Our first port of call upon reaching Tasmania was of course Australia's oldest brewery, the Cascades in South Hobart.

(Yes, I know that if you're in my Tasmania gallery I'm repeating myself. But the commentary on this image was originally in my PAD gallery.)

Actually I don't drink. And my significant other does so sparingly. So we weren't "here for the beer", but there is plenty of it to be sampled in the brewery's visitors' centre / café which is set in a beautiful garden and does a damn fine steak. Not to mention a beer damper.

We had another reason for being here, specifically an interactive piece of theatre known as Louisa's Walk. Two actors take you on a journey which begins at the Brewery (playing the part of 1840's London) and takes you down to the remains of the Female Factory, a female prison and alleged reformatory (really a hell hole) where women convicts were sent when transported to Van Diemen's Land, as Tasmania was then known. It tells the tale of an actual convict who made the voyage, and the vicissitudes of her life; from Irish farmer's wife and mother, to starving widow, to convict, to virtual slave, to… well, I won't spoil the ending.