Our flight from Hobart to Melbourne was timetabled at 85 minutes. In 1835 the men who founded Melbourne took weeks to cross the same strait from Tasmania, and Hobart itself had been founded by people who tried Port Phillip first. A last morning on Sullivans Cove, a flight, and an evening in streets named after Hobart men.
In ten years gold turned Melbourne from a town of 29,000 into a city of 123,000, and the city spent the money on things meant to last. Shirley's last day runs through three of them, a market, a gallery and a tower kept under glass.
Twelve places to drop into from a hotel in the middle of Melbourne, Tuesday evening to Thursday. What's open on which day, how long to allow, what it costs, and how to get there on the free trams.
Don't rush Hobart from one must-see to the next. Stay somewhere central and dip into these places whenever there's a gap, on foot or on Tasmania's fare-free buses. What's on which day, where to go in the rain, what's free and what needs booking.
Mawson sailed from here in 1911. Amundsen cabled the news of the South Pole from here in 1912. The orange icebreaker still calls Hobart home. A free day on foot in the last city before Antarctica.
Skiddaw, Table Mountain, Mount Wellington, kunanyi. Every name tells you who was looking. The mountain above Hobart has kept all four, makes the city's weather, and still starts arguments.
Twice, Hobart has cut into a cliff to build what paid its way. In the 1830s convicts quarried sandstone for whale-oil warehouses. In 2011 a gambler dug a museum into the rock. A Saturday at both, joined by the river.
The prettiest name on the east coast has an ugly origin. A day down the Midlands and along the coast, with a convict bridge at each end, to a bay named, the story goes, for the colour of whale blood.
Explorers, settlers, ships' pilots and news all came up this river. A slow day along both banks, from the wetlands to the oldest pilot station in Australia, and home on the water, up Cataract Gorge.
Alternative version, if you have energy. A bay named for fires that belonged to the people already living there, a waterfall named by an Irish exile, a Chinese temple that moved to Launceston, and a dam that broke on the night of the great flood. One loop of road through the north-east.
An Austrian botanist stood on a Tasmanian summit in 1910 and said a sentence. Everything you see at Dove Lake today follows from it.
Two reclining seats across Bass Strait overnight. What it costs, what the ship is actually like, and why we'd do it again — differently.
Off the coach at one o'clock, and by half past two you can be standing in a 140-million-year-old gorge. An afternoon plan for Launceston, in the order that saves you two kilometres of walking.
The ferry docks at six and the bus leaves at 11:25. What to do with four hours in Devonport, all your luggage, and no sleep.
A last day in Geelong before the overnight ferry to Tasmania — six stops on one street, and the story at each of them.