I bought a handy dandy little device that plugs into my camera and I can then set to take a single shot at set intervals. After a few hours I end up with a few thousand individual photos which I then stitch together to make a movie. Simple right?

The real art is not the technicalities but finding something that will be truly amazing when viewed in this way. Now I just have to find those things.

I only wish I had been able to do it on a few of my trips. Can you imagine the sun rising over the Himalayas or setting over the pyramids?

I drove about 6000km on my trip to Hobart and it took me from about halfway up the east coast of the country to the bottom, a seemingly tiny distance on the map. But it was the equivalent of travelling from New York to Los Angeles and then halfway back again. Or from London to the middle of Iran.

This is a big place.

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I left my hotel (the Rydges Lakeside, possibly the worst hotel I have had the misfortune to stay at) at 8.30 and headed out for my planned day in the nations capital.

The only redeeming feature my hotel had was it’s location. The night before I had pored over a map torn from a tourist brochure and, using my fingers as makeshift callipers, I had figured that I could easily walk to and between the 4 attractions I wanted to visit. All well and good on paper but I had not taken into account how old and unfit I was.

My first port of call was Parliament House. If you are going to come to Canberra then it really is a must see. Luckily all the politicians were out of town kissing hands and shaking babies in preparation for the upcoming election so I figure that I would have the place to myself. It turned out to be a little difficult to get to on foot, there was a few mad dashes across heavily trafficked roads and up a couple of embankments, but it also included an extremely pleasant walk along the banks of the lake. 

As you undoubtedly know the lake was named after Walter Burley Griffin, the American who designed the city and didn’t manage to live long enough to see the lake completed. He would have been proud to have had his name on it if he’d been walking with me. It looked stunning with a mist rising off the water but I fear I may have been one of few who were enjoying it as everyone else seemed to be in a hurry to move their heavily clad selves into warm buildings.

My first impression of the Parliament Building was one of neglect. As I was walking I made my way up the large open grassy space in front of the building and I couldn’t help thinking that I’d seen better lawns at a gophers convention. It certainly wasn’t the immaculately maintained frontage that you would expect of somewhere like the White House but I imagine that all the visiting world leaders don’t spend a great deal of time wandering around outside and probably use a completely different entry, if they come here at all.

Once inside it all struck me at first as being slightly underwhelming. Apart form an initial metal detector there certainly wasn’t the amount of security one would picture in a situation like this. In fact I found myself free to wander pretty much anywhere I pleased and after mailing a couple of post cards at the Post Office on the second floor I set out to do exactly that.

It lacked the splendour of a palace and the sense of self importance that the White House has and, as I walked around, I started to appreciate it more. There was a feeling of Australian unpretentiousness, and I liked it. There wasn’t even anyone waiting to take the free tour, unlike the hours long queue I saw in Washington. Even on my way out of the building I stopped for a casual chat with one of the security guards and we simply talked about the weather and what it was like to live in Canberra. He had a genuine pride and fondness in the place that was heart warming to see.

From Parliament House I walked across one of the bridges across the lake and then around the lakeshore until I could look directly up Anzac Parade to the War Memorial, my second destination.

Anzac Parade is a work in progress. A wide avenue that sweeps down the hill from the War Memorial to end at the lake, it has smaller memorials lining it’s edge to the various conflicts Australia has fought in. Some, like the Vietnam memorial, are extremely well done and evocative while other open areas have signs telling of what is yet to come. At the lake end of the Parade is a monument from New Zealand, the other part of Anzac, that is meant to show Aus and NZ as two handles on the same basket.

I hiked up the Parade to the Memorial itself and was again struck by the relative lack of people. Any other capital city in the world would have had hordes of tourists visiting national monuments of this type but here it was very quiet. But somehow that quiet fits a place like a war memorial. It meant I could walk slowly along the walls inscribed with so many names in silence. The touching part about this display was the number of poppies that had been tucked into gaps between the slabs. 

The museum portion of the Memorial is extremely well done. Even though the WW2 portion was closed for renovations there was more than enough still available to keep me occupied. It is a nice combination of static displays of artefacts, video and interactive displays and dioramas that are amazing in both detail and the way they manage to capture a a moment in time. It is another unpretentious building that seems fittingly sombre on approach but manages to hide a wealth of riches, revealed once you get inside.

