Off to Hobart town.

Such a restless night - some piratey character was trying to hurt us and I woke just as he was about to cut my throat!!!! Too many convict ruins me thinks!
The trip from Strachan to Queenstown was pleasant, a little windy, but nothing compared to the Gillies Highway at home. Queenstown a very typical mining town, the landscape going out of town toward Hobart was like being on another planet, very bare orange mountains very much affected by the mining practices in this area, this is called 'Victoria Pass'. Very sad to see the damage done to the environment, and we now understand all the devestation to the King River we saw yesterday. This scenery lasted almost until we reached the 'Gordon-franklin National Park' - beautiful rainforrest through here. We stopped at Derwent Bridge at the 'Happy Wombat' cafe for smoko - delicious citrus tart and coffee. It is very windy and so cold. There are some very nice log cabins here - maybe another time. Lake 'King William' is huge and there are lots of tiny mining towns, no pride in gardens or vegies growing here, and a huge Hydro Power station beside the main road. We reached Hamilton just in time for lunch

Pub in Hamilton where we had lunch.

Pubs earlier photo on wall in pub.

Hamilton around 1830.

Heritage centre building in main street.

Tiny church and graveyard.

Country side around this district, seems to be a lot of sheep. Back on the road through Gretna and New Norfolk which is the outer suburbs of Hobart. Thank god for 'Noah'
wouldn't have found our way to the 'Rydges' hotel without him. Our accomodation is very roomy and quiet with a lovely outlook over the North Hobart AFL ground, and in the distance, Hobart CBD - our only criticism being that the tiny kitchen did not have a m/wave, just a plug in hot plate, but we managed over the three days spent there.
Jus went off on her own to find a supermarket to get some food to last the next few days, didn't realise how far it was on foot, was pretty ******** when she returned, but I think a bit of time out was in order.
Saturday morning we had a leisurely brekky and then off in a Taxi to the 'Salamanca Markets', very glad we didn't attempt to drive there, so many cars and people. The markets were huge, probably about 500 metres in length and four lines of stalls - everything you could imagine for sale - we wished this was our first day in Tassie so we could have brought the beautiful fruit and veg, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and all sorts of lucious stuff. We had freshly made pancakes stuffed with spinach and ricotta and a fresh donut for dessert - ****** the diet!!! We brought pressies for the boys and beads and earings and I got some scarves. The stalls with hand carved wooden things were everywhere, Jus brought some lovely things, it will be interesting getting them into our bags for our return trip. When we returned from the market we had 'free view' of the footy match in the oval nextdoor.

Pic of houses taken from our unit window, very typical of older houses in Hobart, the other pic our view of the CBD.
We had a relaxing afternoon playing UNO with Josh, then off to bed as we have a very early start tomorrow on our "BIG ADVENTURE".
Till then.