Finding John's office the next morning in order to arrange our tour turned out to be a little more difficult than we had expected. At the address we had been given, there appeared to be nothing more than a pharmacy waiting for us on the corner. We went in and wandered around, wondering if we were supposed to go up the stairs at the back of the shop, but suspected that doing so would result in all sorts of people running in our direction thinking we were druggies looking to steal the stock. Outside, we looked for another doorway into an office, in case John's travel company was over the shop, but after walking up and down the street a couple of times and scratching our heads we could find nothing.

Returning to the shop, I went up to the counter and asked if anyone knew how we got into the tour company offices and were directed by a helpful assistant to make our way around the back to a dingy looking car park where we would find an equally dingy looking flight of steps leading up to a door which you couldn't see from the street. This didn't sound too auspicious, and it did cross my mind that we were essentially looking for the back street office of a bloke we had met in the pub who was promising to take us out into the woods - an idea which might have had many people choking on their coffee. On the other hand, the woman in the pharmacy obviously knew John and we had been given a glowing recommendation by our hostel, so unless the whole town was in on some sort of X-Files conspiracy to get rid of strangers we felt as though we were on safe ground.

The office was, indeed, up a very inconspicuous flight of well worn stone steps at the back of a small private car park which we had walked past several times and written off as unimportant. Inside, however, the place was spacious and filled with brochures and photos on the walls of places to see around Tasmania. John greeted us with a warm smile, having first spent the best part of a minute trying to open the office door which had clearly seen better days, and bustled around apologising for the mess and moving stacks of boxes out of the way. Clearly, they really weren't kidding when they said it was out of season - the office looked as though a member of the public hadn't been through the door in months. In the front room, which had light streaming in from several windows and was the only brightly lit room in the place, a single desk was covered in paperwork and brochures and a large photograph of John's family showed that this was where he spent most of his time. A young lady, who was in the photograph and therefore probably John's sister or wife, bustled in with cups of tea for us both and we were invited to take a seat while more boxes were hastily shuffled out of the way. It was all very chaotic, but we took solace in the fact that they seemed very eager to make sure we were comfortable and that we would go away saying how helpful people in Hobart were. Obviously, our options for tours were limited as we couldn't do anything which involved working with other tour companies which were closed for the season, or going anywhere which wouldn't have any facilities available. In the end, we opted for the eco option and chose to take a trek into the dense forests of the nearby Styx Valley. John showed us some photos which, naturally, made the place look irresistible - then he took our money and quickly made some phone calls. We should return to the office the next morning, he told us, where we would be introduced to the guide taking us on the tour who was, perhaps unsurprisingly considering the current state of the business, one of John's mates.

The state of the temperate rainforests in Tasmania is a cause for debate. The Styx Valley, it seems, is one of Tasmania's last surviving patches of rainforest, due entirely to mankind's relentless perceived need to cut everything down and turn it into woodchips rather than leaving it alone so that people of future generations can look at it and wander through as we were about to do. Tasmania bills itself to the world as "the natural state", and as Australia in general prides itself on its love of slapping protected national forest status on everything, it's not hard to see that people come to Tasmania expecting to find the place covered in woodland and can sometimes be disappointed. What remains, however, is truly some of the most remarkable and beautiful forest in the world, with a certain mythical quality which makes you feel as though you are inside a story by Tolkien and that there are elves hiding just out of sight behind a fallen tree. Something about the way that light seeps through the canopy and illuminates moss covered patches of bark on gigantic fallen eucalypts gives the forest that elusive otherworldly feel. Those on the other side of the debate argue that the vast majority of what remains of Tasmania's forests is protected in perpetuity and that much of the island is national forest and therefore untouchable, but this is hard to take on board when you see logging trucks sailing up and down the streets. In 2002, conservationists paid a small fortune to have a billboard erected in Sydney airport showing the Styx valley as a burnt, smoking corpse of a forest with a single charred tree standing at the centre. The caption read: "Discover Tasmania before 2003", airing their increased frustration at ongoing deforestation projects which seemed to be in direct contradiction to the government's latest drive to bill Tasmania as a beautiful paradise that everyone should visit. Hardly surprisingly, the billboard lasted for about five minutes before enough people in high up positions were seen with smoke pouring out of their ears and it was taken down. In 2002, a year before our visit, the worlds largest hardwood tree - christened El Grande - was discovered growing in the forest. It had an unbelievable nineteen metre circumference, was hundreds of years old, towered proudly over it's neighbours and, for a short while after its discovery, drew visitors from all over the world to stare up at it in awe. Then in may 2003, mere months after it had first caught the world's attention, El Grande was in the spotlight again when it was accidentally destroyed by a fire which had been started nearby to create woodchips. This story shocked the world, making it within hours onto the pages of British newspapers. In Australia, it didn't even get a mention. At the rate we're going, I wonder if it won't be too long before a child will be born who will be able to utter those terrifying words "what's a tree, mummy?"

