A POM's reaction to Tasmania and its people | OPINION

I had the pleasure of the company of my brother-in-law POM Dave for a couple of weeks.

He grew up in East London and still lives there, so Tasmania was a very different environment for him. It's not so for me as I grew up in the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire.

Our Unit, 2/Leven Villas, is on the bank of the Leven River and separates we in West Ulverstone from those in the main metropolis, which is a 15-minute walk across the bridge.

There are six rivers in the North-West flowing north/south; the Montagu near Smithton; the Flowerdale more towards Wynyard; the Blyth near Burnie; the Leven as mentioned; the Forth (through Forth); and the Mersey which flows through Devonport.

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Given that we overlook the Leven, the obvious choice for a tourist trip was one which led to its origin, which is (surprise surprise) in the Leven Canyon.

It's about 40km from where I'm sitting so it's a pleasant fairly-short round trip.

Short if you're a crow and flying straight there, but much longer if you're driving.

Some years ago, I drove a West Australian colleague down there - afterwards, he commented: "When God was creating the world, she was very tired by the time she got around to creating Tasmania and was cutting back on her ironing - if Tasmania was ironed out flat, it would be bigger than Western Australia."

DAVE agreed with that but enjoyed the ride, gently swirling down through state forests of eucalypts, some of which are a thousand years old, negotiating the odd hair-pin bend.

There was virtually no other traffic, which made it even more enjoyable.

Leven Canyon is spectacular. There's a short walk from the carpark to a lookout about a 100m right above the source of the river.

Dave could see this and hear the roar of the water as it spewed out of the mountain. As he had been saying on and off on the journey down: "Wow."

In all fairness to the rest of Tasmania, Dave's reaction was based on his experiences in the North-West, but there's a limit to what you can see in a couple of weeks.

THAT was seeing Tasmanian geography, but I wanted him to see Tasmanian people.

That was easily done by us walking together each morning into the metropolis.

Everyone, and I say everyone, smiled and said "'g'day ". It was the same at the newsagents, and at the check-out in the supermarket.

This really impressed Dave; this never happened in London. Once or twice I told them that Dave was from London and that opened the floodgates.

I told him that I usually leaned on the parapet of the bridge when I was walking to catch my breath and this always sparked, "are you okay?" from passersby.

I could go on, but Anthony Trollope summed it up nicely many years ago:

"It is acknowledged even by all the rival colonies that Tasmania is the prettiest... everything in Tasmania is more English than is England herself."