Consider a place about the size of Wales with Whitby as its capital city, and you have Tasmania pretty much down to a tee. It has lovely landscapes...very reminisent of the North Yorkshire Moors; small seaside towns with great fish and chips and a huge Cadburys Chocolate factory (ok, so Yorkshire doesn't have a Cadburys chocolate factory but apart from that its pretty close!)
>York's chocolate heritage Sadly I didn't have much time to explore Tasmania and I really only got to see its capital, Hobart (the spitting image of Whitby and just as good fish and chips, even if it is flake and chips instead of haddock and chips!) Set to the south of Tasmania, Hobart really isn't very Australian. There are no cool surfer-types, a few beaches and a distinct lack of the usual bronzed bodies, but this is why it is so nice - because it's different, and perhaps yes - because it reminds me of home and all those summer holidays spent in Whitby, Scarborough and Levisham (which compared to some of Tasmania's villages would be quite big!) Something that can adequately display the size of Hobart is that it's a state capital like Sydney, Melbourne and Perth but unlike these places you have to get your own luggage off the golf cart from the plane. There's no luggage carousel, no standing around and waiting to spot your backpack, no none of that, just a big scrum - the kind you get in Rugby Union where no one has any idea where the ball is and eventully you come out with your bag or what you hope is your bag. And then you move on to find some transport to the city (the airport is conviently located miles out of the city) and you find that there is only one company taking people to Hobart accomodation (unless you want to get robbed 30 dollars - £20 for a taxi... I think not; as a backpacker I'm watching purse strings!) So eventually you get to your accommodation and this is where you really start to come out of the bewilderment of your arrival and realise that this is what makes Tasmania attractive, the fact that not many people go there - it's not built for tourists but it copes with them and hasn't changed for them. That is why Tasmania is nice, even if I didn't make it to the Cadbury chocolate factory tour because they only run one a day and you have to book weeks in advance (pre-planning is obviously something I need to learn more about!) So from Tasmania it's back to work in Queensland. Stepping off the plane to 30 degree heat was pleasant until I realised that 20 degrees had felt cold, and soon I'll be returning home where it's freezing and snowing. I think I'll have to get my mum to bring a coat and some woolly socks with her to the airport when she picks me up!
Still, I've a while left before then... Claire Could you be a student diarist?
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