Australian Adventures Part Two

Emma Takes Tasmania! Feat. Wombats, James Turrell, and Blood Pens

I had one main objective in coming to Australia: find some cute animals that wouldn’t kill me, and pet them. I am delighted to tell you that it is mission accomplished. I flew from Melbourne to Tasmania, dropped my bags at my hotel in Hobart, and fifteen minutes later was in a van on my way to Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. Waiting at Bonorong was Robyn, my new friend, who had recently retired from working in Customs for 30 years, and was now a wildlife expert. I loved Robyn. For the next three hours, Robyn led our small group through the dark sanctuary, introducing us by name to every single animal, even the wild possums who just came to steal the other animals’ food. Before it got dark, though, I was handed a bag of kangaroo snacks and told to just walk over and feed them. Huh? Surely I had missed some information. No, I hadn’t. I walked through a gate and around a little bend and there were about 150 kangaroos—baby ones, enormous ones, and everybody in between—and they hopped right now and ate out of my hand.

Do you know that kangaroos are fuzzy? Do you know that they like to be pet on their chests like enormous pussycats? They do! I won’t add photos of every single animal I made friends with last night, but here’s one more—I call this one Madonna and Child, though I am the Madonna and the child is a wombat named Madge.

I know you can’t really see Madge very well, but you can see me, not NOT baby crazy for this creature and imagining bringing it home in my backpack.

Here is Madge’s whole glorious body. We met echidnas, we met Tasmanian devils, we met two different types of quolls, one kind that wanted to murder us and one kind that just wanted to party. What’s that? You’ve heard that wombats make cube-shaped poops and you wonder if I got to see one? Oh, you bet I did.

I’ve never had so much fun with raw chicken and buckets of weird goo with maggots in it. It was terrific, two thumbs up, if you ever have the opportunity to snuggle a wombat or need a kangaroo, do it.

But I’m not just here for wombats! Hobart has some great bookstores, and this morning, I went into two before my ferry up the river to MONA. I met Nina at the Melbourne Writers Festival, and this is her debut, and she was telling me and Gabrielle about choosing the model for this cover, and I was so excited to see it in Fuller’s this morning, and so I bought it! Can’t wait to read. Yay for debuts, and neon green.

The thing that absolutely every single person told me to do in Tasmania was take the ferry to MONA, a giant art museum. What I did not learn until I got to Australia is that MONA was created by this eccentric billionaire who made his fortune gambling and counting cards, and then teaching other people how to count cards, which maybe is not illegal in Australia? I don’t know. All I know is that the ferry was beautiful and had good snacks and then the museum pretty much gave me a panic attack.

First, the good:

1. The view from the ferry! Ferries are an impeccable form of travel, always.

2. The James Turrell— there were several, but this was great even when it was too light to be on! I sat here and finished my book and it was wonderful.

3. Lots of other things—as described to me by Alice, who did PR for the writers festival and used to work at MONA, the gist (and the fun) is sort of the juxtaposition of priceless work and cheap work, of old work and new work. For example: a sarcophagus! Next to a Marina Abramovic interactive project where people are counting grains of rice. That is fun, on the whole.

Ai Wewei’s White House

4. There are tunnels. This is where the good and the bad start to coverage for me. Have you seen The Menu? Or Knives Out 2: Electric Boogaloo? The vibes were like that: a person with infinite sums of money created this environment exactly the way they wanted, and it’s a bit creepy, on purpose.

   

At this point, I was starting to tire of the walls of vaginas and pitch-black exhibits, half of them with strobe lights, and began looking for an exit. Most of the museum is subterranean, and it did occur to me that we were all going to be murdered. The staff was all adorable and very friendly but still. It seemed like a pretty solid possibility.

5. Except for one oasis—at the end of one long, endless series of tunnels and turns, there was a fully lit room, with two middle-aged women sitting behind a desk, in a familiar setting. It was the library. One of them looked at me, and perhaps noting the murder panic on my face, invited me in. I browsed the shelves, and quickly came upon the section of books about museums. I took one off the shelf, and opened to the table of contents.

In it, I found an essay by my sister Ann Patchett, and sat down and read it, and felt like someone had poured liquid Valium all over my brain like chocolate syrup on an ice cream sundae.

In conclusion, I would give MONA one and a half thumbs up, but only because I wasn’t murdered. If I had been, zero thumbs! They clearly like to be a bit scary—sexy and transgressive, like one foul-smelling exhibit called the Cloaca Professional, in which they turn digestion into art, or this item from their gift shop that I did not purchase—but I’m still glad I went.

Now I have another night in Hobart in which to recover, then back to Melbourne for a quick dinner and then off back to Brooklyn. So far everything still fits in my suitcase. Including a small, stuffed version of Madge. Don’t tell my kids, she’s a surprise.