Travel

Apple Island Holiday.

IT is essential in Australia to-day, as in all other countries, to plan holi days as far ahead as possible. Many Australians, who in more normal times would go abroad, now see their own country first. This puts a great strain on available tourist facilities. Generally it can be said that their path of migration is north in Winter and south in Sum mer. As few Island visitors are likely to be interested in a holiday on a palm fringed island in the Barrier Reef, they should concentrate on southern holiday resorts —Victoria and to a greater extent, Tasmania.

In the summer months, Tasmania probably receives more tourists than any other Australian State and, indeed, a great deal of its revenue comes from the tourist trade. But Tasmanians are ex ceedingly prosperous and passionately devoted to the 40-hour-week. Their gen eral attitude to visitors, therefore, is that of sufferance. If you want a holiday in Tasmania next summer, you will need to begin to think about it now. No one in the apple isle is likely to put them

selves out for you if you leave it until the last moment.

Tasmania is a land of mountains and rich, fertile river valleys. In the centre, of the heart-shaped island, at an eleva

tion of about 4,000 feet is the Great Lake, from which hydro-electricity is generated and reticulated to all parts of the State, providing cheap industrial

power which has encouraged some of the largest manufacturing establishments in the Commonwealth to make Tasmania their headquarters.

The two main cities are Launceston in the north (population about 37,000) and Hobart, the capital, in the south, with about twice as many people. Both are prosperous, wealthy, well-built and laid out, and have an air of pride about them found in few mainland cities of the same size. Both have excellent hotels —and some bad ones, which are a trap for un wary tourists.

Outside of Launceston and Hobart, however, the hotel accommodation is at best third-rate, and in many instances frightful. This should not, however, de ter the tourist. Tasmania is a small island and scarcely any part of it is out of reach of a day’s journey from either Launceston or Hobart. The Great Lake, for example, is within three hours’ drive of Launceston, and there on the hottest

summer day one may enjoy bone-freez ing weather. There are chalets and caoins on the Lake, which is the Mecca of local and overseas trout fishermen, Tasmanians treat their railways as a joke, and practically all travelling is done oy service-car or coach, of which there literally are thousands, running to all points and linking every part of the island. The distance between Launceston and Hobart is about 120 miles by the mam highway, and this is accomplished by service car in a few hours.

CONDUCTED tours of the island are virtually in the control of Pioneer Tours, a subsidiary company of Ansett Airways, but because of the country ac commodation (already mentioned) con ducted tours of this type are best left alone. The tourist is recommended to make Launceston and Hobart his head quarters and arrange his sightseeing from those points.

In the summer Tasmania is certainly the most attractive place in the Com monwealth, and the food is uniformly excellent. You may wallow in apples, raspberries, the largest strawberries this side of Devonshire, gooseberries, and any variety of currant you fancy. There is cream and butter galore, in spite of rationing; fish, with a flavour not known in northern waters, and crayfish is as common as shark in the rest of Aus tralia. Beer is better and more plentiful on the island than anywhere else in the Commonwealth.

The country is beautiful in the way New Zealand and Southern England are beautiful —but with an Australian flav our; and finally, one is confronted around every bend of the road with history of the very earliest days of British colon isation of the antipodes.

Island visitors to Australia, who only Sydney know, should think well about a visit to the island State. There is some thing there for everyone; the student of history, the seeker of peace and beauty or of health; the tropically-pale child; those who like good food; and —the beer connoisseur.