Tasmania is a lot greener than South Australia and Victoria although the grass is still quite brown in places. We left Melbourne in the hope of escaping the heatwave and it's true it didn't reach 45 degrees in Tasmania like in Adelaide and Melbourne but we still had 38-40 degrees a couple of days. Tasmania is more mountainous than the parts of the mainland that we have seen so far, and there is some water flowing in their rivers, it seemed more similar to New Zealand than mainland Australia.

We spent some time in Hobart before visiting Mount Field National Park and taking some walks out to Russell falls and Horseshoe falls. We spent the night in New Norfolk, visiting Something Wild Wildlife sanctuary to see some Tasmanian Devils the next morning. From a distance we also saw a Platypus in the river. We stayed the next night in Tullah before going to Cradle Mountain National Park and doing a walk around Dove Lake at the foot of Cradle Mountain, it was very scenic there. We drove out to Stanley on the north west coast that night for a meal. It's a very quaint little place built at the foot of a large rocky promontory known as 'The Nut'. We spent that night in Wynyard and drove along the north coast the next day stopping in Burnie, Devonport and Launceston briefly before making our way to Ringarooma in the north east of Tasmania. On the way there we stopped off at some public toilets on the side of the road and saw the biggest spider we have ever seen up in the roof! We stayed in Ringarooma for the weekend with the Heyes family, Peter, Ruth, Michael, Richard, Rosie and Sam. Richards girlfriend Dimitra Galerakis was also there from Greece. They live on a farm and they grow potatoes and opium poppies - for morphine not the illegal type! We had a great time with them all there. On Sunday afternoon Michael, Richard and Dimitra took us out to Ralph falls for a walk with Lincoln Champion and Ben Ritson and his family who are some of their other friends.

The following days in Tasmania were a lot cooler, and the temperature dropped to about 15-17 degrees. We also had some rain and in comparison to the previous days it seemed very cold. Unfortunately visibility was also very poor so after staying the night in Bicheno near Freycinet National park we abandoned the idea of taking the walk out over the mountain to Wineglass Bay as we would probably have seen very little. As we made our way south it brightened a little and we made our way to the Tasman Peninsula, we went out to some lookout points over places of interest but rain threatened again so we found a place to stay in Eaglehawk Neck for the night. We passed through a place called Doo Town and all the places there have the word Doo in their house names. We saw 'Luv Me Doo', 'We Doo', 'Sheil Doo', 'Much A Doo', 'Digere Doo' and many more!