Matchman's Grand (Old) Adventures

Back In Sydney

Welcome back to Sydney. I've had a good week staying in the city centre, it's been better than I thought it would be. The hostel is really nice and I can't hear the main road (George Street) from my 5th storey room, which is a real bonus. I've had a few nights in, a few nights out and it was nice to meet up with both Derek and Bev on different occasions. Dez - I hope the weather in Cairns improves mate!! Ouch.

There's an autumn heat wave going around the south of Australia at the moment (not the east and west coasts though!). Perth is nice and hot and sunny as always, Adelaide is as dry as ever (it hasn't rained for 2 months!) and Sydney is enjoying some great weather right now, high 20s and sunny. Lovely!! What a change it makes to have great weather, as I'd expected from Australia in the summer. To celebrate I did two of the things I never got round to last time - the Sydney Lookout Tower and the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk.

I'm off to Canberra tomorrow to stay with Barbs for 4 nights. Current plans are to see the Brumbies play rugby union on Friday night, go water skiing on Saturday, go to Batemans Bay on Sunday (the weather is great there too!) and then check out what's left of Canberra on Monday while Barbs is at work. Oh, and get drunk regularly and celebrate my birthday of course!! Enjoy St Patrick's Day if you're going out, and I'll be back after Canberra is done. Bye!

Canberra - Visiting Barbs

Not many backpackers visit Canberra, and I'll explain why in the next entry. My visit was a bit different as I was staying with Lynn's friend Barbs who made sure I had plenty to do in the scant amount of time available (three days/four nights).

On Friday night we went straight to Canberra stadium, aka Bruce Stadium (how Australian), and watched the CA Brumbies play a Super 14 rugby union match against the Hurricanes, a team from New Zealand. In time-honoured tradition the home team got well and truly turned over just for me, losing 15 - 33, so the crowd was a bit dead. In fairness the Brumbies were missing a lot of players, including Stirling Mortlock who I've actually heard of. Barbs got the tickets from a friend who used to work for the Brumbies; not only were they free, but they also got us free beers in Captains Lounge. Nice touch, and a good start to the visit.

On Saturday we went down near the coast, about an hour and a half south east of Canberra, to the Nelligen River with Barbs' brother Michael and his girlfriend Sarah. Michael part owns a boat called Legless with another guy who wasn't around that weekend, so I gladly accepted the offer of a shot at waterskiing, which I knew full well I was going to suck at. The only downside to the trip was leaving at 7:30 in the morning to get there...

First of all I tried waterskiing, and failed to master the start four times before hurting my knee (I fell over drunk the week before in Sydney and twisted it a little bit), so my next attempt later in the day was on a wakeboard, basically very similar to a snowboard. I failed at that too, although I did get very close to getting right up on it. Six or seven attempts later I was exhausted and had to take a breather before one final push on the 'biscuit', basically just a little dinghy that gets tied to the boat and then the driver does his best to throw you off it by flooring the boat and driving in a continuous circle until you lose grip and take a flying lesson at over 50km/h. After the early start and the physical pounding I'd taken I well and truly zonked out on the drive back. It was a good experience, I'd love to do it again although preferably with a bit more success.

We went out on Saturday night to see what Canberra had to offer - not a huge amount but it was a fun (and late) night out - and then Sunday was spent recovering and getting ready for the barbie that Barbs was having for my birthday on Monday, which was a great touch. Michael and Sarah came over with the gas barbie and four of Barbs' friends also popped round. Not too late a night - no not because I'm old, but everyone else gets up early to go to work. How easy it is to forget about all that...by the way, thanks for the birthday wishes everyone.

Speaking of work, I hear that HBOS has blocked this site now. How rude. They've probably been monitoring Ballard's web access - he's still far and away the lead logger-on-er. Never mind, I'll plough on regardless and hope that some people can access it at home. A bit of sightseeing in the next update.

