We enjoyed a leisurely start with breakfast in the 'unit' now affectionately known as home. We even settled down to watch the Aussie equivalent of This Morning (called The Morning Show here. There's a lot more flirting between the presenters. It's quite disconcerting over your cornflakes).

Today we started our sightseeing at Binalong Bay, the beginning of the Bay of Fires – so-called because when the Europeans first arrived, all they could see were the fires started by the Aboriginals to put them off landing. Needless to say, this strategy didn't work for long. It's a beautiful beach, and at this time of year the waves crash along the shore pretty aggressively.

We started the day's driving proper and headed out towards St Columba Falls, 'allegedly' the tallest falls in Tasmania. No one wants to come out and say definitively it is the highest, just in case there's another one they haven't found yet. It was discovered by a farming couple who trekked across the mountains with their 10 kids just to farm the land here. This dedication clearly paid off, as the descendents lived on the farm for over a century. The falls were beautiful, although James took the instructions about 'closing your eyes and opening your ears' to listen to the water a little too seriously, as you'll see from the picture here.

We were aiming to stop for lunch in Scottsdale, but it turned out to be a bit of a local town for local people, so instead we stopped at the Forest Eco-Centre and had a picnic in the sunshine. I'm still not sure quite what the Eco-Centre was for, despite having been inside, but it looked pretty from the outside and had good picnic benches.

From there we drove on to Launceston, the second biggest town in Tasmania (population 100,000). I am afraid I have little positive to say about Launceston, so I will have to defer to the guidebook, which says it “maintains an unconcerned, big-country-town pace.” I would describe it as a shithole. It was a bit like how I imagine going on holiday to Slough or Didcot Parkway might be. However, resourceful individuals that we are, we did managed to find a couple of redeeming features: beer and cataracts.

1) Beer: we went to the Boag's Factory. Although too late for the tour and tasting (tours in winter stop at 2pm, I'm not sure why) we wandered around the museum, which included some gorgeous advertising shots done by Helmut Newton, as part of the 'Who is James Boag?' campaign, and also lots of bottles through the ages which we marketing geeks enjoyed looking at immensely.

Rather than tasting the beer on a tour, we consoled ourselves with a beer of Boag's in a local bar. It's a little better than Cascades, but not a lot, so we weren't too disappointed about having missed out on the 'tasting.' Our very nice bartender also explained to us the different measures of beer they have over here in Australia:
The Pint: Self-explanatory
The Schooner: A bit like a 330ml tall glass, used for drinking Peroni and Star
The Pot: Just over a half-pint, this is the standard beer measure in Oz. It is perfectly acceptable for grown men to order and drink pots in a pub
The Pony: An 8oz or 6oz glass, generally (but not exclusively) for the ladies

2) Cataracts: actually not as weird as it sounds, this refers to Cataract Gorge, a beautiful limestone gorge and fast-flowing river about 10 minutes outside of Launceston. There's a suspension bridge which was built in 1906, and several beautiful walks. As it was getting dark when we arrived, we only wandered around for a little bit, but still managed to see some peacocks strutting their stuff. James also claimed to have seen a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, but since they've been extinct since 1936 I think it was probably a possum.