Blogs from Maria Island, Tasmania, Australia, Oceania

A very dear friend of mine, God rest his soul, used to maintain that you should always pick the second cheapest wine. The cheapest on the menu would almost certainly be something pretty foul, as any complaint could be rebuffed by simply pointing to the price. From there on up, though, you may as well save your pennies; most folk aren’t exactly connoisseurs and struggle to tell the difference between a decent basic tipple and one ten times the price, so best just plump for the next cab off the rank. My own new policy for holidays is a similar idea in reverse; you should always pick the second best attractions. The real headline acts become victims of their own success, rapidly succumbing to the three ‘O’s; overbooking, overcrowding and overpricing, leaving them mostly overrated. Almost ... read more

My last place to visit in Tasmania was Maria Island, about an hour north of Hobart. It was named by good old Abel Tasman in 1642 after Maria van Diemen, wife of the Governor of Batavia (that's Java to us modern folk). Van Diemen himself had already had the whole rest of Tasmania named after him, as Van Diemen's Land. A few hundred years of Australian accents have changed the pronunciation though, so now the island is called Ma-rye-a Island rather than Ma-ree-a Island. Like the rest of Australia, Maria Island started out being used as a convict settlement but it was so easy to escape from that it was abandoned as such after only seven years! More recently it has become sort of a lifeboat for threatened Tasmanian wildlife, with several species being introduced here ... read more