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!

After an early start in Launceston, we drove out of town with the morning 'rush hour' (two other cars on the highway) and west to Deloraine through icy valleys full of mist and cows. Strangely sinister.

From Deloraine we left the safety of the main roads and began our windy ascent towards Cradle Mountain. Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is perhaps the most famous tourist attraction in Tasmania due to the Overland Track – an 80km, 6 day hike south through snowy mountains, moorlands and temperate rainforest – which is regarded as one of the best hikes in the world. We didn't have the time, weather, inclination or fitness for the hike itself, but in our circuit of Tasmania we were able to visit the start and finish of the route.

Cradle Valley is always a couple of degrees colder than the lowlands, so Sarah and I spent a frosty 5 minutes in the Visitors Centre car park, hopping around to keep warm by the boot of the car, putting on all the clothes we had in our backpacks. There are a number of day walks at the Cradle Mountain end of the Overland Track, so we decided to do the 3 hour walk around Dove Lake which sits beneath the park's namesake mountain. It rains 7 days out of 10 in Cradle Valley and is cloudy 8 days in 10, so we were very lucky with the weather, catching a glimpse of the 'baby in a cradle'-shaped summit as it briefly emerged from the clouds.

Back once more on windy roads and refreshed after the bracing mountain air, we drove down deeper into the west coast wilderness. The west of Tasmania is still the most underdeveloped part of the state – the small towns that hunker down into the base of the valleys exist only to serve the mining and logging industries. Strahan (pronounced 'Strawn' for some reason) is the exception, due to its location on the side of the Maquarie Harbour – one of the first harbours and site of the first penal colony in Tasmania. It was discovered by sailors in the 1800s looking for Huon pine – a valuable hardwood – and its relative inaccessibility (both from land and sea, through the treacherous 'Hell's Gates') led to its being used as a penal colony. From 1821 to 1834 (when Port Arthur was founded) prisoners on the tiny Sarah's Island worked 12 hour shifts, logging and working timber outside in the rain and cold.

In the summer Strahan must be a tourist machine, but on a rainy winter's day there's not much going on. We had a hot chocolate in a cafe by the marina, admired a rainbow that had materialised in the rain, then left. As we couldn't do the boat tour to Sarah's Island we drove out to the head to see the Hell's Gates, parking in what must be the most depressing campsite in the world. Standing on the beach, staring across the narrow entrance to the harbour and its churning brown waters you could see how intimidating the sea-route would be for any potential convict escapees. A beautiful sunset distracted us from the fast encrouching tide which snapped at our heels as we retreated to the warmth of the car.

In one final hour of driving, we sped back through Strahan and over a mountain pass (in the dark – more fun driving!) to Queenstown and our hotel. We stayed in 'The Empire,' a formerly decadent, currently decaying vestige of Imperial pretention. Climbing the grand creaking staircase to the first floor you are greeted with a horrifying 6 foot tall painting of Queen Elizabeth. Damp had eaten at the oils and her face seemed to be rotting – a zombie queen. This was all a bit too much for Sarah after our Port Arthur ghost tour, and I had to act as a supernatural bodyguard for the night - escorting her down the darkened corridors on bathroom trips.

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.

We woke up freezing in our cabin on the Tasman Penninsula. We were in a bunkhouse on a campsite, but as it's the off-season we were the only occupants. Sarah and I huddled together for warmth on the bottom bunk of one of the three triple-deckers in the room. Having failed to figure out the heater, we had had to pile all of the other bedding onto our one bed in order to survive the night.

Checking out of the campsite I asked the receptionist if there was anywhere good for breakfast nearby:
'Hmm.. well there's a bakery in Dullersbury (5km away) that might be open (on a Wednesday at 10am, you would hope so), or you could drive to Hobart (the capital, 1.5 hours away), or there's Mackers (MacDonalds) in Sorell (1 hour away)'. I am beginning to understand Tasmania's reputation as being somewhat more 'provincial' than the mainland.

We lucked out with the bakery, so come 1030 we were both full of pastry and coffee, speeding north up the A9 with the car stereo belting out some quality local radio.

Tasmania reminds me of New Zealand – lots of stunning scenery, and very few people. We drove all morning on empty roads through rolling fields and forested hills before arriving at Triabunna by the sea. From there we continued north up the coast, winding around the headlands. Great fun to drive. I snatched sideways glances of the amazing sea views whenever I could safely do so.

Nearing Swansea (!) and a lunchstop, Freycinet Peninsula reared up across the water to the east, enclosing Great Oyster Bay. This was our destination for the afternoon: Freycinet National Park is the home of the stunning Wineglass Bay, apparently one of the 'Top 10 Beaches in the World'. (according to whom, they didn't say). To reach the bay we hiked up through temperate rainforest to the mountainous peaks of 'The Hazards' – four pink granite summits that guard the entrance to the peninsula. From these heady heights we were afforded a fantastic view of Wineglass Bay: As the afternoon sun threw the forest around it into shadow, the beach still gleamed white, and the sea a sapphire blue. We climbed down to walk on the beach and stood listening to the booming surf until it got cold and dark enough to make our hike back a little interesting.