Canberra Sightseeing

Canberra, the capital city of Australia, was specifically created in 1913 to end the row between Melbourne and Sydney over who should be the nation's capital. It's a planned city, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, after whom the artificial lake in the city was named. To put Canberra halfway between Melbourne and Sydney would place the capital in New South Wales, something Victoria objected to, so they created a new Territory (not a State) to go with it - the Australian Capital Territory. Jervis Bay was also allocated to the ACT to give it a port - see my previous Roadtrip entry!!

Canberra is spread out over quite a large area, with a population of about 350,000 people. As a result there's a lot of nothingness about and it really doesn't feel like you're driving through a city, let alone the capital of Australia. If I had to liken it to anything it would be Milton Keynes (also a planned town), although Milton Keynes has a good shopping centre and Xscape. Unlike Canberra.

Unsurprisingly the government dominates life in Canberra. Most of the famous attractions are government related - Old Parliament House, New Parliament House, Aboriginal Tent Embassy - and a large part of the population are employed by the government, including Barbs and a few of her friends. The new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has made himself popular here by moving to Canberra, whereas John Howard previously refused to do so and stayed in Sydney instead.

So, what is there to do here? Well, as previously mentioned you can visit New Parliament House, which is a bit of an eyesore, or Old Parliament House, which is now a museum. If you stroll over the road you'll find the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a protest by the aborigines against the government which is literally a collection of tents on the grass.

There are lots of National things around in Canberra - the National Museum, the National Gallery, National Zoo & Aquarium, National Botanical Gardens, and so on. The best attraction in Canberra is probably Anzac Street, with the War Memorial at the end. It's just a pity that you can see the steeples of New Parliament House down the far end.

I can't imagine how a backpacker can come here and have a great time. It's vast and spread out, there's not a great deal to do and even that is difficult to do without a car. Public transport here isn't great either which just adds to the problems. Unless you do something like I did then I certainly wouldn't recommend a long visit.

Right, back to Sydney then. Again. Speak soon, and to those of you at HBOS - if you can even see this - sorry to see the share price!! What a joke!!

Illness!!

After I got back to Sydney I started to feel pretty crappy and eventually went to see a doctor, where I was diagnosed with influenza and a bruised rib cartilage. So, not much to say really apart from that the weather has been a bit rubbish and I finished 6th out of 70 in a poker tournament last night. Not bad but unfortunately only the top four got any money. My french roommate won the $370 first prize after flukily knocking me out, but that was okay as he bought lots of drinks afterwards.

I still feel pretty rough but I'm on the mend. Next update from Cairns as I'm meeting back up with Dave and Jamie to begin our East Coast adventure...

First Impressions

I've now entered the largest state in Australia, and indeed the second largest subnational entity in the world, Western Australia. Its capital is Perth, home to three quarters of the population of WA. You can fit the UK almost 15 times into WA - it's pretty big. Perth and its surrounding area is famous for a very generous all year round climate - in the summer the temperature is regularly up to 40 degrees with a refreshing breeze, and usually doesn't drop far below 20 degrees in the winter. It really is a great place to live, although house prices have shot up in the last 5 or so years and the cost of living is quite high anyway as it's a long, long, long, long way from any other major city.

Of the original crew that spent a lot of time together in Sydney, and that travelled to Tasmania, only 3 of us remain - myself, Dave and Jamie. The others have either stayed in New South Wales to work, headed off home or have already travelled through the west. I'd already decided to go to Perth after just 3 nights in Adelaide so when the other two guys decided to visit some friends of Jamie's north of Adelaide I was left with a week in Perth to myself.

Hostels in Perth are in high demand at this time of year - probably partly because the east coast has had terrible weather recently - so I booked myself into a hostel in a little beach-side place called Scarborough, about 45 minutes from Perth city centre on the bus. After 2 days of cloud and rain the legendary Perth weather finally made an appearance and I settled in for some serious tanning sessions on the beach - long overdue after 2 months of decidely average Australian weather (I still had the bottle of suntan lotion that I brought from England).

