Photo Essay: My journey to work

I thought that I would do something a bit different today, and take the camera with me to record my trip to work this morning. I've been looking at people's blogs a bit of late, and have seen all sorts of interesting accounts (pictorial and otherwise), of life in all sorts of places, from Alaska to Ghana to Romania. So I thought that I should add little old Hobart to the list, as well as record it for myself, for future reference. As someone who is really into history on all levels, sometimes you forget that if you don't leave some trace your own little existence; it's bound to just disappear! So here we go my trip to work on this Wednesday morning, March 5, 2008.

As my bus leaves at 7:30 am (sometimes earlier, sometimes later), I'm out the door by 7:20 at the latest for the walk to the stop. Today, Henry and Jen accompanied me to see me off (and were themselves headed off for a brisk morning walk!). So we said our adieus, and went our separate ways. Jen, by e-mail, let me know that "Henry enjoyed his walk this morning. He even managed to walk from the play equipment in the park in Lindisfarne Bay around to the Child Health Centre all by himself. I think it must have worn him out as he seems to be sleeping nice and soundly now." This is always great to hear!

None of my pics of the actual bus journey turned out very well, so I won't put them up. Suffice to say, it was dull and involved smelly teenagers making a lot of noise, and a few people commuting to work. As I live on the Eastern Shore of the Derwent River (although it is really an estuary), this involves a trip across the Tasman Bridge. Because I stuffed up, I got this photo from Flickr of the bridge to get a sense of the journey.

Off the bus in town then, and I hook on to Elizabeth Street and walk towards the waterfront with others heading to work. The Mercury thermometer (the newspaper, not the element, known locally as The Mockery) told me that it was a balmy 7 °C, which has not deterred me from wearing shorts (the same shorts that I got married in, in fact!). It is predicted to rise to an agreeable 22 °C today.

If I'm rushing, I walk through Franklin Square and head directly to Salamanca Place (where I work), but more often like to stroll on the docks and take in the scenery. Today, the Russian icebreaker Marina Tsvetaeva [Мари́на Цвета́ева] is in town.

I then crouched down low to both minimise the sun, and give people an idea of how flat the Derwent is on a calm day.

Hooking onto a street that I don't know the name of, you can just about see the Tasmanian Parliament through the trees. Although it's early days yet, it's starting to look a bit like Autumn!

Nearing work now, I stopped to get a shot of Salamanca Lawns on what really is a fine, clear morning.

Looking up towards Salamanca Place, you can see the rows of converted warehouses. My office is right up near the end on the third floor.

I decided that a closer view of the laneway into Salamanca Square would maybe turn out to be a decent shot. I'm only about 30 meters away from work here.

This is a shot from the front door of my building. Looking across Castray Esplanade, you can see another visitor, French Southern and Antarctic Territories support vessel L'Astrolabe. Being the last stop off before Antarctica, you often see these sort of ships berthed here throughout the year.

To finish things off, I decided to not show you a photo of an untidy desk, and leaned out the window of my office (yes, I'm lucky enough to have a window in my office), and snapped off a (somewhat crooked) picture of Mount Wellington, which pretty much dominates the city of Hobart.

So there you go, there is my daily trip to work!