From the Memorial I headed towards the National Film and Sound Archive. The brochure I had torn my map from had a full page advertisement for a display there that was devoted to the pioneers of Australian animation. Being more than a little interested in animation and having a few artefacts from early Australian animation myself I was keen to see it. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment with the display consisting of only a few pictures on a wall and a small set from the “Dot and the Kangaroo” films of Yoram Gross.

From the Film and Sound Archives I headed to the National Museum. this is built on the previous site of a hospital and developed a tragic history when a young girl was killed by flying debris when the planned demolition went wrong. Families were watching the “implosion” from the other side of the lake when it exploded instead. The security guard I had been chatting to still remembered the event and the name of the 12 year old girl who died.

The Museum itself was okay. I probably expected more from something styling itself as the National Museum but in reality it is not as if they had managed to commandeer every artefact and display from every other museum in the country. In fairness it has only been open 9 years and is probably finding its feet but it really didn’t strike me as being any better (or worse) than any other museum you might find in any state capital. That being said, i did have an enjoyable time wandering around and what they have is done very well.

My day had started out very planned. Being a government town everything works to a 9 – 5 schedule and I had only 8 hours to try and fit my 4 destinations in. Thanks to my fleeting visit visit to the Film and Sound Archive i managed it without feeling like I had glossed over too much but I still feel like there is much more to be seen, both in the places I had already visited and in all those I hadn’t. I want to go back again soon.

It feels good to get that off my chest.

I will admit that I am one of those people who never really considered coming here after hearing for years all the disparaging comments people have made about it. But its a really nice place. Of course I have had the perfect day to see it at it’s best with there not being a cloud in the sky but since most of the places that interest me are inside anyway I don’t think a little rain would have been a problem. I will definitely be coming back to see all of the sights.

This is going to be a super short post because I was out at 8am and have been walking ever since. About 20km according to my handheld gps and that doesn’t include walking around inside places. So here is just a brief rundown. I’ll post a longer version when i get home, complete with photos.

Went to Parliament House…understated and interesting.

Went to the War Memorial…easy to see why this is one of the countries great tourist attractions.

Went to the Film and Sound Archive to see a display on Australian animation…disappointing.

Went to the National Museum…impressive and would like to have had more time.

Now I am footsore and tired but that’s a good thing. It means that I can now have a leisurely shower before I put my feet up and fall asleep in front of the TV. I need a good nights sleep because I have a 16 hour drive ahead of me tomorrow to get back home.

Keep your eye on twitter ( http://twitter.com/ptrekker ) as I tweet from the road.

Yes, that’s right, I’m not back on the Gold Coast yet, I am, in fact, in Canberra.

To say that I am a little tired at the moment would be an understatement so I will have to give you the highlights of the last couple of days rather than poetic descriptions of the countryside I’ve passed through.

I woke up early on Tuesday morning, they start loading the ferry 2.5 hours before it sails, which meant 6.30am. I was there a few minutes after that and queued up with a number of other vehicles waiting for the gates to open. Once they were we filed through the security check, which meant getting out into the cold and opening the bonnet and boot for inspection. From there we all queued up again and waited…and waited…and waited. We were still waiting on the wharf when the sailing time came and went which was causing a little frustration but eventually we formed up and were directed to our parking spots.

this was a day sailing, unlike the night one i had on the way down. Rather than paying extra for a cabin or recliner I just had a “day pass”, which meant access to the ship but no assigned seating. Luckily I managed to find a nice seat with a little table to spread my stuff on and a view outside. Then it was just a matter of killing time. The thrill of being on a ship at sea is a little lost on me so I just read magazines I had hoarded in preparation and watched which people headed to the toilets when we hit open water and the boat began to move a little. I’ve been in seas that have literally thrown me out of my bunk so it didn’t really phase me.

We were an hour late sailing which meant we were an hour late docking in Melbourne. Due to my normal run of luck I was among the last allowed off (first on, last off?) and it was dark and raining as I hit the streets.This is where Bambi was going to earn her money.

The plan was to head off and try and put a bit of black stuff between me and Melbourne straight away. On the ferry I had decided that I might like to have a look at Canberra, never having been there and keen to add another capital city to my list. Looking at a map I figured that I would try to get to somewhere around Sale and then find a nice looking truck stop and get a few hours sleep in the car before carrying on.

I somehow managed to lose a bit of time by getting lost in Melbourne. And when I say that I got lost I mean that I got lost and Bambi knew exactly where she was and where to go. I made a wrong turn, against her instructions, and then had to find my way back to the right road. Did you know that because of the trams you make right turns from the left hand side of the road in some places in this crazy Victorian city?