I ended up staying in Scarborough for 5 nights - a bit long for somewhere so quiet, only one pub there - and then spent the next 7 at the YHA in Fremantle where Jamie and Dave made the mistake of joining me. It really was a horrible place, hot and sweaty and full of lunatics but it was the only place with space in Fremantle. The weather remained pretty decent, getting up to 40 degrees at times, but the beach life was getting kind of annoying, not just because it's a bit dull but also the wind in Fremantle is so strong at times that you get covered from head to toe in sand and also might end up chasing your towel half way down the beach. So, we decided to get away from the mainland and spend a few days on Rottnest Island.

Rottnest Island

When Frederik de Houtman visited a small island to the west of Fremantle in 1696 he noticed that a number of marsupials (kangaroo relatives) on the island resembled rats, and hence the name Rat's Nest (Rottnest) has stuck ever since. The little critters are actually called Quokkas and as there are no predators on the island they positively flourish; apparently it's impossible to visit the island without seeing them. And see them we certainly did.

The ferry to Rottnest costs about 25 pounds for a return journey. The journey takes 25 minutes each way so that works out at about 50p a minute - I'm not sure if that's expensive or not. Lots of people take a single day trip but if you want to stay a bit longer, like we did, there's plenty of accomodation in the way of a hotel, a hostel and loads of little apartments. We chose to stay at the hostel, a former army base called the Kingstown Barracks, for 2 nights before heading back to the mainland. We also hired a mountain bike each as cars are banned from the island (only shuttle buses and maintenance vehicles are allowed) and it's the best way to see the whole island in a few days.

We still had our snorkels with us and, since Rottnest is also famous for snorkelling and scuba diving spots, we put them to good use by following the designated 'snorkel trail' as best we could. Parker Point had the best snorkelling area and had a nice touch of mounted plaques on the sea bed for you to read as you move along. I didn't see anything particularly dangerous, unlike in Jervis Bay where there were stingrays galore, but I did see some pretty colourful and also very large fish.

After stopping for an ice cream on the way between beaches we spotted a quokka hopping about outside a shop. We got very excited and tried to get loads of pictures, but had we realised how many there were on the island we wouldn't have been quite so enthusiastic. They're incredibly cute little things and quite friendly to humans too, and when they want to they can hop REALLY fast. It's quite a sight. They flourish on the island because predators such as cats and foxes are banished. Also they, like most of the island's fauna including the coral, are strictly protected. You can't even pick up a shell from the seabed in some places on the island.

We didn't quite manage to get round the whole island - mountain biking and snorkelling in high temperatures is a tiring combo - but we did get to see most of it, and beautiful it certainly is. If you go to Western Australia in your lifetime make sure you check it out, it's well worth the time and effort and is fairly cheap too, our hostel cost about 25 pounds for 2 nights and there's loads to see and do. Right, I'm pretty much up to date now so I've no idea what the next update will be about. I've moved into Perth city centre and am staying here for a few days so I'll probably be back with an update about that soon enough. Take it easy, and I'll see some of you soon, yes?

Sun City

Not a huge amount to report since the Rottnest update. I've had a great time, no doubt about that, but it's been a very hot and subsequently laid back affair that's mostly involved being out in the sun, which has been out in full force for virtually the whole time. Did I mention it's been very hot? Usually upwards of 35 degrees, and not much wind in the city centre until late in the afternoon when the Fremantle Doctor kicks in.

First thing to mention is that we had fun getting our luggage back from Rottnest after we put the wrong ferry labels on our bags - you specify one of 4 destinations by getting a particular colour, and they take your bags and put it on the relevant ferry going to a particular port, either in Fremantle or Perth. We were going to Fremantle on the Rottnest Express but we were hungover after a night of drinking with our roommates and didn't even notice there were different colours when we picked them up. Fortunately, and I mean very fortunately, they arrived 30 minutes later at a port not far from ours in Fremantle - they could have gone to Perth instead, or been left on the island. Phew.

Some sightseeing updates - I've been to the Perth museum, the art gallery, Kings Park, the WACA and the Swan River. And I've also been to the Adventure World water park near Fremantle. We went back to Scarborough for 3 days at the beach as well. As a result of all this I've decided to put some pictures up of my tan.

