Tassie profile

You may not know too much about Tasmania (affectionately referred to as Tassie) and I welcome any excuse to pretend I'm a geography teacher, so here goes. An intro to Tassie.

Tasmania lies off the southeastern coast of the Australian mainland. If you need a comparison for size, its closest to West Virginia, 41st in total area (oh hey Alexa). But population-wise, it barely rivals Wyoming, our least populated state. DC even beats Tasmania, at roughly 600,000 residents. That was a bit of a shock for me to realize.

I've learned that there is a pretty strong division between the north and south of the island. Steve (the dad in the house) informed me that this partisanship can manifest itself in serious loyalty to regional beer - northerners will only drink Boag's, southerners Cascade (I've tried the former - not half bad). Steve also tried to liken the north/south dichotomy to that of the States, but I'm not sure I can envision people forswearing Jack Daniels or Sam Adams merely based on regionalism... but I'd love to be proven wrong if you've encountered this!

The weather here is interesting - it really does change at a moment's notice. Since we are about 45 min south of Hobart, overlooking Bruny Island, we get winds coming down around the southern tip of Tassie that makes the weather rather mercurial. Today, it is actually rather nice. I was fine working outside with just a long-sleeved shirt and leggings (and the necessary Wellingtons, of course).  I'd guess its about 65 degrees outside - not bad in the sun though, since the ozone is practically nonexistent here.  They say that a 15C day here feels like a 21C day in Sydney. Hopefully I wont get the sunburns to prove that saying's validity...

Well, I'll get back to this as I pick up more local knowledge about the geography down here!