A reasonably early departure from St Helens to make our way to Launceston. As per usual our travel day is also one of exploration with plenty of stops along the way. Our first stop today was St Columbia Falls near Pyengena, a short walk through the rainforest to the viewing platform - once again, we had this all to ourselves. On the way back we stopped off for coffee and cheese tasting at the Pyengena diary company and of course had to buy some strong & cr...

We continued our journey along the Great Eastern Drive which was only about 80km from Bicheno, but still took us 6 hours with the stops along the way. The first stop was Douglas-Aspley National Park, 7km off the main road down a gravel track, where we were going to do a short walk through the forest to a waterhole. However, when we got out of the car we were attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes, so decided to give it a miss. The drive along the coast was pic...

After our substantial breakfast we set off to Bicheno on the east coast - part of the Great Eastern Drive. This should have been a 3- hour drive but obviously we had stops on the way. As our accommodation was self-catering we did some grocery shopping en-route. Had a picnic at a lovely deserted cove called Spiky Beach, stopped at a vineyard called Devil's Corner where we actually had coffee and not wine! The vineyard had an amazing view from their lookout o...

Time to leave Hobart and start our anti-clockwise circumnavigation of Tasmania which is 2/3rds the size of England and with a total population of only 500,000. We left at 08.30am heading for Port Arthur, a former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula. A journey of only 100km ……. However, this took us over 5 hours, not due to traffic or road conditions but Heather wanting to stop and see everything on the way, and there was a lot to see along the P...

We stayed near the airport the night before as we were up at 4.30am for our flight to Hobart. We were flying with Jetstar - worse than Ryanair as only 7kg of luggage (for 2 weeks)! Arrived on time though and picked up our hire car and off we went for our 16-day tour circuiting Tasmania. Bit of history - Tasmania was originally called Van Diemen's Land. First European to land there was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642 and he named it after the Govern...