Upoffmebum

By Upoffmebum

Post caps

Off on a boat cruise today, up and down the River Tamar.
It's clearly named that way - that is, as a river - on the map, but it's really more of a 60-odd kilometre long estuary, with Bass Strait at the wide northern end - and the Australian mainland beyond that - and the city of Launceston (third earliest European settlement after Sydney and Hobart) at the narrow southern end.
The tide was right out when we boarded the good ship Tamar Odyssey, and many of the anchored boats and other assorted craft scattered  around the dock were sitting high and dry on the muddy bottom. A good two to three metres of the old wooden pylons with the thriving grass mop-tops were exposed above the water line. Today's photo is the Before shot.
You'll need to take my word for this, because your faithful correspondent forgot or couldn't be bothered following up and taking the After shot - but by the time we got back a couple of hours later, some of the mop-top clumps of grass were completely under the water, and the rest were sitting not very far above it.
Which means the vertical distance between the water level at low and high tides in these parts is definitely somewhere around the Gigantic mark on the tidal scale, and possibly approaching Monster mark territory.
With the introductory pleasantries out of the way, the Good Captain Leigh wanted to assure all passengers that he was not even remotely interested in the arcane mysteries of real estate prices in Tasmania - especially in northern Tasmania; and even more especially in comparison with mainland prices. 
Moreover, he had something well below zero interest in comparisons between northern Tasmanian real estate prices with those in particular large mainland capital cities - such as Sydney and Melbourne, for example.
Some passengers were a little puzzled then, when Capt. Leigh spent by far the better part of the return leg of the cruise extolling the virtues of buying real estate in northern Tasmania - especially in Launceston, where he was born, bred and still proudly lives, and so has specialist, up-to-date as well as long-term trend knowledge,. Not only of house prices in different suburbs, but also of how many bedrooms, bathrooms and car parking spaces you can expect to be included - and especially when compared to similarly priced houses in, well, for instance, Sydney and Melbourne.
It became very clear to all who cared to listen that there were still many, many misguided souls living in those cities who were continuing to pay unreasonable and extortionate prices for houses with well under half the facilities your money could buy you just about anywhere in the fair city of Launceston.
If only I'd been able to take the River Tamar cruise some time before plumping for my obviously facilities-deficient abode on the cursed mainland. 
On any totally rational and objective assessment of my obviously imprudent housing investment, I would be well-advised to sell up at the earliest opportunity, and grab a bargain abode before the rest of Australia belatedly sees the light.

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