Besides a trip to the Styx Valley, a look through a guidebook of things to do in Hobart can really raise some eyebrows. Amongst the oddest things visitors can do - during the tourist season, of course - is the Rivulet tour. The rivulet is a river which runs down from Mount Wellington, the mountain which overlooks Hobart, and then makes its way under the city through pipes until it reaches the Derwent River. Originally, when Hobart was first built, the Rivulet used to run right through the middle of the city, but as more space was needed for building it was eventually paved over and then forced into pipes to provide drinking water for the locals as it made its way towards the Derwent below the streets. These days, tourists can book themselves onto a tour of the Rivulet, which essentially means being guided through what amounts to a large sewer-like system underneath Hobart where pipes funnel the Rivulet through the city to provide drinking water to the population rather than taking it away after they've finished with it like a normal sewer. Predictably, the walls of the underground Rivulet are covered in colourful graffiti, and the tour certainly isn't something for the claustrophobic, but one thing you can say about it is that it's certainly original. At various points along the route, grilles allow visitors to look up through the roof at familar landmarks, so this is obviously a very good choice of tour for perverts who like to look up girls skirts when they're not suspecting it! Nevertheless, if some enterprising businessman in London decided to offer tours of the London sewers, I don't think many would take him up on his offer. Personally, if I wanted to tour the Rivulet, i imagine I would much rather make my way up onto Mount Wellington where it's out in the open and dotted with beautiful scenery and waterfalls - but perhaps that's just me being all romantic again! The atmospheric, underground ghost tours of Edinburgh in Scotland, this is not.

Probably the most prominent landmark in Hobart is the Tasman Bridge. Originally, the bridge was the only way to cross from the Western to the Eastern banks of the Derwent River, and was seen as something of a modern marvel at almost a kilometre and a half in length. With five lanes and a pedestrian walkway on either side, it has always been most locals main route in and out of the city. The Tasman Bridge was built in the 1950s to replace the older Hobart Bridge, which was starting to suffer congestion as the city expanded on the Eastern side of the Derwent - according to the plans, the new bridge would also allow ships to pass underneath unhindered, without the need to stop traffic and raise and lower the central section as had been necessary with the Hobart Bridge. At least, that was the theory.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan, and the bridge did indeed provide a fast and easy method in and out of the city to the growing number of cars on the road for twenty years, until everything changed on one fateful Sunday night in January, 1975. At around 9.30pm on the 5th, the bulk ore tanker Lake Illawarra, with a cargo of 10000 tonnes of zinc, attempted to pass underneath the bridge. Unfortunately, due to strong currents and a decision by the captain to steer the ship not through the centre of the bridge as was the norm, but through a narrower section between two supports on the Eastern side, the attempt failed. Realising that the ship wasn't going to make it between the narrow supports with the strong tide against it, the captain inexplicably ordered full speed ahead, lost all control of his vessel and crashed the ship spectacularly into the base of one of the supports, destroying the stability of the bridge and causing a 130 metre section of road to come crashing down from above, landing on the deck of the ship and sinking it to the bottom of the Derwent within minutes. Seven crew members went down with the ship. Because it was a Sunday night, there wasn't much traffic on the bridge - something which has often been hailed as something of a miracle as the same disaster ten to twelve hours later would probably have killed hundreds of people on their way to work or taking their kids to school for the new term. Nevertheless, there was no way for anyone approaching the bridge to know what had happened and the bridge was designed in such a way that motorists would have been driving uphill as they approached the missing section with no view of what was up ahead. Four cars, the occupants suspecting nothing, plunged over the edge into the river, killing everyone on board, while two other cars screeched to a halt and were left hanging over the edge. Sylvia Manley, a passenger in one of the cars left dangling over the edge:

"As we approached, it was a foggy night...there was no lights on the bridge at the time. We just thought there was an accident. We slowed down to about 40 kph and I'm peering out the window, desperately looking to see the car...what was happening on the bridge. We couldn't see anything but we kept on travelling. The next thing, I said to Frank, "The bridge is gone!" And he just applied the brakes and we just sat there swinging. As we sat there, we couldn't see anything in the water. All we could see was a big whirlpool of water and apparently the boat was sinking."

The effects of the disaster were far reaching. At that time, there was very little development on the Eastern shore of the Derwent and most people commuted across the Tasman Bridge to work or school. All city facilities, shops, parks, hospitals and stations were situated on the West side of the river, and the only other route to the other side involved a ninety minute diversion via a bridge in the town of Bridgewater - before the disaster, this journey had taken three minutes. The residents on the Eastern shore were effectively cut off, causing serious phychological issues throughout the community. Crime soared by 41%, while domestic arguments and disturbances rose by 300% in the period after the disaster. Ferrys were quickly set up to shuttle people between the East and West, but they were overcrowded and in many cases added to the frustration people felt. Many businesses closed, being unable to source stock, and relationships fell apart as anger and dissent swept the isolated community. In short, the scale of the Tasman Bridge disaster went far beyond the relatively low loss of life.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.