I did find a nice “power nap” area just short of Sale that had a toilet, was lit up and already had a truckie asleep there. I wrapped up in my North Face jacket, crawled into the back seat and was asleep pretty fast. I’d been awake a little over 17 hours so I actually slept well, in fact I slept until 5am.

From there I just followed Bambi’s instructions and got to Canberra safely.

The drive was good, a nice mixture of terrain with a stop for a full English breakfast in a little roadside cafe in Cabbage Tree Creek. The road took me from a heavy bush setting for breakfast to a fleeting glimpse of the ocean at Lakes Entrance and stark and wind blown hilltops at over 1100 metres closer to Canberra.

Tonight is set aside for sleeping and tomorrow I hit the streets to see if this town does its title of Capital justice.

I am now sitting in a motel that has seen better days but was (relatively) cheap and is close to the ferry terminal. The result may not be so picturesque but I had an awful lot of fun getting here.

To be perfectly honest there is little that I can say that I didn’t say yesterday. I followed Bambi’s suggestion of a scenic drive and made my way from Strahan to Devonport by way of Cradle Mountain. A decent coffee and a steak sandwich at a little place in Tullah and I spent the rest of the drive just waiting to see what would be around the next corner.

Come to Tasmania and just drive you won’t regret it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then I’ll just post a few photos and leave it at that.

I started the day by looking out my window at the sort of weather that you picture when you think of Tasmania. It was wild, wet and very woolly. Even getting my bags into the grey ghost, which was parked in the street directly in front of my room, was an exercise is speed and precision. Holding the door open in the face of a gale and then managing to get my pack in the front seat and my bag in the back without getting too wet was an adventure. I bought a pie from the only establishment open in town and sat on the waterfront watching the rain shoot sideways across the bay.

I figured that it was going to be an interesting drive to Strahan.

As it turned out it was extremely interesting.

I followed all of Bambi’s instructions and headed back towards Burnie, eventually making a turn at Wynyard and heading inland. From here on the joy of the journey took over.

The scenery changed, seemingly at every corner, from bush that reminded me of New Zealand so much I almost had a tear in my eye, to green rolling hills and farm houses, to scrubby windswept hilltops and sweeping views over lakes. It was a magical drive and even the weather seemed to change from driving rain to bursts of brilliant sunshine at the drop of a hat.

I stopped to take photos of scenery and to walk little bush tracks that were signposted on the side of the road. I can count the number of cars I saw on two hands and no one else seemed to be in any more of a hurry than I was, and I wasn’t. The grey ghost glided gracefully over gradients and through glades to my glee. I also had a lot of time to think.

If I haven’t said it before then I’ll say it now, it was a great drive and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Eventually the road ran out and I found myself in Strahan. I wonder what I can say about Strahan that isn’t coloured by the weather. As far as tourism goes I can only say that it is a summer town. All of the suggested things to do on the sheet in my motel room are water based or require warmer conditions than are here now. As was the case in Stanley so many places that would be swarming with tourists at any other time are now shut. I drove around for a while and then walked up and down the main street, interacting with the friendly locals who were standing outside the local hotel, seemingly oblivious to the weather.

This would be a great place to visit in summer but for me today it’s turning into a place to rinse out some smalls and get some sleep at the end of a day of driving I won’t forget in a hurry. I can only hope that tomorrows scenery on the way back to Devonport is half as good.

It started out okay, I found the house where my Grandmother had been born in 1916. It stood on a corner, looking a little old and nondescript and now inhabited by a doctors surgery. I took a few photos for my mother and then continued on to the Museum, wanting to be there at opening time.

I should have known that it was not going to be good from the moment I found the cost of parking. From there they seemed to have a problem getting the doors to open and I was in a little group that found ourselves stuck outside. Someone inside had to wave their arms frantically at the sensor to get the doors open.

Finally inside I made my way up to the History Centre and this is where I ran into a brick wall. The gentleman did know of the phones and had heard of Biggs (I think) but they were no longer on display. He did offer that his colleague would be in shortly and possibly, maybe there was a chance I could see a photo of them. Given that I had just shown him a photo of them when I was describing what I was looking for made the gesture a little hollow. My lack of enthusiasm from the day before for the Museum as a museum was just reinforced as I made my way out to my car. It’s found it’s way onto my list of places not to see in Launceston.

