Impressions of Tasmania Part 2

If you have a yen to go to Tasmania, here’s three key pieces of advice. Go in spring or autumn, take clothing and footwear for all seasons and, most importantly, allow more time than we had (18 days). I’m taking up the travelogue as we arrived for three days in Hobart (having arranged to drop our car into the dealers to troubleshoot a faulty sensor). We checked in to the Hobart showgrounds, a spacious complex…

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Confessions of a Tree Hugger

Our whistle-stop tour of Tasmania (18 days) reminded me much of my teenage years in New Zealand as a fledgling Tree Hugger. Tasmania itself reminds Kiwis of the home country, with its hilly roads, sparse population and evidence of man’s attempts to harness the wilderness. Tassie’s north-west coast in particular looks like the rugged beech forests of the South Island’s west coast. (Photo: tall timbers at Heritage Point on the Gordon River.) There are other…

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Antarctica or Bust.

For most people who like to travel, Antarctica is probably not on the list of places they aspire to visit. I say that because, although visitor numbers to the frozen continent have risen 50% in recent years, the numbers are tiny on the mass tourism scale. People with some curiosity about the seventh continent can satisfy it by reading books or viewing any of these recommended documentaries. Armchair travel obviously did not do it for the 73,…

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Strolling Through an Historical Village

A sure sign of advancing years is just how quickly you can identify household objects when visiting a local historical village. In my case, this is particularly so when an historic house has preserved its original laundry – twin concrete tubs, a mangle, a copper, a metal baby’s bath hung on a nail and a flat iron (designed to be heated up on a wood stove). Not to mention wire washing lines, strung between the…

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