THE WIPERS ARE beating like a pair of metronomes set to Prestissimo, but the blizzard is calling the tune. A few hundred metres below, Hobart is basking in warm sunshine, but Mount Wellington is blanketed in snow and it's getting thicker by the minute.
With visibility reduced to a couple of metres, I give up the ghost and turn back, edging down the slushy slopes to Tasmania's capital city, where shirt-sleeved spectators are enjoying a cricket match. Summer is just around the corner, they say.
Mount Wellington is a mere pimple at 1,270 metres, but when the infamous Tassie weather turns fickle, it's no place to be, even in a motorhome where you can bring a kettle to the boil at any time and huddle up under a warm quilt in a double bed. Unfortunately, the vehicles aren't four-wheel drive.
I can't say I wasn't warned. I picked up the vehicle in Launceston in the north of this Australian island state a few days earlier and commented that I was in luck. We had clear blue skies.
'I hope you've brought some warm clothing,' the Autorent Hertz manager warned. 'Tassie weather can change by the minute. You could be sunbathing down here, then drive into the mountains and be hit by a blizzard.'
Prophetic words: the weather had closed in at Port Arthur after a few glorious days driving leisurely down the beautiful east coast, which is largely deserted, but for a sprinkling of towns that are little more than large villages. There, the rain pelted through a veil of mist as dusk approached and I welcomed every drop that bounced off the hood of my raincoat.