It was time to leave Launceston and also time to leave the ancestral trail I’d been following. My next port of call was Stanley, way up in the top left hand corner of the island on a spit of land that looks on the map as if it is a wannabe  island  slowly pulling itself free of the mainland.

The drive was exactly the thing I had come all this way to do. I followed the highway from Launceston to Devonport for the most part but would impulsively pull onto side roads just to visit small towns. There are a number of them; in fact most of the towns marked on the map as seeming to be on the highway are on side roads. Usually just one or two kilometres out of your way but so worth the effort. The towns may start to run together into an amalgam of sandstone and timber but the scenery between them is some of the greatest rural beauty you will find in this country.

As long as you like the English pastoral type of beauty that is because you will find yourself driving along narrow country roads with hedgerows flanking both sides that suddenly open out onto green rolling hills with small ponds and lakes. It was a fine day so the sky was a brilliant blue, the grass a brilliant green and the ponds a shimmering silver. Small farmhouses sat back off the roads, up long gravel driveways, their chimneys usually complete with tendrils of smoke and promising a kitchen replete with smells of baking bread.

Okay, I may be waxing overly lyrical but it was a nice drive and did much to improve my mood.

I skirted around Devonport and made my way across the north coast, through Penguin, Burnie (a much bigger town than I imagined) and Wynyard. The weather was good for the most part as the road alternated between views of the ocean before dipping back inland and farm scenes.

Bambi brought me safely to the Bayview Guesthouse, my home for the next couple of nights and I carried my bag up to the front door. Only to find something that could truly only happen in a small country town. Taped to the door was a note from my hosts explaining that they had had to go out, where my room was (outside access) and that it was open, with the key on a table inside. They wished me a goodnight.

I found my room and immediately knew that I was going to be pretty comfortable. I had planned these last couple of days here to be ones of leisure and the armchairs in front of the large window giving me a view across the bay was just what I was after. I made myself a cup of tea and settled in.

This morning I checked in with Denis, another Queenslander (although technically he’s a pom) who’s escaped down here. We chatted for a while about why he had moved to the other end of the country but he ultimately failed to convince me that cold is better. I got a real example of the cold when I set off for a walk around town, clutching a walking guide kindly prepared by Denis.

Stanley is a fishing town. It’s hard not to notice that. From my window I can see boats pulled up onto a slipway and just a little down the road is Hursey Seafoods, a wholesale and retail fish shop selling the catch from the Hursey fishing boats, a few of which are undoubtedly those I can  see pulled up on the Hursey slipways. It’s a Hursey town. The crowning glory of the Hursey Seafoods building is the big crayfish so I have at least managed to tick off another of those “big” things.

Following Denis’ guide I first walked around to the Fisherman’s Dock. Probably a hive of activity in Summer the dock seemed a little forlorn this morning but it did give me good view up at the “Nut”. The Nut is a Gibraltar like rock outcropping that protects the bay from the open ocean. It is also the source of a good story that i am going to shamelessly quote from the guide.

“The bluff face of the Nut looms above you at this point. In 1892 an attempt was made to blast rock from the vertical face, to be used to reinforce the breakwater. The day of the detonation drew a crowd who were disappointed to see nothing but a cloud of dust and smoke spurt from the drillings where literally tons of dynamite had been set. It was another twelve years before the rock finally fractured enough to shear off. Fortunately the fall occurred before work in the early morning, and no lives were lost.”

Pretty cool, huh?

The rest of the town didn’t take long to walk around, mostly due to the fact that everything is closed for the winter. The Post Office (which is also a B&B) and the bank/newsagent/general store were open but the places that rely on the summer tourist trade were taking advantage of the lull to do renovations or take holidays.

The town itself didn’t really remind me of Australia. It had an American Cape Cod feel to it. The houses are predominately timber and stand facing the water and winds with a defiance that says “I’ve been here for well over a century and I have a lot longer to go”. They may appear to be a little weather beaten, and they are, but it’s that  toughness that gives them so much character. I spent quite a while walking the streets, gleaning facts about the buildings from the guide and as I went I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bearded and salt encrusted man in a bright yellow raincoat or cable knit jumper walk past me.

About the only thing I didn’t do was climb to the top of the Nut itself but that was purely because of my perfectly rational fear of heights. I’m sure that the view would have been spectacular.

