Stephen King Memorial

The memorial is about five metres high and consists of seven copper representations of poppy capsules. It was unveiled in March 2004 and although Stephen was present, he died three months later.

From this you might have guessed that the memorial is not dedicated to the famous American author! In fact, it commemorates the man who pioneered the Tasmanian poppy industry.

The pharmaceutical industry needs poppies for morphine, codeine and thebaine. Apparently poppies had been grown in South-East England but the alkaloid content was not fairly low, meaning that insufficient morphine could be produced. Tasmania was identified as an ideal location with an excellent climate for poppy production so Stephen King (an Oxford botanist) emigrated to Tasmania in 1965 to supervise research and production of poppies in the state.

He was tremendously successful, and Tasmania now supplies about fifty per cent of the world’s morphine, codeine and thebaine requirements.

Jean

Pohutukawa Trees

We saw many examples of this tree while in New Zealand. It is a native that has beautiful bright red flowers which bloom between November and January and is sometimes known as the New Zealand Christmas tree. Many naturalists in NZ are concerned as it is under threat particularly from browsing by the common brush tail possum which was introduced from Australia and strips the tree of its leaves extremely quickly.
I was therefore quite surprised to see several examples of this lovely tree on our walk this morning along the banks of the Mersey River in Devonport.

Jean

Trains again

As noted previously, Tasmania has had no passenger rail services since 1978 which is quite a surprise.

Various enthusiasts around the island run local tourist trips like this one at Devonport. They have four steam trains but none is working at present so the hourly 20 minute service up and down the local riverside is operated by a diesel unit (top right) dating back 70 years but still working well. Dave

Also, as noted previously the Spirit of Tasmania sails regularly between Melbourne and Devonport where she was docked on Monday morning after an overnight crossing.

This and her sister ship were built in Finland in 1998, weigh in at around 30,000 tonnes and have berths for around 800 passengers. They do the 430-km trip in around 10 hours. Dave