The same size as Ireland, and subject to the same foul weather, Tasmania was (and still is) the closest thing to Britain on the south side of the equator. Its capital city, Hobart, is almost as old as Sydney and the landscape is dotted with buildings and ruins dating back to colonial times. The rugged coastlines are dark and stormy in winter and pristine in summer, while the heart of the Island is World Heritage listed rainforest of epic proportions.
Hobart was Australia's second city and its proud colonial history has produced some absolutely gorgeous architecture. Hobart is about the same distance from the equator as Boston, or The south of France, so by Australian standards, it's bitterly cold in Winter and fairly mild in Summer (although nowhere near as cold as Boston, or as warm as the Mediterranean). Hobart has all the conveniences you'd expect from a major Australian city, but if you head out of town you'll quickly find yourself in the wilderness.
Built in 1833 to house convicts who had re-offended after being transported to Australia, Port Arthur was the world's toughest, most remote prison for a brief, but tumultuous four decades. The settlement was built with convict labour and the sandstone-hewn buildings are both serenely beautiful and depressively haunting. It has been a popular, and worthy tourist attraction almost since the last prisoner was shipped out, although its dark past was further tainted in 1996 when a lone gunman shot and killed 35 people in and around the grounds in Australia's worst-ever mass-murder.
Desolate, and awe-inspiringly beautiful, the Tasmanian west coast is unlike anywhere else in Australia (or the world for that matter). It's the only place where you'll find snow and surf sharing the same horizon with wild rivers rushing through eucalypt rainforests to meet magnificent, seaside gorges. Quaint logging and mining towns dot the backroads and you're never, ever going to be caught in traffic. In fact you might not even see another car for hours. Jump in a boat and head due west and you won't make landfall until you reach South America, roughly 18,000km away. As you can imagine, the air is rather fresh and the waves can be gigantic (Shipstern Bluff was voted the heaviest wave in the world by Surfing Magazine).
Buffeted by the wild winds of Bass Straight, the northern coastline of Tasmania is populated by a string of logging, mining, farming and fishing communities, stuck in a time-warp circa March, 1986. It's certainly not the shopping or culture capital of the Southern Hemisphere, but what it lacks in sophistication, it more than makes up for in charm.
A pristine stretch of hidden bays, deserted beaches, ancient forests and freezing, crystal clear water, Tasmania's east Coast is a nature-lovers paradise. Don't dream of going swimming in winter, but in the summertime, you'd be hard pressed to find a better place to get your toes wet. The coast is protected from Pacific swells by New Zealand (1600km to the east) so the weather is a lot more predictable than the wild west coast.
The largest un-tamed wilderness area this side of the Amazon, Tasmania's wilderness is every bit as unforgiving and awe-inspiring as Australia's mainland deserts. When they're not shrouded in fog, or blanketed in snow, the mountain forests that make up most of Tasmania's interior are about as beautiful as it's possible for an earthly landscape to be. You don't get World Heritage Status for being average.
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