I’m back in my room now, cup of tea close to hand and view of the water before me. I’ll probably wander down to Hursey’s this evening for some fresh seafood before getting a good nights sleep. Tomorrow I plan to hit the west coast.

In 1833 my GGGGGrandfather, Abraham Biggs, his wife and 5 children arrived in Hobart Town from England. Abraham was a carpenter and established a business in town. He then decided to go into farming, something he failed at, before coming back to Hobart and eventually going into the kit home business. One of his sons tried his luck in the new goldfields of Victoria but noticed that houses couldn’t be built fast enough for the influx so he ended up as the Victorian agent of the family business, selling kit homes as fast as he could land them on the wharf from Tasmania. The family went on to spread itself out in Tasmania and Victoria with my Grandmother being born in Launceston. When she was really young she moved to New Zealand and I was lucky enough to be born on the better side of the ditch.

Another of Abraham’s sons is also of interest. My GGGGranduncle, Alfred Biggs had a pretty full life that included being a teacher, bank clerk and amateur scientist. He made the first long distance phone call in Tasmania (and likely the southern hemisphere) using handsets he built himself. He was one of the founding fathers of seismology in Australia  and was a keen amateur astronomer. He assisted in the observance of the transit of Venus in 1874 and was popularly known as the Astronomer  Royal of Launceston. It was a memorial to his observatory that I was searching out when I first arrived in Launceston.

So, now that the background history is sketched out, on with the story.

I’d seen Hobart as it is now and tried to picture it as it must have been in 1833 and it was now time to move back the way I’d driven but forwards in the story. I knew that Abraham had tried his hand at farming because he was a keen letter writer, as I suppose many were in those days. The advantage of Abraham is that his letters have survived and I have copies of them. Starting with one before he leaves England and continuing on to 1853, the detail is amazing, entertaining and informative of the times.

In 1836 Abraham moved to a small village called Jerusalem, something that must have pleased him as a devoutly religious man. It is still a small village and it’s necessary to turn off the highway to get to. Now called Colebrook it is somewhere that you could pass through without noticing. I was really only there to get a feel for the place and to walk in my ancestors footsteps but I spent a pleasant few hours talking with Allan, a volunteer in the Colebrook History Room.

The History Room is a small single roomed building that stands alone in a park and is crammed with displays and artefacts attempting to tell the story of Colebrook. Despite the protestations of some locals the Room is there and Allan is justifiably proud of its existence. Allan struck me as a man who is not attempting to escape from society so much as happy to observe it from a small distance. Having moved to Tasmania from the Sunshine Coast only a few years he has been working at the History room as a volunteer and trying to win the trust and confidence of the locals as he battles to gather the rapidly disappearing resource of local memories. I left with the promise that I would send him copies of Abrahams letters which paint a vivid picture of life there in 1836.

While I was there I also got to meet the Hon. Dick Adams, the local federal MP for the region, who dropped in to shake hands and meet and greet. I was impressed with his knowledge of the area, even in the short time that we talked. Dick would not have looked out of place in 1836 with his generous girth, waistcoat and bristling beard.

On Allan’s recommendation I drove on to Oatlands and visited the History Room there. This one really felt like a second hand store. It was in an old service station and was crammed with so many artefacts that it was hard to sort through them and get any coherent idea of the towns history. I had coffee in a coffee shop that boasted an open fire and then walked up and down the main street admiring the substantial collection of sandstone buildings that have all managed to survive from the early 1800’s. It may be a little off the main highway but well worth a look.

I was now leaving the trail of Abraham, after failing at farming he moved back to Hobart and went back in carpentry, and now picked up Alfred’s story.

A little further along the highway is Campbell Town, the place I had stopped at on my trip down and where I had raved about the roast beef and yorkshire pudding. Alfred had moved with his family 1871and took the position of teacher at the local school. It was here that he made friends with the local doctor who seems to have ignited his passion in science. In his time at Campbell Town he assisted a group of American scientists who had been sent to Tasmania to observe the transit of Venus. In thanks the Americans left Alfred many of their instruments. His interests were wide ranging though because, when he heard of Bell’s success with the telephone he decided to build his own. Once he had his two handsets he sent one to Launceston and used the telegraph wires to “make a call”. The phones are now in the Queen Victoria Museum in Launceston although they no longer seem to be on display. I’ll be trying to make some enquiries in the morning to see if I can get a photo.

