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Tasmania - not the first place on anyone's list I would guess when visiting Australia. But I went and it was amazing - the best scenery I have seen yet!
I hired a car for 7 days and drove from Hobart to Hobart completing a lap of the island state. Highlights were Cradle Mountain & Dove Lake and Wineglass Bay. Cradle Mountain is spectacular as you can see from the picture. Dove Lake sits in front and provides an awesome foreground to the mountain. You can actually do a day's hike up it, but I just walked around the lake a bit - still good though. Wineglass Bay is on the east coast and is amazing. There is a hike to the viewpoint which looks out over the bay with the beach a perfect curve with incredible white sand. I walked down and went swimming in the sea and whilst cold it was a good swim.
Whilst those two views/places were the highlight, Tasmania has so much great scenery to offer. Every drive I took was through a different type - from rugged coastline, to flat plains and from wild forests to mountains!
Port Arthur is the number 1 tourist attraction on the island and was a good day trip. It is an old penintentiary and while most of the buildings no longer exist, there are enough still standing so that you can get a good idea of what it must have been like to be put there.
Hobart, the state capital, is another nice city. It is built around sailing and everywhere you go there is another harbour full of all shapes and sized boats and yachts. Salamancia place was also nice - there is a market on a Saturday and whilst I wasn't there for one, there are still cafe's and little shops and things.
So even though it's a little out of the way and not wholly appealing to everybody, I enjoyed it. The scenery is just supberb.
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