The alarm sounds early. I need to make sure I am breakfasted and ready to leave within 20 minutes to ensure I get to the harbour in time. I have...
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Travel Tasmania
Tasmania is a fantastic place with the friendliest people you'll meet in the country and a landscape blessed with natural beauty.
Tasmania also has history. Big deal you might say, but in Australia, where anything pre-1986 is regarded as an antiquity, this is unusual. Once named Van Diemen's Land, this island was home to a cruel convict colony, mainly for second offenders and escapees.
Highlights
Hobart:
A lovely little seafront city with great pubs and restaurants, especially along the waterfront at Salamanca Place, where there's also a top weekend market.
Food:
Tassie is famed for it's dairy products, especially cheese, and is also renowned for prime beefsteaks, wine and all things guaranteed to make you a happy little porker. Plus there's a real chocolate factory, which you can tour.
Countryside:
About one third of this beautiful isle is undisturbed virgin wilderness. Of the more accessible natural wonders, highlights include Cradle Mountain, Lake St Clair and Freycinet National Park, home of the post-card picturesque Wine Glass Bay.
Port Arthur:
The historical site of a an old prison. It's macabrely fascinating with instruments of torture and old jail cells, including a silent one where inmates were deprived of all sensory contact by always wearing a hood. The ghost tours here will give even the cynics a genuine frightening experience.
