HOBART is small but beautifully sited, and approaching it from any direction is exhilarating: speeding across the expressway on the Tasman Bridge over the wide expanse of the Derwent River, or swooping down the Southern Outlet with hills, harbour, docks and houses spread out below. The green- and red-tin-roofed timber houses climb up the lower slopes of Mount Wellington, snow-topped for two or three months of the year, and look down on the expansive harbour. It's a city focused on the water: the centre is only a few minutes' walk from the waterfront, where fresh seafood can be bought directly from fishing boats in Sullivans Cove, and yachties hang out at old dockside pubs or head for fish and chips served from the punts moored in Constitution Dock. South of Constitution Dock is Salamanca Place, a well-preserved streetscape of waterfront stone warehouses which is the site of a famous Saturday market, a Hobart highlight. Yacht races and regattas are held throughout the year, while at weekends the water is alive with boats; you can choose any type of craft for a harbour cruise - perfect in the summer when it's dry and not too hot. In winter, though, the wind roars in from the Antarctic and temperatures drop to 5°C and below.

Australia's second-oldest city after Sydney, Hobart has managed to escape the clutches of developers, and its early architectural heritage is remarkably well preserved - more so than any other antipodean city. In 1803 Lieutenant John Bowen led a party of 24 convicts from Sydney to settle on the eastern shores of the Derwent River at Risdon Cove. A year later Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins arrived, with about three hundred convicts, a contingent of marines to guard over them, and thirty or more free settlers including women and children, and founded Hobart Town on Sullivans Cove, 10km below the original settlement and on the opposite shore. Collins went on to serve as Lieutenant-Governor of the colony for ten years. For the first two years, food was scarce, and settlers had to hunt local game, creating an early culture based on guns that was later to have terrible effects on the Aboriginal population. The fine deep-water port helped make the town prosperous, and a merchant class became wealthy through whaling, shipbuilding and the transport of crops and wool. The period between the late 1820s and the 1840s was a golden age for building, with the government architect John Lee Archer and the convict James Blackburn responsible for some of Hobart's finest buildings. There's a wealth of colonial Georgian architecture , with more than ninety buildings classified by the National Trust, sixty of which are on Macquarie and Davey streets. Battery Point , a village of workers' cottages and grand houses set in narrow, irregular streets, has hardly changed in the last 150 years.