When we arrived at Launceston Airport, the first thing we did was find the familiar bank of phones and cards advertising local accommodation and arrange somewhere to stay for a couple of nights. We settled pretty quickly on the imaginatively named Launceston Backpackers, although to be honest I can't remember whether this was because it particularly stood out from the description and photos on its card or simply because we were tired from our flight and picked somewhere on the "close your eyes and stab a finger at the board" principle. Anyway, the friendly sounding women on the phone explained that we could just hop on the airport shuttle bus, which would turn up outside the front of the arrivals hall every half an hour or so and would drop us off at no charge outside the front door of the hostel, so we collected our luggage and went outside to wait for it. This is another thing which you notice almost immediately as a backpacker down under - you can nearly always phone a hostel up out of the blue, often in the middle of the night, and they'll normally either have a free shuttle bus running between the airport, coach station and their door or else they won't see anything remotely strange about getting someone out of bed to come over and collect you. Try this anywhere else in the world and you'll probably get given a list of bus routes which might possibly get you there, except that the buses aren't running at two o'clock in the morning and you'll still have a twenty minute uphill walk to the hostel from the nearest bus stop even when you do finally manage to catch one. Some of the hostels we've been to have sent over minivans to collect us which were covered in brightly coloured graffiti or pictures of kangaroos and koalas and local attractions, all carefully hand-drawn onto the vehicle by the hostel themselves - you certainly can't accuse backpacker accommodation in Oz of not having any pride in their work.

Even before we'd seen anything of the city, Launceston Backpackers gave us a pretty good indication of the atmosphere we could expect. As soon as we were dropped off at the front of the hostel by the airport shuttle bus, people were coming out to greet us and help us in with our backpacks. The building was obviously in a nice part of town, surrounded by tree lined avenues and big Victorian style houses - it wasn't at all like the modern city centre places we had stayed in before. Once inside, it was obvious that we were staying in a large converted Victorian, possibly Edwardian house of the type that you couldn't possibly afford to live in these days in England unless you were a multimillionaire - this style of architecture is known in Australia as "Federation style". Every room was huge, with high ceilings and elaborate bay windows. The living room was like a waiting room in a doctor's surgery, with sofas and chairs arranged around the outside and tables piled high with magazines and brochures. The television, mounted on the wall in a corner, was surrounded by a selection of videocassettes offering information on Launceston and Tasmania in general, and numerous films which were just old enough to have been picked up from the bargain bin at the video store for a couple of dollars. There was also, believe it or not, a piano. The kitchen was a large room at the bottom of the stairs, easily big enough to have passed as the kitchen for a small restaurant, and contained every amenity and a stainless steel food preparation surface which could've easily accommodated about fifteen people standing around it all making lunch at once. Sometimes, when you see how huge and well maintained hostels in Australia are, and the range of facilities on offer, it really is obvious just how much money backpackers must put into the economy. The one thing which is quite strange about Launceston Backpackers was the colour scheme - the walls were all painted in a sort of yellowy-gold, which is quite normal for buildings of this type in Australia, but somebody had chosen to "complement" this by painting all of the ornate pillars, archways and door frames in sky blue.

Looking at the age of the building and comparing the gold and blue walls to the more authentic looking features such as the banisters on the wide stairway leading upstairs, it was hard not to feel as though somebody had just lifted the colour scheme from something they saw on a bright and colourful television show for five year olds! However, this was where any reservations I had about the place ended. The staff were friendly, the other guests welcoming, and everyone did their best to ensure that we felt as though we'd just arrived home. Upstairs, our room was easily the largest we had stayed in on the entire tour - turning the key in the lock, we found ourselves entering a large, high ceilinged room the size of the average student flat back home. A large window flooded the room with light, and it was obvious straight away that the only furniture in the room was a simple two-door wardrobe and a double bed - so there was the rather odd feeling of having just moved into a new house before the furniture has turned up, but at least there was no shortage of space to dump our stuff.

Since we were only in town for a couple of days, we really didn't need any cupboards as there was probably enough empty space on the carpet to park a couple of cars. Other upstairs rooms, as we saw when we were being nosey and peering in as other people were coming out, had been converted into dorms with bunk beds or family rooms. One thing was for sure - there certainly didn't seem to be any shortage of guests - considering we had been told that it wasn't the tourist season in Tasmania at the moment, I think we had both been expecting the place to be empty.

Due to limited time, we were having to be quite selective at this point as to what we saw in each place we visited, but the hostel had a fairly good selection of brochures and flyers advertising local attractions. The receptionist also couldn't speak highly enough of Launceston's local pride and joy - a place just ten minutes walk down the road called Cataract Gorge, which she described as not only the local natural wonder but also an extensive area of gardens and parkland with cafes, ponds covered in swans and peacocks wandering everywhere. We figured that, even if both the receptionist and all the leaflets on the place were exaggerating a bit, we'd still be able to enjoy a quiet afternoon in a cafe by a pond feeding the swans - so we set off at mid-morning in the direction of the edge of town, following the rather simple directions we had been given by the hostel. One of the advantages of being in a city built on the block system is that there's never any difficulty finding anywhere - a couple of turns along tree lined avenues and we were already heading out of town along the West Tamar Highway towards a bridge over the South Esk River which was apparently where we would find the foot entrance to Cataract Gorge. En route, as we had all day, we took a brief detour to check out the shops at the Brisbane Street Mall, which turned out to be every bit as laid back as every other Mall we'd been in the country - a section of Brisbane Street has simply been pedestrianised, and a large chunk of it is covered in a rainproof shelter so that people can get from one side of the street to the other without getting wet but while also not having to say that they've gone inside out of the fresh air. Both sides of the street are covered in wide verandahs covering the entrances to all the shops, so you can walk up and down the mall all day without ever having to encounter the weather at all. Pedestrian Malls in Australia are not the bustling places we have back home, with thousands of people barging each other out of the way and throwing empty crisp packets and cigarette butts all over the floor. Instead, they usually give the impression of being quiet side streets, the road often being cobbled or covered in crazy paving, benches placed at regular intervals so that nobody has to feel as though they have too far to walk before they can have a rest with their heavy shopping bags. They are also nearly always spotlessly clean - perhaps there's some sort of government scheme whereby a crack squad of marksmen are perched on top of every building waiting to pick off anyone who drops a crumb. It is also not at all unusual to find permanent booths stuck into the middle of the pavement selling cakes or newspapers or snacks to people wandering through, or little street cafes plonked down literally right in the middle of the street with chairs just hap-hazardly scattered around at tables with beach umbrellas sticking out of the middle of them. I strongly suspect that the Australian Mall is the hub of life for most Australian city folk, who probably spend much of their time sitting on a plastic chair reading the newspaper and munching on a Melting Moment while people stroll by on all sides. The illusion that these places are quiet compared to shopping streets back home is probably caused by the fact that, at any one time, a large percentage of visitors are either sitting at a cafe or inside a shop - there doesn't seem to be any of the manic racing around from one place to another in crowds which defines the British shopping experience.

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.