I've been reading a lot of books on my travels. Current count is 15 but some of those were pretty chunky, over 750 pages. The good thing about reading books in Australia is the abundance of second hand bookshops that will take back the book you bought for $15 last week and give you $5 credit for the next one you get. So you end up spending about $10 per book, which is about 4 pounds. Not bad really, and the second hand shops are excellent, full of all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. Here's a selection of some of the books I've read:

- The Godfather Returns (Mark Winegarden)
- The Eagle Has Landed (Jack Higgins)
- The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
- Mein Kampf (Adolf Hitler)

Yes, you read that last one correctly, Australia is one of the countries in the world where you can legally obtain copies of it. Amazing what takes your fancy when you've got loads of time on your hands at the beach. Oh, and I've decided to teach myself Spanish. I've started with a simple book but hopefully by the time I rock back to Blighty I'll be fluently covering everyone in saliva when I speak.

I'll be back with one more update from Perth before flying to Sydney on March 6th, where I'll see a few visitors to this blog. Don't forget that it's my birthday on March 17th so make sure you have a few drinks for me. See you later.

Goodbye WA

Transport in Australia is a strange beastie. You can get cheap shortish-range transport such as a bus from Sydney to Canberra (> 3 hours) for just 15 dollars - under 7 quid - yet air and, in particular, long distance rail journeys are extremely expensive compared to the UK. Get this - to travel from Adelaide to Perth you can realistically either get a train or a plane. For the plane you can fly with Qantas or Virgin Blue, and it takes about two and a half hours. For the train, you sit in a single seat with nowhere to lie down for almost 2 days solid. And which costs more? Yep, you guessed it - the train. And yet people actually choose to travel on it!! You can sit and explain that one to me all day and I still won't get it.

So, what was the point in that bit of waffle? Absolutely none, I just thought I'd mention it. It probably comes from reading Mein Kampf, which is possibly the worst written book in history and is literally just pure waffle (and insanity). One amazing point about that book - it appears that the Holocaust, in which an estimated 5 million+ Jews were murdered, might have stemmed from Hitler contracting syphilis from a Jewish prostitute as a youth. Talk about holding a grudge.

So, what have I been up to? Not much is the answer, apart from topping up my tan at Cottesloe Beach. As previously advertised, I fly to Sydney on the 6th (exactly 3 months after first landing there), however I'm doing this with a tinge of regret. It'll certainly be nice to see the likes of Dez, Bev, Jon, Beth and Nick, and Sydney is great, and Dan and Holly will be plus one and I still have friends in Bondi. But the trip means I'm missing out on going up the west coast of Australia with my friends Dave & Jamie, with whom I've been travelling for the best part of 3 months. That would have been a blast - the dolphins at Monkey Mia, stromatolites at Shark Bay (oldest living microbes in the world, over 3,000 years old), and the wildlife at Coral Bay which is apparently almost as good as the Great Barrier Reef and more accessible too. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do that later, but in the meantime it's back to the hustle and bustle of Sydney for about a month.

It looks like I'm going to be spending my 31st birthday in Canberra of all places, with Lynn's friend Barbra who is a lovely lass indeed. Most travellers don't even bother to visit Canberra because its reputation is so unbelievably poor (Bill Bryson even hated it in his book, and he likes Bradford) so I'm eccentrically delighted to be spending 4 nights there and celebrating my birthday in a very original way. If nothing else I've always liked to be a bit different. Incidentally I've booked a Murray bus to get there for 15 dollars - see first paragraph.

I went to Fremantle before flying to Sydney to exchange some books and subsequently lighten my luggage load. I was rather surprised to see the QE2 leaving Fremantle harbour when I got off the train, on its last ever voyage to Dubai. What timing. A few average kodak moments later I was back on the train, the proud owner of a book called 'Danger Down Under', full of tales of woe of backpackers in Oz. How cheery.

