We then set out towards Hobart.

Descending into Queenstown it was an industrial landscape and shanty style housing. Queenstown looked as if it had been quite swish in the past but was shabby now. Very different to Queenstown in NZ.

The road out of Queenstown hairpinned up through hillsides which had been stripped bare of trees to fuel the blast furnaces in the past, then blackened by fire and the topsoil scoured by rain. Gold, silver and copper have been mined here for more than a century, yielding more than $4 billion worth of ore. It was pouring with rain and water was rushing down the rock faces and making waterfalls. As we got higher there were some trees. It was a landscape like no other we had ever seen and went on for a very long way.