Our 6 event program of “short” races began today, but not until late afternoon, so we took the opportunity to visit the Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, a short drive away. The gardens are best known for “The Patch” which is a community food program that features regularly on “Gardening Australia”.   But there is much more to see. We started at one end and wandered through the various Tasmanian sections, until we came upon the Lily Pond – full of flowering waterlilies and happy ducks. We also spent time in the beautiful sandstone Conservatory, full of massive, colourful begonias and gorgeous orchids.

The Subantarctic House gave us a taste of botanic life on Macquarie Island. The Herb Garden earned another stop, and we admired the huge red brick wall – heated by the early colonists, because they didn’t believe fruit could be be grown in Hobart without being warmed against a wall, as was common practice in England.

As we entered The Patch, Ian pointed to one of the gardeners. It was Tino from Gardening Australia, in the middle of a bed of tomatoes. He was happily chatting to anyone who asked him a question, and we listened eagerly to his advice about staking, pruning and fertilising tomatoes for the best results. Tino is my favourite presenter on the show, so it was quite exciting to see him live, and to discover that he really did work at The Patch, and wasn’t just there for filming. He showed us the famous banana plant that he’d been growing, and gave us some advice about improving our clay based soil at home. It was quite a highlight!

The Japanese Garden was a delight, with its bridges, sculpture, water features, paddle wheel, and beautiful deciduous trees. After Tino, it was my favourite part of the visit.

We left reluctantly and headed for the University of Tasmania, venue for race 1. The Hobart Shorts were billed as a 6 race series of short distance events, and this one was a pure urban campus sprint. I made a cautious start, but then got reckless and ran off in the opposite direction to where my control was. Oops! That blew about 3 minutes. No problems after that, just making sure I knew where I was going and planned ahead. There was a bit of climbing as we crossed into an adjoining campus, and a bit of confusion mid course when I kept going down stairs in error, having to climb back up. My time had me about 2/3 of the way down the field. Ian had another good run, finishing 6^th.