So, my little Perth adventure is over. I loved it, it's really relaxed but can also be bustling if you got into the city centre or out anywhere at night. The trick is to get out of the city and down to one of the suburbs, preferably a beach side one. I'd love to live in a place like Fremantle, it has everything, but I think it would be too expensive for a pauper like me. Oh, and don't forget the weather in Perth which is just awesome, probably the best in Australia. You can go hotter, but why would you want to? Anything more would be too stifling. I'm hoping to come back here to work, if I can find something suitable - touch wood.

Next update from Sydney, I'll be staying in the city centre which is a first for me - should be an experience. Bye for now!

Just before Mount Gambier on our journey to Adelaide we crossed a line of longitude that took us into South Australia, and bizarrely took our clocks back by just 30 minutes (it took us a while to realise we needed to do that). And so I soon found myself in my fourth state capital city, Adelaide.

To quote Bill Bryson, Adelaide is the driest city in the driest state in the driest country in the driest inhabited continent on the planet. It's quite dry. And yet they still find enough water to maintain over 1,500 acres of parks in the city. If you look at the facts, Adelaide should be a great place. The city centre is nicely laid out, two identical halves opposite each other surrounded by parks that separate it from the suburbs. It has a good tram service, nice beaches such as at Glenelg, it's easy to find things (unlike Melbourne) and has two or three streets that are positively banging at night time. And yet no-one seems to have a good word to say about it, and backpackers often avoid it completely without even seeing it.

I actually liked Adelaide, for all the reasons listed above. Okay, I was only there for a few days but I saw enough to draw that simple conclusion. The weather is nice and hot, about 30 degrees most days, and there's something for everyone. It doesn't have a booming economy and there isn't much work for someone like me there, but I'm sure it's a nice enough place to live.

That's about all I have to say on Adelaide. Oh, one more thing - how's this for a novel idea? There's a bar in Adelaide that let's you play paper-scissor-stone with the bar staff for every drink you buy. If you win, you get it for free, otherwise you pay a slightly over-the-top price for it. How cool is that?

One more thing to report - I've given up on my tank of a camera and have purchased a more modern Nikon Coolpix camera, 7.1 megapixels and a chargeable battery so I won't have to carry round a suitcase of AAs everywhere I go. I got it with a 2Gb SD card for just under 120 quid. Bargain. Hopefully my pictures will be a bit better from now on.

Next update from Perth, home of the great climate. I'm already in Perth of course as I'm backdating but I'll save the gossip for later.

An uneventful morning in Hobart led to our arrival in Melbourne at 4pm and within an hour we were back on the road in a rather sporty Toyota Aurion - a free upgrade as Hertz had run out of crappy cars to give us. Not a typical backpacker's car but we weren't complaining. Our destination for the night was Torquay, the surf capital of Australia and pretty much the start of the Great Ocean Road, but along the way we went through Geelong and took in a series of small towns that form what is known as the Bellarine. I have nothing to report from those places, and I don't have much to report from Torquay either apart from that it's full of bleached surf dudes and is the original home of surf shops such as RipCurl and Billabong. The weather was pretty rubbish which admittedly didn't help our impression of these places.

Onto the next day. The weather was still crappy but improved as the day went on. We started our journey towards our next stop, Warrnambool, by taking in a few coastal points such as Point Danger, Surf Beach, Jun Juc, Winkipop Beach and Point Addis. Next up was Aireys Inlet, home to Split Point lighthouse (the lighthouse from 'Round The Twist!'), and then we reached Coalmine Creek, the entrance to the Great Ocean Road.

The road was built as a memorial to WWI by 3,000 returned servicemen and took approximately 13 years to finish. The idea is that you drive along it, taking in the ocean views as you go, and just pick amongst the umpteen million places and things to do along the way. Some do it in a day, others take weeks. We took about 3 days to do the journey which, given the crummy weather, was plenty of time.

It wouldn't have been a roadtrip for us if we hadn't seen some waterfalls, so we took a butchers at Erskine Falls before stopping for a quick sunbathe at Apollo Bay. Eventually we mustered up the energy to complete the final part of the journey to Warrnambool - via the Twelve Apostles.

