A Cascade of Rabbits?

The extinct thylacine, better known
 as the Tasmanian Tiger

Tasmania's coat of arms ...
extinct Tassie Tigers

This post will literally and metaphorically be a look into the rabbit hole from my last road-trip to Tasmania and back and the events since that trip that have multiplied (like rabbits) the synchronistic thoughts inside my head since that day of looking into the rabbit hole after a brewery tour one Sunday afternoon in Hobart.

 The Cascade Brewery and Mt.Wellington/
Kunanyi in the background

The Dead Man's Hand

On my last road-trip to Tasmania, it was always my intention to visit the two big breweries that dominate the beer market of the island state.

Boag's Brewery formally
Esk Brewery, established 1881

The 'Dead man's Hand', a pair of aces and 8s?

And on my last Sunday in Hobart I did a tour of the Cascade Brewery and then sampled their beers and had a bite to eat in their wonderful restaurant before going on a walking tour of the city of Hobart, instead of making use of the 48 hour bus ticket I bought the day before when I went on a trip to the top of Mt. Wellington/Kunanyi and saw snow for the first time in my life, which I wrote about in this post about another weird walk back to my motel room - 

 Room at the End of the World?

Passing the 'World's End Brew Pub' on
the bus to Cascade on Sunday

Mt.Wellington/Kunanyi and the
Cascade Brewery straight ahead

It was never my intention to walk around Hobart, but being such a crisp sunny day and having to wait for 20 minutes for the bus, I got the idea of walking between bus stops on my bus map and just kept walking from the brewery to the city centre and then back to Wrest Point Casino and along the way I saw some amazing things ... and yes, I had been drinking, but at least I had my iPod camera with me to snap the weird walk I went on.

A crow on a pole outside the
Cascade Brewery Sunday

Another crow across the road on a pole
 was there to greet me, as well:-)

Actually, I should have known it was going to be an interesting Sunday when the bus driver let me off at the Cascade Brewery and there on a telephone pole was my "totem" spirit animal to greet me, once again on my road-trip.
If you have been following my road-trip posts on this blog you will know that I just can't seem to avoid the crows following me around, like they were guiding and watching me on my journeys across Oz.  

My "ticket" for the brewery tour ... which I still have

The tour party started off with having our tickets exchanged for a beer label and four bottle caps.
The label was a token to prove you had paid for the tour and the bottle caps were tokens I could exchange for four beers at the end of the tour.

I thought it was rather appropriate that our tour guide was an American, instead of an Australian, as the brewery like just about all major "Australian" breweries is owned by a multi-national brewing company.
"SABMiller plc (LSE: SAB, JSE: SAB) is a multinational brewing and beverage company headquartered in London, England. 
It is the world's second-largest brewer measured by revenues (after the Belgian-Brazilian-American Anheuser-Busch InBev) and is also a major bottler of Coca-Cola.
Its brands include Fosters, Miller, and Pilsner Urquell.
It has operations in 80 countries world-wide and in 2009 sold around 21 billion litres of beverages.
SABMiller's origins date back to the foundation of  
South African Breweries in 1895 to serve a growing market of  
miners and prospectors in and around Johannesburg. 
Two years later, it became the first industrial company to list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. 
From the early 1990s onward, the company increasingly expanded internationally, making several acquisitions in both emerging and developed markets. 
In 1999, it formed a new UK-based holding company, SAB plc, and moved its primary listing to London. 
In May 2002, SAB plc acquired Miller Brewing, forming SABMiller plc. SABMiller has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. 
It has a market capitalisation of approximately £42 billion as of 24 October 2015, the sixth-largest of any company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange."

"Foster's Lager is an internationally distributed Australian brand of lager. 
It is owned by the British headquartered brewing group SABMiller, and is brewed under licence in a number of countries, including the UK, where the European rights to the brand are owned by Heineken International. 
Foster's annual sales amount to around 500 megalitres worldwide, largely buoyed by UK sales, where it is the second highest selling beer after Carling.
While known internationally as the quintessential Australian beer brand, Foster's does not enjoy widespread popularity in Australia compared to other CUB beers such as Victoria Bitter or Carlton Draught."

