts live on the Marin County side of it: the bridge ends near the notorious San Quentin Prison...
26 January 2010 at 02:08
Roddy said…
Laying the foundations in 1823 would have been a feat in itself. The placement of each and every stone would have been painstakingly slow. Especially by unskilled labour.
I watched your grandfather (Jimmy), stack wood one time. The effort he put in was monumental. As a result I can get a pretty tight woodstack myself. He could actually get an extra quarter metre to the measure.
26 January 2010 at 10:34
Kris McCracken said…
Louis, I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
27 January 2010 at 10:49
Kris McCracken said…
Roddy, he had a method.
27 January 2010 at 10:49
Roddy said…
Does that make his stack "methodical"?
27 January 2010 at 13:02
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...
62 comments
Read more

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...
42 comments
Read more

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...
50 comments
Read more