II HOBART AND THE MIDLANDS 49 



match ' has become one of the chief national 

 sports at which the most skilled timber-men 

 assemble from all parts of the island to compete 

 with one another. In a ' chopping match ' blocks 

 of timber usually of about two feet diameter are 

 fixed to stumps, and the competitors, divided 

 into heats, have to cut through their blocks in 

 as short time as possible. 



Hobart is blessed by the possession, among 

 other things, of a considerable mountain, situated, 

 so to speak, in its back garden. Mount Wellington 

 is a real mountain, properly steep and stony and 

 intractable ; the coaching road to the Huon 

 passes over its southern shoulder, and from the 

 highest point on this road, where the Fern Tree 

 Hotel stands, a good road winds still further up 

 to the ' Springs ', and here, too, a small hotel, 

 rather after the style of a Swiss Chalet, has been 

 erected. From Hobart it is not more than two 

 hours' drive to the ' Springs ', situated about 

 three thousand feet above sea level. Making the 

 ' Springs ' my head quarters for about a month, 

 I rambled over the mountains in most directions, 

 and it was here that I made my first serious 

 acquaintance with the Tasmanian bush and some 

 of its wild inhabitants. The bush of Mount 

 Wellington, despite the devastations of fires and, 

 to a much less extent, of man, is by no means 

 contemptible ; in some of the gullies the Euca- 

 lyptus regnans attains as great a size here as 

 anywhere, and the undergrowth of Acacia, Cutting 



SMITH : N.T. jy 



