We wake up bright and early and leave Fawlty Towers and the 'town that time forgot' behind. As we drive out of town, we pass a tourist information board which says “Queenstown is like nowhere else on earth.” They got that about right. It does look pretty from the top of the hill though.

We drive the windy (pretty much every road in Tasmania is windy) Lyell Hwy in the early morning sunshine, wending our way across the countryside.

After a couple of hours drive we arrive at Lake St Clair, the other half of Cradle Mountain National Park. It is so early we interrupt a couple of wallabies breakfasting on the edges of the public area. Despite this, we are still not the first people into the park – another very enthusiastic couple beat us to that title. Second in doesn't seem so bad.

St Clair is usually the finishing point for the Overland track, so a lot of the walks here are a minimum of a day long. Since we have a flight to catch at 5pm, we opted for a few of the shorter walks through the local area, which give great views of the lake. We also take the opportunity to search for platypuses which apparently fish here, but we don't spot any at this time of day.

We continue our journey onwards. The friendly bottle-shop owner we met last night told us to look out for the “Hungry Wombat” for a great lunch, which is situated just after the “mighty Derwent Bridge.” We were expecting great things – what we actually found was a greasy spoon cafe (albeit with delectable-looking cakes) just after a mini-bridge. It barely qualified as a bridge to be honest. However, considering this was also the guy who described Hobart (population 200,000) as “The Big Smoke,” I don't really know why we were surprised.

It being a little early for lunch anyway, we decide to press on to Hobart. And what a good decision it was. The sun was shining as we enjoyed fresh fish with a glass of wine on the Elizabeth St Pier, overlooking the marina. Bliss. If this is an Aussie winter, then bring it on!