Tasmania at last!

I am in Tasmania! It was so lovely to be met at the airport by Jon and Lisa. I was so excited! They live in a gorgeous colonial style area of Hobart called Battery Point. It's so pretty. That sounds like a very boring way to describe it, but it is very pretty. It reminds me of the old 'Murder she wrote' series - Cabbot Cove; clapboard houses painted pastel colours with porches out the front surrounded by roses and white picket fences. Really! It's very Victorian and is set on a hill above the harbour!

We had a brief trip around the bottom part of town, where Jon and Lisa showed me all of the lovely little food shops. I am especially looking forward to going back to the one that sells tea and chocolate. Oh yes! We then stopped off at a fab little shabby pub that sold pale alcholic ginger beer in old fashioned handled pint glasses. The ones with bobbly bits. The inside of the pub housed some very interesting art work by a local artist.

It seems very strange being in a busy town now. Although, it's not so busy that you have to wait to cross the road. In Battery Point, if you wanted to play 'chicken', you'd have to actually wait a while for a car!


It's nice to see the mountains again. After leaving Kaikura on Monday, the trans coastal train travelled through the Canterbury plains to Christchurch. The rain meant that the scenery along the coast was slightly obscured, but once we had passed through the Conwy valley and over the Conwy river (home from home!), it brightened up a bit and we could view the last ofthe mountains before reaching the plains. There was a commentary available through headphones, that I imagine explained a lot about what we could see and who founded the lands. However, as mine kept cutting off I gave up.

We also passed over the Wyeo River, which I at first thought was man made. It consisted of a vast expanse of gravel broken up by small streams meandering across the river bed. This is apparently a braided river