A whistle-stop tour of Tasmania
Trip Start
Dec 02, 2007
1
26
55
Trip End
Sep 01, 2008
Launceston,
Tasmania,
Australia
Friday, May 2, 2008
We flew in to Hobart from Sydney. It is an attractive city, with a lot of history. Many of the buildings there continued the trend we noticed in NSW, whereby every other pub or hotel claims it is the oldest in Australia, justified by increasingly eccentric criteria. Charlotte guided us round town on a history walk, which was interesting, although it is always a little strange that my parents' house would be older than most on the tour!
From Hobart, we headed over to the Tasman Peninsular, via the village of Richmond, which could easily have been in the Cotswolds. The peninsular is home to some great coastal scenery, and Port Arthur, site of a convict prison and transportation point in the nineteenth century. It was a really interesting place that made it easy to imagine the experiences of the convicts shipped over from Britain and Ireland. We also took part in a ghost tour, which was particularly chilling, although this was mainly due to the weather...
After Port Arthur, we made the trip up the east coast to Bicheno, passing some spectacular scenery en route. I had ensured that we stayed somewhere with wifi access due to the playoff semi-final that night, and was up at 4.30am for the commentary. I'm still suffering from that now, but at least we won!
Our final day was spent in Launceston, the second largest city in Tasmania. The main site there is Cataract Gorge, a large gorge system only ten minutes from the centre of town. We also treated ourselves to what will probably be our last curry before we get to India - a chicken vindaloo certainly helped on a freezing night!
