Tasmania Day 1 - Launceston to Hobart

@forexbrokr and I left today for our 10 day Tasmania Trip. We got up far too early after far too little sleep and headed to the airport.

Goodbye Sydney!

Hello Tasmania!

Driving down the middle

We drove down the Midland Highway, stopping at whatever took our fancy.

The first town we stopped at was Campbell Town, which has some lovely old houses.

There was a small park next to the bridge out of town, where trees had been carved with animals and people.

Driving down the centre of the island, we noticed how much of Australia's early convict history was on display.

We stopped at Ross, and walked down to the Female Factory. Built in 1833, the building originally housed chain gangs who were working on the Ross Bridge. A chain gang was a group of inmates chained together to perform labour tasks.

After this, the building was converted to a female factory and operated between 1847 and 1854 as a solution for the female inmates sent to Australia.

The scenery from Ross was so picturesque -

We hopped back into the car and continued on the Midland Highway, coming to a stop at Lake Dulverton. @forexbrokr saw some black swans, but I only managed to catch the ducks!

We had a quick look at the Callington Mill, built in 1837. My quick research tells me that this mill has been restored, and is now the only working mill of it's type in our hemisphere.

Mount Wellington

Our first stop in Hobart was to see Mount Wellington, and to see the views from the top. Mount Wellington is 1271m above sea level, and can frequently be covered in snow. While the weather was quite crisp for us, it was a long way off snow.

The road to the top was quite narrow and winding (and made me extremely nervous!), though before we had even got to the top, the views were already quite promising -