Having spent 3 nights in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania (which is probably OK to see the main central sights), we set off today on a 7 day excursion of the island. Although small in comparison to Australia, Tasmania is actually reasonably sized measuring 364km north to south and 306km east to west with a population of 576,000.
Hire car pickup was not as smooth as for the Sydney to Melbourne run. The vehicle provided was older with rather more existing damage to record and a hard sell on supplementary insurance. The process took an hour - far more than it should have done and delayed our start. This particular day was also the longest leg, travelling almost the whole width of the island (306km) from Hobart to Strachan through a significant amount of national park (part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area).
Such a journey also needed to include photo stops at scenic points and occasional small diversions to interesting places en route. Many of the places sported familiar English names like Norfolk, Hayes, Cambridge and Uxbridge.
The first significant stop was at the Russell Falls, a 15 minute walk into the Mount Field National Park through magnificent tress and tree ferns. Many of these places are served by paved paths and visitor centres for which the park authorities require a daily fee of AUD48 (~£25). Continuing on, we passed some impressive hydro-electric power stations up in the mountains along steep winding roads before coming down the other side along equally winding and heavily forested routes. The roads are generally all single tarmac carriageway with occasional overtaking lanes but there are also quite a few lengths of roadworks where speed restrictions are (always) 40kmph.
On entering the National Park, the weather (which had been reasonably kind until then) took a turn for the worse with low cloud and rain setting in. This significantly limited the landscape photography where the views would otherwise have been quite dramatic. As we began to leave the park towards Queenstown, the rain became heavy. I just managed to get a shot from the Iron Bore lookout but further lookouts above Queenstown were impossible, despite there being some very dramatic colours in the rock.
Queenstown is an old mining town which would have been interesting to explore but we were out of time with still another hour (40km) to go to Strahan on the coast. We arrived at Strahan as the rain stopped to find a most impressive accommodation in the Strahan Wilderness Lodge, originally built in 1897 as a mine manager's residence. Including stops, the total journey time for this leg from Hobart was 8 hours.
Click here to see the 'Leg 1' gallery.