Monday in Hobart

We actually had a day off on Monday.

Thanks to Scott, Elaine, and son Colin, Taylor for showing us around Scotty's ToyShed, with a few interest classic and race cars, and lots of good memorabilia, photos etc. Elaine then dropped us up to the Moorilla estate, where a controversial new modern art gallery has been opened by some gazillionaire. Very modern building, and the whole place is very funky, but just a touch weird ... There are no descriptions on the Walls by the exhibits, but they give you an iPod which works out where you are in the building and what you might be looking at, in each case there is then different buttons that gives you an explanation of the piece, the comments of the Gallery owner or the curator, or in some cases an interview with the artist. Some of the comments by the owner or the curator are classic, as they have a tendency to describe each other's selections (or sometimes their own!) as cr@p! After you've left, the iPod then emails your own experience in the museum to you.

The gallery has only been open a couple of months and is seriously impressive, inevitably we found some stuff good, some stuff clever, and some other stuff just plain weird or even deviant! The piece de resistance (although I hesitate to use that phrase) is actually a machine called the 'Cloaca Professional' ... Anyone out there remember their Latin from school? Cloaca is the word for sewer if I recall correctly, and this is a machine that actually makes poo, replicating the human digestive system. Into one end they feed food that is surplus from the restaurant and cafe (at 12:00 and 15:00 every day) and then at 14:00 every day it poos - I'm not kidding! Jason asked the technician a bit about it, and he told us that it had got a bit clogged up during the installation phase, but then they realised that it didn't have a varied enough diet, as the builders were dropping their pies and chips into it ... Now it has a 'normal' varied human type diet, they even give it a beer a couple of times a week!

One of the other exhibits opened with some chunks of genuine meat hanging from it, when these started to deteriorate, they fed the meat to the Cloaca ... So here we have it, the first museum in the world where one exhibit eats others. Hilarious. If you don't believe me check out the website mona.net.au

Off to the big Targa Presentation dinner shortly, and ready for a beer! Will report on the dinner later.

Tomorrow we drive up through Tasmania from Hobart to Devonport to catch the ferry, and we have planned to meet a group of Targa-istes at the pub that sits on one corner of the old Longford circuit, and is apparently full of race memorabilia. It's about half way up the state, so a good place to break anyway in the 4 hour drive. I hope the car can make it...!