Battery Point, Hobart

This historic district rises on a headland beside the Hobart waterfront and preserves one of the best-kept collections of colonial cottages in Australia. Its narrow streets, laid out from the 1830s, are lined with sandstone and weatherboard houses once home to shipwrights, mariners and merchants who worked the nearby port. A tiny square known as Arthur Circus, ringed by miniature cottages around a green, is a particular curiosity. Walking tours reveal the maritime heritage of the quarter, and its elevated lanes give glimpses of the River.