We travelled north from Freycinet to Launceston. The terrain varied from ocean vistas to mountainous passes. Tasmanian roads are...........narrow and twisty, and require your complete attention to keep from being a statistic. After several days of driving on these roads I have developed some rules of thumb concerning speed. Generally in Australia, take the safe travel speed and add 50% and that will be the posted speed. It's interesting to note that today on several of the mountain roads the posted speed was 100km/hr, with many corners and curves posted at 25 km/hr........who the hell does that make sense too? Only 5% of the road is safe at 100km/hr and the balance is safe at 25km/hr so lets post it at 100km/hr. The challenging part is the the average Aussie thinks the posted speed is the minimum suggested speed. Now these roads are twisty, that's one issue, but the real challenge is that they are extremely narrow, like 20ft wide with no shoulders, none. You go from black top to 15 ft circumference gum trees that look very substantial as they wizz by at my suggested speed of 51 km/hr. The road scape is regularly punctuated with dead marsupials, wombats, kangaroos, possums and other unrecognizable dead stuff. So much for my driving trauma. We arrived in Launceston mid afternoon and checked into the Charles hotel with no reservations (this is the first time we winged it without reservations......I was nervous). The hotel turned out to be great. We made reservations at a local restaurant and set out to explore the town on foot and end up at the restaurant for dinner. Launceston is the second oldest city in Australia. The current population is just over 100,000 people so it is on the small side, however......The city centre was all developed and build before 1850 and all these buildings have been preserved and are in use today. It's almost like a living museum, the entire central business district consists of two and three story grand old buildings which are generally in immaculate shape. In our exploration we stumbled upon a walk along a river in a granite lined gorge. Absolutely stunning. We ended up at the restaurant and had a superb meal in a converted flour mill at the harbours edge. All fresh produce, fish, meat and wines from the local area in Tasmania...... Oh and we finished the meal off with a local single malt. Launceston is the gem of Tasmania......it's like a living museum of architecture with super foodies manning the restaurants......what else could you ask for?