I search for history on the Hobart-Launceston road and find it in plenty, discover a beachless Brighton, walk through an appleland and tell of a trouble-making pioneer.

Very early one April morning I turned my back on Hobart and began a journey originally intended to be of 121 miles, but which ended by exceeding 1,400. It was between the G.P.O. and Augusta Road that this book was born, for as I trudged up Elizabeth Street, I reflected that although an observant globe-trotter had declared of Tasmania that he had "seen no country of the British Empire that was such a panorama of beauties", the few books that had been written about the island had by no means exhausted the subject. Another traveller (Mr George Mendell) had included Tasmania as one of the four most lovely islands of the world, but no Stevenson, no Belloc, no H. V. Morton had as yet wandered this way. Though Anthony Trollope travelled here in 1872, Tasmania still awaits "discovery".
So, as I started out to walk the historic road between Hobart and Launceston and to note whatever information came to my ken, I decided to continue my adventures into the trackless regions of the interior, to sleep at hotels where there were any, in haystacks, hollow logs, or bush- men's camps where there were none; and then, if my pilgrimage found me still alive, I'd enter upon what might be a still harder quest--the quest for a publisher. And so, realizing that I was turning my holiday into a task, I entered the last suburban stationer's shop and purchased as many notebooks as my swag would hold. This book is the substance of what I set down in them.
Were I judge of a contest in Tasmania at which the twelve months of the year were competitors I should always give April the prize. The days are as near perfection as mortal could wish, with a tang in the mornings and evenings to give a contrast with the grateful warmth of noonday; and there are those gorgeous colourings with which autumn splashes this island that is just a warmer England. I am always sorry that the bulk of the tourists do not see Tasmania with her party dress on. They cannot be blamed, of course, for flocking across in January and February to enjoy the pleasure of summer temperatures from fifteen to twenty degrees lower than their mainland homes; but they have not seen Tasmania in her most gracious mood till they have visited her in April. I was truly sorry for those thousands of visitors who had scorned home too soon, as I journeyed on to experience three weeks of perfect weather. I cannot say that I shook the dust of the city off my feet, firstly because there is very little dust at any time in Hobart, and secondly because whatever specks there might have been were well and truly laid by the heavy autumn dew.
Near the top of "Lord's Hill" I waved a goodbye to Hobart. I knew that the main road is now a street of houses for many miles, and I remembered the sentence in the first issue of Ross's Almanac, a quarter of a century after the foundation of the city, remarking on the wonderful growth of the town, and recording that the furthermost cottage on the left "is the elegant little cottage of Mr Emmett". It was opposite this house, where my father and grandfather had lived, that I turned to wave goodbye. I could not see any name on the gate, but the original name was Beaulieu-pronounced "Bewley"-named after the abbey in Hampshire. Adjoining this "elegant little cottage" there had been Providence Valley, the hop plantation of Mr Shoobridge. No other notable building then existed till Mr Lepine's public house The Rose was reached, after the crossing of the New Town rivulet. St John's Church, now regarded as old, had not then come into the picture. A hundred years has moved the "last house on the left" nearly twelve miles along the road.
New Town is the first suburb, and as it was born on 7 January 1885, there is now nothing very new about it. Perhaps on the occasion of its second centenary a re- christening will be part of the ceremony, for the name is now about as apt as that of Forest, near Stanley, where the trees have long since disappeared.
Looking back from St John's Avenue I came to the conclusion that Hobart is exactly the right size. Green paddocks divide house allotments, virgin bush is little more than ten minutes away, hawthorn hedges border enticing lanes, and picnic spots abound by creek banks. Hobart is at once country and city-the happy medium. Doubling the population might reduce the taxes, but a big city swallows up the beauty. Of course, where Hobart is pre-eminent is in its hills and mountains. Every ten minutes there is a view, for there is not a road that hasn't learned to climb.
I wonder why people take more interest in buildings than in roads. If you wanted to find out all about Government House, or Parliament House, or the G.P.O., you would get it all duly set forth, with dates and coats and other particulars. The Hobart-Launceston road has a history much more absorbing than that of any mere building, yet it may almost be taken for granted that that history has never been written; its humours and tragedies have been blown away in the dust of the highway and nobody knows how many millions have been expended on its construction, its upkeep, its deviations and general repairs. The map conveys about as much concerning it as the directory does about the inmates of the numbered dwellings. Of its entire length possibly not one half now follows the original route surveyed by James Meehan in 1812.

Chapter 1 continued