The Twelve Apostles are a very famous landmark in Australia, a set of limestone stacks that have been formed by erosion over time. There are actually only 8 left - the 9th fell in 2005 - but noone seems to care about that little fact. The main attraction is the view at sunset or sunrise which is, apparently, spectacular. So spectacular in fact that after checking them out and driving to Warrnambool to check in we drove back to take in the sunset - only to be denied by clouds. We weren't the only ones, mind, there were probably a few hundred people there at sunset. Warrnambool was pretty much dead when we got back so we grabbed some fast food and went back to the hostel for a few drinks before bed.

The next and final overnight stop on the journey was Robe, a small town 3 hours south of Adelaide. The map didn't offer many suggestions along the way so we tried to do our best with the scant offerings we could find.

First of all we went to see the lake at the centre of Tower Hill, which was in fact bone dry from drought. We did however get to see some enormous emus there, very close to the path we were walking along. Having navigated our way past them we drove to Portland and Cape Bridgewater where we tried desperately to find a beach to suit the improved weather but failed miserably apart from a small grey looking beach in Portland that overlooked a massive oil rig. Then, when all hope was lost, we meandered through Mount Gambier, the second biggest city in South Australia, and decided to take a look at the Blue Lake from the lookout point. Finally, something to gasp at after a 3 day journey!! I can't describe the shade of blue of the lake and I doubt my camera does in justice either - it really is something to behold.

The remainder of the road to Robe was a mixture of barren wasteland and - well, nothing at all. Totally uninteresting. We had mixed emotions when we arrive din Robe; on one hand we were glad to be off that boring road, but on the other hand we knew that there was nothing to do in Robe either. Catch 22.

The hostel - the Robe YHA - was certainly impressive. It's like a mansion, only one floor but huge and we had a room to ourselves with 10 beds to choose from (only four of us). There was also a fantastic library with beautiful leather sofas, bathrooms the size of houses, nice gardens and an awesome hostel dog to mess about with, a particularly lively chocolate labrador. And all this for just 10 pounds a night each! For that money you'd be lucky to get a sofa to sleep on in Sydney. As for Robe itself - nothing to report, unless being joint winner of 'Best Medium Sized Town' in 2007 is really the claim to fame that they make out.

And so we reached the final chapter on our journey to Adelaide. We left Robe at 10:30am and arrived at the Hertz depot at 2pm, minutes before they shut the doors. And so now I'm in Adelaide, it's hot - just over 30 degrees - and we're off to explore and see if Adelaide is really as dull as people say it is. After 10 consecutive nights in different places it'll be nice to spend 3 nights in the same hostel; after that it'll be off to Perth.

Day 1

I've met several people on my travels who have told me that going to Tasmania is a waste of time as you can just visit New Zealand for the same price and see similar sights but on a grander scale. Complete nonsense - I had a fabulous time in Tasmania and there's quite a few things that New Zealand can't possibly offer, as you'll see.

We got up in Melbourne at silly o'clock in the morning and after a short one hour flight arrived at Hobart at 8:30am. By the time the others arrived at 9:30am we had our 7 seater car from the rental company and were ready to rock and roll.

Tasmania is a fascinating little place (well, a similar size to England actually) that many people seem unable to comprehend. Two people in our group didn't know Tasmania was part of Australia. It is of course one of the six states of Australia, along with the two previously covered in my blog - New South Wales and Victoria. Its capital is Hobart, a proper city with an economy, a big port and even an international test match cricket ground. Tasmania has a total population of about 500,000 people. There's no international airport so you can only fly into Hobart or Launceston from the mainland.

We checked into our hostel, the Pickled Frog in Hobart, strolled into the city centre for a bite to eat and left for our first destination, the Tasmanian Devil Park, at 1pm.

