TASMANIAN
Tasmania, Australia's smallest and most southerly State, 240 km off the south-eastern corner, separated from the mainland by Bass Strait. It is an island about the size of Scotland. Tasmania has a dramatically different landscape than the mainland, there is no arid Outback here.
It is an island of contrasts: from rugged mountainous wilderness, with lakes, waterfalls and steeply falling rivers to rolling hills and deserted beaches and unspoiled, natural beauty of national parks and world heritage areas and with some of the cleanest waterways and air on earth. Hop fields with rows of tall poplars, apple and pear orchards, rich pastoral plains, great mining complexes, wonderful trout fishing.
Despite tremendous development and industrial expansion, the island still retains much of the beauty and charm of its original colonial architecture, charming villages, old coach houses and roadside inns. Many of the early buildings constructed of solid freestone still stand today, blending with more modern structures of steel and concrete, but the old world atmosphere still pervades the cities.