As the final fragments of sunlight left the sky, we drove the up to the town of St Helen's in the North East of Tasmania. On the way we very nearly annihilated a wallaby which had decided to take a breather in the middle of the highway. Blinded by the full-beams, he sat there for a good couple of seconds before hopping off into the undergrowth. It was quite a shock to see a living animal on the road, having observed such a massive amount of roadkill over the previous two days of driving.

St Helen's had a strangely American feel to it when we arrived: A one road town with a supermarket, off-license ('bottle store'), petrol station and a couple of diners; every other car a 4x4. We had booked into a 'Unit' for the night, which turned out to be a self-contained bungalow on the outskirts of town. Over-excited at being able to play house, we decided to eat-in and cooked ourselves a lovely dinner before settling down on the sofa to enjoy '20 best break-up songs' and other fantastic programming with a bottle of wine. It's amazing the things you miss when you're travelling – lazy evenings in front of crap TV are definitely one of them.

Glorious cold. Stepping down from the small plane onto Tasmanian tarmac was like jumping into a cool bath after a hot day. Except our 'hot day' had lasted 3 whole months. Sarah had got off the plane before me and was already halfway to the terminal. She looked back to see where I was and burst out laughing – I was standing still on the runway, arms outstretched, wearing a lunatic's grin and two layers of clothing, manically giggling at the fact that I was NOT SWEATING. Pure joy.

My expectations of Tasmania from somewhat limited research were that it would be a snowy wilderness of dense forests and gloomy port towns, within which mean-looking locals sat hunched over strong ales, spinning tales of Antarctic adventures and escaped convicts.

And this was exactly what Tasmania was like.

...two hundred years ago. Tasmania's heyday was the early 1800s. As one of the furthest outcrops of the English Empire it served as penal colony, a source of timber for furniture and boat production, a key hub for the whaling industry and was also one of the biggest apple exporters in the world. The docks in Hobart were a rolling maul of convicts, sailors, 'timber-getters', prostitutes, local merchants, recent free-men and the odd crusading Jesuit trying to offset the mayhem and moral turpitude.

By the 1850s gold had been discovered in nearby Victoria and the action shifted to the mainland. Wandering around the capital it doesn't feel like Hobart has ever really recovered. 'The Smoke' - as Tasmanians call it (eliciting stifled guffaws from Sarah and myself) – still feels like a small, slightly sleepy market town. Which is amazing really, given that it's one of the best natural ports in the world, is under an hour's drive from several immense national parks, 20 minutes from some great vineyards, and home to such an incredible history. I think that Hobart is simply a victim of its location – at the end of the earth.

At the moment, Hobart's tourist offerings seem to be limited to rely on a scattering of Georgian civic buildings, an art gallery and a number of seafood restaurants. Surrounded by predatory sea-gulls, we enjoyed a fantastic lunch of fish and chips by the Constitution Docks – where the Sydney to Hobart yacht race finishes on New Years Day. (Aside: As we ate, we heard a young American student telling her friends how amazing her meal was with the choice phrase: 'This is tasty as shit!')

Things are changing though. The number of people down-shifting and moving from mainland Australia to Tassie is on the up, as is tourism – mostly from mainlanders, but also from Asians and Europeans. Hobart seems like it's beginning to wake up to the commercial opportunities these off-islanders represent. The swanky cafes and art galleries of the Salamanca redevelopment at the base of Battery Point – the oldest settlement in Hobart – is doing well, as is the new 'Elizabeth Street Pier' complex of restaurants and apartments at the docks. We noticed a couple of other 'luxury lifestyle' projects going up as we strolled around the town.


From our stay, we feel there are still two critical barriers to Hobart's regeneration:

1.Opening hours. Sarah and I went out to find some food at 8 one evening, and every restaurant in town was shut. I know it's the off-season, but what gives?

2.Beer. It's incredibly expensive to drink in Australia, so if you are going to save up some money to buy a whole pint (to our surprise we learned that the standard measure in Oz is a 'Pot' – just over a half pint) you would hope that it would be worth it. Unfortunately the two Tassie local brews are pretty poor. Lusting after a real beer after 4 months of Asian lager, Sarah and I made our way pub-wards within hours of landing in Hobart. Sitting down in 'The Best Pub In Hobart' – Knopwood's Retreat in Salamanca – we therefore had high hopes for 'Cascade', which has been brewed in Hobart since 1832. After our first sip we thought the taps might be off. Cascade tastes like a watery, fizzier version of Budweiser. 'Boag's' from Lanceston in north Tassie wasn't much better. Chatting with some very drunk locals who had clearly been in the pub for some time, they recommended we avoid both of Tassie's home-grown beers completely and stick to James Squire ale (from Victoria) or better still, the wonderful Spanish wine that they had discovered a few hours back. Unfortunately by then we had no money left, so had to leave.