The most popular visitor attraction in Australia is – a prison. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, so I decided to add Tasmania to the itinerary so I could investigate on your behalf. Oh I know, I hear you groaning. What is it with me, this endless selfless doing things for you? I promise I will do something for myself some day. (Note to self: this joke, last time. Ever. Honest.)

Port Arthur is right at the very bottom of Australia, as far away from anything or anywhere else as you can get. Tasmania was previously known as Van Diemen’s Land, but the convict history and the connotation of ‘Demon’ led to a petition by a 19th century Tourist Information Bureau for something a little more soft and fluffy.

The British had wanted somewhere to house the worst of the worst convicts shipped here, so they requisitioned a flour mill earlier settlers had built, and dumped a few hundred ne’er do wells there from the mainland, together with military personnel, free settlers (essentially tradesmen) and the odd cleric to form a correctional utopia that God (and Whitehall) would approve of.

It grew to become a huge place, with the penitentiary, the asylum, the hospital, the dock and stores, living quarters for soldiers and their families, a school, a poor copy of a formal English Italianate garden, a large church and many other buildings all within close proximity of one another, in a beautiful harbour, from where you could get to.. precisely nowhere. For escape from here was all but impossible, and if you tried, the sharks would reputedly get you anyhow. It’s so beautiful and ominous, like a version of Portmeirion, the Village where Number Six – Patrick McGoohan – was imprisoned in The Prisoner.

The scariest building – even now – is the Solitary Prison. Quakers – those endearing pacifists – thought a spell in solitary would cause a man to reflect and repent. Jeremy Bentham picked up this American proposal and also believed as man reflected upon his ways, and sought the Bible and Truth, he would pursue a life of repentance and goodness. Idiots all. These cells of 8 feet by 4 must have caused men to go mad. I spent 15 minutes in one, and when I came out into the glaring light of the courtyard I was shaking and thankful. But mixed in with this were the better aspects of Benthamite social reform, in which prisoners were treated with compassion and care, especially in the light and spacious asylum.

Why on earth do Australians come in their thousands to this place, and visit it more than anywhere else in the whole massive continent? There’s a squeamish element about it: a House of Horrors Gone Large. But I think there’s something more basic: it’s where the relatives lived. Families walk around as if visiting the ancestral home. They look at the cells as we would an imposing portrait in Windsor. ‘Look Lukey’, I heard one father say. ‘ This is where your grandfather’s grandfather lived, in a cell like this’. The chest was puffed out with the pride only genetic criminality can bring. The whole site is kept in that state of pristine decay reserved for European Places of History from Versailles to Rivaulx Abbey. This is Australia doing Heritage, complete with ruins, videos, interactive screens, information boards, your own personal criminal to watch out for as you go round, the ubiquitous convict ‘stories’, ‘experiences’ and ‘narratives’ – and queues like the Tower of London. Take me away. Preferably not to the local ‘Convict Bed and Breakfast’, where presumably it’s lights out by sundown, and one has to slop out, and where they doubtless serve the local Convict Jam for breakfast. With weevil infested oatmeal. 

People said we would love Tassie (as everyone calls ‘her’). They told us that it is on a much more manageable scale than the mainland. That it’s so much more, well, English.

But English it is not. It’s much more Scottish, specifically the western mainland of Argyll, where they’ve just got into the swing of the 1950s. The landscape is of small villages with working phone boxes, unhurried roads through rolling hills, and people who seem surprised you’re there at all.

On top of this, there is a distinct whiff of Economic Development Funded by the Centre. It’s unfair of me to scoff because mostly it’s great – an award winning whisky industry, artisan food, wine and beer, a thriving craft ethic, and some beautiful beaches that really remind me of Islay. Especially as the weather’s been pretty awful: a triumph of hope over reality. Waterproof trousers, electric blankets, tea. Yeah, just like home. And the rain washing the suntan away early.

But there’s also interesting stuff going on in Hobart. Everyone told us about the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) entirely funded by David Walsh, a local man who won gazillions and gazillions more, betting using a system he devised. He’s built a gallery just out of town that starts at ground level and goes down several layers, all dark, disconcerting and discombobulating. The building is great, the art is execrable. Apart from a superb huge Gilbert and George retrospective. So – listen – you’re in Hobart, in Tasmania, the sleepiest part of the continent, and you get 50 giant pictures by Gilbert and George of their own turds, of Fascism 2014 style in our beloved London, of the grime and beauty of my home city where everyone lives cheek by jowl, of where there are over 200 languages spoken at home, of where double standards in commerce and industry show every day.

And maybe because of this we’d gladly come home now: we miss our daughters, our families, our friends, Borough Market, the tube at rush hour, decent music, the National Theatre, How To Academy debating sessions with Will Self, damp nights at White Hart Lane… We miss London.

But I know that you have expectations of me, and we will soldier on to the bitter end! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)