Unfortunately I arrived in Campbell Town too late and the museum and information centre was closed so I over-nighted and was up early this morning to walk around town.

It was a clear blue sky and the frost had left so much ice on my car that it sparkled when the light hit it.

Campbell Town is not big and it wasn’t difficult to find St Luke’s school, the building still standing on the side of the road.

From there I found “The Grange”, once the doctors residence and still a private residence. I stood staring at the impressive building that wouldn’t look at all out of place in an Agatha Christie novel and imagined Alfred sitting in the doctors study, in front of a fire and possibly with a port in his hand while the two men discussed the latest scientific marvels and discoveries of the day.

In front of the Grange is a park that was the site where the Venus transit was observed.

By now the museum was open and I walked in with high expectations that there would be an entire display devoted to my GGGGrand-uncle. There wasn’t.

The lady in there was a volunteer and new to the area so she didn’t actually know Alfred and was quite impressed when I said that his name appeared in a few places around the town in connection with it’s historic past. She was even more impressed when I pointed out the book for sale which was his biography. I bought a copy of the book so that I would have my own, I’ve been using a battered copy of my Mothers and it, along with Abrahams letters, have been my guides to this trip.

I walked back to my car, past a butcher selling mutton birds, and continued on up the highway to Launceston.

My intention was to find Alfred’s telephones in the museum but I made a small detour to the Cataracts where I had a nerve wracking walk over a suspension bridge and then a wonderful Devonshire tea. Just as a side note, which goes on the scone first, the jam or the cream?

On to the museum I found that it has moved and the original building is being renovated. the new one is on the former site of a railway yard and while the displays of trains is good there doesn’t seem to be any displays relating to any other part of Tasmanian or Launceston history so I couldn’t find the phones. The Community History Centre part of the museum was closed by the time I got there but I intend to be back at opening time tomorrow to see if anyone can help me to get a photo of these elusive handsets.

The problem is that the place didn’t really do much for me. I will stand by my comment of yesterday that it has the feel of a large country town that is falling on hard times. Don’t get me wrong, it is certainly a city, a state capital in fact, it just feels like it is actually only a suburb of a much larger place.

I wanted to just walk around today and for the first time in a week the grey ghost didn’t get used. I could almost hear the sigh of relief from the poor overused engine.

I spent the morning poking through both the Maritime Museum and the Museum museum. The Maritime one was interesting if a little static in it’s displays and probably just scraped in as earning it’s $7 entry fee in value. 

The Museum museum on the other hand was a free admission and took a bit longer to wander through. It was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of displays, going from minerals in cases that barely got a look from the kids racing through, to an impressive display on Antarctica and Tasmania’s relationship to it. That was pretty interesting but the one real highlight. I had been hoping for much more on the colonial and convict past of the town but that seemed to be seriously lacking. I couldn’t help wondering why.

From there I walked aimlessly up and down the city streets.The problem I have in doing that as a way to get a feel for a place is the sense of familiarity. I’m so used to foreign places where every shop is new and even the signposts and rubbish bins have an exotic appeal that streets of business I can find within walking walking distance of my own home just fail to hold my interest.

I did find Elizabeth street though, a place named prominently in letters my GGGGGrandfather sent back to England after landing here in 1833. The family spent their first few weeks living on that street and I sat there for a while, in the middle of a pedestrian mall, and tried to imagine how it must have been all those years ago.

After a lunch of an unimpressive chicken wrap and even less impressive coffee I walked on and eventually found myself in Sandy Bay. I sat and watched the dogs playing in a park that was the place where Errol Flynn lived. I even walked on the little piece of sand where he learnt to swim, a skill that probably came in extremely handy doing all those pirate movies.

I walked back into town around Battery point and followed a trail of signs giving historical information. That I found interesting although I got funny looks from a few people as I stood contemplating overgrown plots of land or rusting steam boilers almost completely buried beside storm drains.

It was also interesting to see the street side of some of the houses on the Point. From Sandy Beach they had looked like old, rundown buildings perched on the cliff but from the road it was obvious that a lot of money had been spent on most of them and I can only imagine what the insides would be like, especially with the magnificent view they have over the harbour.

Back past Salamanca Square, a refurbished area on the waterfront that may do okay in the height of tourist season but seemed to be struggling a bit at the moment, and I ended my day by having fish and chips from a small takeaway that is actually moored at the side of the wharf.

I’m heading back to country Tasmania tomorrow and leaving the big smoke of Hobart behind.