I learnt two main things from seeing the Devils at the park. The first is that they're nothing like the cartoon character Taz, not just in looks of course but in character. They go a little bit wild at feeding time but for most of the day they just lounge about on top of each other, sleeping in the shade and just generally being peaceful. The second thing is that the Devils are facing a serious extinction threat due to a mysterious facial cancer that scientists are still trying to work out - it's believed that the Devil population has halved in the last decade. It's a big issue for the people of Tasmania having lost their other icon, the Tasmanian Tiger, and having to work out how to deal with the highly intelligent European red fox that somehow appeared in 2001 and is threatening to wipe out the Devils due to their decreasing number - previously the Devils were taking care of the foxes but now the foxes are getting more and more food and increasing in number.

The highlight of the park was the kangaroo feeding. They bring out a huge bucket of green grain and you just fill your hands with it and wander over to some roos and let them munch out of your hands. At one point a massive one came bounding towards me while I was feeding a smaller one, grabbed my hands with its front paws and selfishly gobbled up the rest in no time at all, leaving the smaller one to go and find some food elsewhere. Cool. There was some other stuff going on including a bird of prey exhibition similar to the one I saw in Devon last year, and then we moved on to Port Arthur at the very bottom right of the island, a former penal colony with a rough history and also the home to a gun suicide massacre in 1996.

Port Arthur was advertised as an inescapable prison - like Alcatraz - this reputation was helped by the shark infested waters that surround it. One person managed to escape by covering himself in a kangaroo hide and hopping across the plains but gave himself up when the guards started to shoot at him so they could have something for dinner. Prisoners were hooded and forced into complete silence, and also had to build most of the buildings that make up the colony. Boys as young as nine were sent there for stealing toys. Prisoners were subjected to psychological rather than physical torture and many inmates tried to kill themselves or others in an attempt to escape it. 1,646 people died in the penal colony during the 40 years it was open.

Looking around the old buildings was interesting without being exciting. We were a bit late and so we only got a twilight pass and a few of the buildings were closed when we got there. Still, we saw it and ticked it off the list of things to do in Tasmania, then drove back to Hobart with some beautiful sunset views on the way.

In the evening we had a few drinks and a fantastic curry that gave me truly horrendous wind, then it was off to bed ready for a busy day - as they'd all turn out to be in Tasmania.

Day 2

Today we checked out the east coast of Tasmania. We started off by taking a 2 hour drive to Coles Bay/Freycinet Park and marched confidently up the walking path to check out Wineglass Bay, one of Tasmania's most famous attractions. Pretty soon we were reduced to piles of sweat crawling up the steep and seemingly never-ending trail, battling against the humidity and the slippery path. We reached the lookout point after about 45 minutes and discovered, to our absolute horror, that it was full of Chinese tourists who had no intention of getting out of the way. Marvellous. Just in case they were about to head down towards the bay we grabbed a quick kodak moment over their heads and quickly rushed down the path ahead of them.

The weather wasn't the greatest, overcast and humid, so we didn't spend very long on the beach. A quick bit of snorkelling, spoilt by some pretty meaty waves, and then it was time to walk back up the path to the car. Ouch. I had to change t-shirts when we got back as mine was drenched with sweat. Pretty gross but unavoidable.

From there we drove all the way up the coastal road to St Helens, our stop-off for the night, where we checked into the YHA and went to the RSL for some food and, to our great surprise, some live entertainment from a local band. I really can't describe how bad they were - we were literally in tears, the (old) singer couldn't sing at all and the guitars were hopelessly out of tune. I immediately didn't want to stay in St Helens for more than that one night.

One more journey before we tucked into some drinks - to Binalong Bay to see a bit of the Bay of Fires, a stunning stretch of coast formed by huge rocks turned red by iron ore. We spent about 15 minutes there until it went dark, and then went back to St Helens to see what was going on in terms of evening activities - it was, after all, Australia Day, so surely there'd be something to do?

If you're ever in Tasmania do not, under any circumstance, stay in St Helens. It's the hickiest of hick towns, everyone is related to each other and there's an ongoing competition for best mullet that even the women take part in. As you can probably tell, I wasn't impressed and couldn't wait to get out of there. Fortunately we only had a few hours to suffer before we all flaked out at the hostel and got up even earlier in the morning for a huge journey to the west side of the island.

