The Matilda is a small clinker-built fishing boat dating from the 1880s, hauled out of the Derwent in the 1970s and lovingly restored over decades by Tasmanian volunteers. The boat is one of the very few surviving examples of its kind — a working sailing-rigged inshore fishing vessel of the late colonial period, used to catch flathead and trumpeter in the channel between Hobart and Bruny Island.
Now displayed on a slipway behind the Maritime Museum, the Matilda is the kind of unassuming, slightly improbable thing the Atlas Obscura crowd loves: an actual piece of working colonial life, preserved by determined people. Volunteers will happily explain how it was rigged, sailed, and used.