SAB own Fosters as well, which would
explain these scenes, I guess?-)

Screen shots from the movie, 'The World's End'

An interesting sculpture in the gardens
 attached to the restaurant/bar

After the tour of the brewery, I went and had lunch and my beers in the restaurant/bar across the road and went for a walk in the gardens attached to the restaurant/bar, which is owned by the brewery also.

Interesting globe in the centre of this sculpture as well, I think;-)

Seeing this sculpture in the gardens I couldn't help but think how Halfasheep would love this artwork with the four pillars into one that he raves on about in his You Tubes like the ones linked below.
Genocide Memorials investigated by halfasheep

Of course, Tasmania had its Indigenous population pretty much wiped out by the British after the invasion of this island state and the mainland wasn't much better when it came to the indigenous people living there, either.

The gardens are a very nice spot for having lunch, or a few drinks in and contemplating life.

I love the PKDick like pink VALIS beam
from the sun in this photo I took

More pink light hitting water in a church down the road

After my lunch and beers, I decided to walk to the next bus stop up from the Cascade brewery, as the bus wasn't coming for another 20 minutes and I stumbled across a park full of rabbits, which I have written about before in this old post -
A Wonderland of Coincidence in the Book Cellar
I also mention in that post about running into a dead ringer (almost literally) for my old cat, as I came up from that rabbit filled park.

I ran into this dead ringer of
my old cat when leaving the park

Rabbits and rabbit-holes running along
 the rivulet park-lands down the road

The rivulet park walk with the brewery in the background

The rivulet of...

... rabbits and rabbit-holes

The rivulet that runs through the park with the rabbits

Being from the Australian mainland state of Queensland and seeing rabbits roaming freely around a city park just blew me away, because rabbits are a pest that were introduced by the white-fella and are still running wild over the Australian landscape. 

A book I bought in Armidale, N.S.W 
on my way home to Brisbane

On a visit to an art gallery on my way home to Brisbane from Tasmania I came across a book written by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan.

The Armidale art gallery where I found 'The Rabbits' book

The rabbits/pests in this book were obviously meant to represent the white invasion of Australia and how the continent was overrun by "rabbits" destroying the landscape.

It was while reading Jeff Kripal's book, 'Author's of the Impossible' (which I was reading at the time on the road) that I came across a passage on page 124 that H.G.Wells got the idea to write 'The War of the Worlds' while walking with his brother and discussing the fate of the Tasmanians who had recently been decimated by the British colonialists, whose technology far surpassed that of the defenseless islanders.
Wells proposed to his brother a scenario in which the tables were turned and the British colonizers became the colonized.
And so Wells's colonizers became Martians. 
The Inter-dimensional War of the Worlds?

And Australians would know most probably that the author of 'The Rabbits', John (Mars)den also wrote a series of books about modern day Australia being attacked by a superior army, one being made into a major Australian movie called, 'Tomorrow When the War Began'.

I would actually get John Marsden to sign a book I bought of his at the Byron Bay Writers Festival this year, telling him that the only book that I had read of his was 'The Rabbits'.
We also discussed how 'The Rabbits' had been made into an opera recently, which John expressed his amazement in his book ever being turned into a work of art like that.
I told him that I hadn't seen the opera, but had heard Kate Miller-Heidke sing a song from it at a concert of hers this year -
Pigs on the Wing?

The opera of 'The Rabbits'

Kate Miller-Heidke on stage at
Byron Bay Feb 11th, 2016

That's like teaching me brain surgery, I think :-)

John Marsden (right) at the 2016 Byron Bay Writers Festival

As I drove home to Queensland it wasn't lost on me that Queenslanders are associated with cane toads to other Australians, another introduced species to the Australian continent, that has run rampant through the heart of this country. 

I go for NSW in this football war I might add. Go the Blues!

Queenslander?

Really though, anyone who lives in Australia who aren't indigenous are nothing but rabbits in this great land, whether that sits with you, or not. 
And in the Australian state of Queensland it's a $5000 dollar fine if you are caught with a rabbit as a pet.
Good luck finding anyone with a Tasmanian Tiger as a pet though.

The Ambiguity of Art