Hello everyone to our final journal entry, I know its very late and long overdue and you guys are looking forward to askin us all sorts of questions about our travels. Missing the good old creature comforts and certain foods - like pork sausages!!

We arrived in Hobart airport after a very windy day in Sydney and were quite surprised by how cold it was. Even though it was 17 degrees it felt like it was about 7! The sun was out though so this made up for it.

We headed straight to our cosy cabin in Hobart as we had arrived quite late in the day and pretty much went straight to sleep. The cabin was basically a luxurious caravan and it was more than nice seeing as we had been slumming it in a crap hostel for the past week! After a good nights sleep we were again off exploring, this time around the city of Hobart. This is the capital city of Tasmania and probably the busiest and most populated. Our first stop was to go and see some waterfalls in the national park, after a short walk through the tassy rainforest we were treated by one of the highest waterfalls in the southern hemisphere, the water falls down four cliffs before finally splashing down onto the final level, these falls were Russell Falls. From here we headed further along the rainforest to see Horseshoe falls, these falls were probably not as dramatic but equally as effective, its almost a twin fall scenario where the water flows from both sides.

After our national park walk we headed for the city centre itself. There were plenty of sites to see from the national memorial site, which not only dedicates love and memories to the people of world war 1 and 2 but to the Vietnam war and the gulf wars and the many holy wars of the middle east, to the busy market street of salamanca avenue.

After a few hours exploring we headed back to the cabin, another city off the list!! The following day we headed north up the coast stopping a few times on the way to admire some of the gorgeous views that Tasmania boasts. The road is basically a coastal drive so there were many good photo opportunities. We stopped off along the way at another national park, home of the beautiful wineglass bay. You've guessed it the water has eroded some of the land to form a wineglass shape!

After admiring the views here we continued our journey to St.Helens for another overnight stop in our second cosy cabin, this wasnt as nice as the one in Hobart but clean and warm so its all good. From St.Helens we ventured west to the second city of Tasmania, Launceston. This also has an airport and looking back we probably would have benefitted from flying out of here and staying a night as there are plenty of things to see and do here. In Launceston there is a beautiful river running through a valley called Cataract gorge, this is so called because when it was discovered, water running through a rock formation and cascading at the mouth was known as a cataract - its nothing to do with an eye disorder!

We headed back to the cabin for our final night in the north before going back towards the south to our final stopover - Port Arthur. We got up fairly early the next day and headed back the same way along the coast. We decided to stop off at a few of the places we had missed on the way up so we had a bit of time seeing the bay of fires. This particular bay is home of the beach voted no.2 in the world. We were quite surprised at this because its not really as impressive as some of the beaches in mainland australia - especially in fraser island and the Whitsundays. We also stopped off at another national park to view a waterhole at the bottom of a gorge. The waterhole here was a beautiful shade of bluey green and you could see the bottom of the water with ease.

We continued down the coast stopping at a few places along the way, nine mile beach is as the name suggests a very long streach of white sandy beach and we passed this on the drive. We finally arrived in Port Arthur and decided to go visit the centre. Little did we know that Port Arthur isnt exactly a town or city. It is just a historic site! Port Arthur is basicaly a tiny village where the first and worst convict colony was set up. Here they housed repeat offenders and particualrly nasty criminals. The actual site is apparently haunted by a small girl who comes around only at night, they do ghost tours here but both me and shell didnt particularly want nightmares on our last night so we decided against the idea!

We toured the grounds of Port Arthur and saw how convict life was for these people and they were hard times! Many of the criminals tried to escape some fleeing by boat out into the ocean and got nowhere, some fleed by land, there is only one way out of Port Arthur and that was was guarded by a wall. This wall was not an ordinary wall but a small family of attack dogs chained together with two towers either side of the chains with guards on top. The guards were notified by the dogs barking and would march the criminal back to the site. Not a bad idea hey! Some guy decided it would be wise to kill a kangaroo, skin it, wear its skin and try to escape past the dogs by hopping past them. Unfortunately for the criminal the guards decided this particular kangaroo was far too big and meaty to miss and decided to take aim - the criminal cried out don't shoot and was subsequently recaptured!

Our final day was a final coastal drvie back to Hobart stopping at Devils kitchen, the blowholes and a natural arch by Port Arthur. We took some snaps of the beautiful views from here before heading back to Hobart for our flight back to Sydney. One final day here before we head back to the warmth of England!!

Hope you have enjoyed reading our journals and viewing our pics guys, we have had the most amazing time and have been really glad that you have sent all of your wonderful messages, it did make us feel a lot less homesick to know you were thinking of us.

Take care all of you and we will definately catch up with you when we get back, love always x x x Danny & Shell x x x