Day 3

It took just over 4 hours to reach Cradle Mountain National Park from St Helens. Our accomodation was in the park itself - Cosy Cabins YHA Lodge - so we checked straight in and headed down to the various walking routes, which we did in the following order:

- Pencil Pine Falls
- Knyvet Falls
- Enchanted Stroll
- King Billy Track

The walks were quiet which gave us poetic license to explore off the pathways in a few places, in particular the two waterfalls where we got as close as we could by jumping across the rocks in the streams, sometimes a bit precariously, but that all stopped for me when I spotted a big black snake disappearing into a crevice on a bank near one of the falls.

Fairly exhausted and hungry, we strolled into the main Cradle Mountain Lodge for some expensive food and drinks in front of a steaming hot fire in leather armchairs overlooking the lake. Lovely. Then back to the cabin for drink, a few games of cards and a well-earned sleep. Trekking around Tasmania is certainly hard work.

Day 4

Monday was pencilled in as a day of boozing in Tasmania's second city, Launceston. First of all though we had to get there, and on the way we stopped off near Mole Creek to check out King Solomon's Caves.

I'd never been to a cave before and it was pretty much as I expected, although I hadn't anticipated having to hand over quite so much money for the pleasure. The caves were cold, about 9 degrees, and quite narrow and tight in places. One thing's for sure - I was soon wishing I'd worn a bit more than a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops down there. By the way, in Aussie lingo I was wearing a tee, boardies and thongs. Mate.

As good as the caves were I was glad to get out of there to warm my feet up in the sun, and to get away from the tour guide who spooked me completely. Within 2 hours of driving we had arrived in Launceston and checked into our hostel, the Backpackers Hub. And within half an hour of that we'd started drinking in the bar.

We broke off the drinks at 5pm to get some food from the city centre. It was Bank Holiday Monday, after Australia Day, and so a lot of places were shut but we found somewhere reasonable and stuffed our faces before heading back to get changed for a night out in Launceston.

Everything was shut when we went back out. Everything. Not a boozer in sight had an open door. When they have a bank holiday in Launceston they do it properly, no exceptions. Deflated, we went back to the hostel to drink at the bar (thank god they had one, most don't) and the night petered out into one of tiredness. A bit disappointing, especially as we'd been assured that there'd be stuff to do, even on a Bank Holiday. Never mind, the next day would prove to be much more fruitful.

Day 5

Launceston is a great place. A bit too quiet for my liking but from what I saw it was much nicer than Hobart and there's plenty to do. We strolled up the road from the hostel in the morning and checked out the Chinese monkeys in the city park. They were great value for money (free), fascinating creatures to watch in a strange sort of Big Brother way. And then we drove to Cataract Gorge, the highlight of the day and one of the best bits of the Tasmania trip.

The Gorge is a beautiful piece of scenery and they've enhanced it by introducing and maintaining lush grass, a big swimming pool, walkways and wildlife such as peacocks and wallabies.They actually make the money to pay for all this by charging just over 5 pounds for a return ride on the cable chairs across the gorge. It's great value for money, well worth it for the views, and the locals get to enjoy the water or the pool for free. There are even spots to jump off the rocks into the water. Unfortunately we had to leave at 1pm and make the 3 hour drive to Hobart so that the girls could get their flights back to Sydney.

Before going to the airport we checked out Salamanca Square in Hobart, which was very posh although affordable to eat. Then, when we'd said goodbye to the girls at the airport, we drove west in the vain hope that we wouldn't be too late to see Russell Falls, one of the main features in any illustrated Tasmania book.

Not only were we there in time to see it but we were also late enough to sneak in without paying. Brucie Bonus. More leaping about where we shouldn't have been, and yet more steep paths, and then back to the Pickled Frog in Hobart for our last night in Tasmania.

Next step - fly out of Hobart to Melbourne, grab a hire car from Hertz and head to Adelaide along the Great Ocean Road. Bring it on.