Law of averages, someone has to do it eventually, that kind of thing.

Would you believe that more than a million travellers now visit Tassie annually, leaving us to trouser $1.7 billion?

Some of these visitors are Japanese, including this be-hatted "wrong way" guy in The Avenue, both hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel of a small white vehicle, obviously concerned about breaking local road rules.

Except for the really important one concerning "No Entry" signs.

And those large white road arrows taking up half the road width indicating that you're going the wrong way in Lonnie's legendary one-way street system.

"Oh look," your observant columnist said to fellow caffeine imbiber Ralph as we sat at a kerbside café: "There's a Japanese guy driving a car the wrong direction on The Avenue."

"Oh yes, so there is," replied Ralph, as if this were a regular occurrence.

Then we both took a sip of flat white and counted to 10 very slowly.

By the time we got to "9" the same hire car was hurrying past our café table again, this time the right way round.

Followed by a big Metro bus and bringing to mind that TV Subaru advertisement (paraphrased) "almost running up his clacker".

Our city's one-way streets are definitely taxing the visitor.

It's all well for street-smart natives but tourists want to know how two directions of traffic suddenly become one just because they've driven over an intersection.

Think Charles-Paterson or George-York streets.

We just met a nice couple from Wisconsin who were perplexed about everyone driving southward the entire three-lane width of Wellington St.

"In the states, we may have three lanes of traffic headin' one way, but then across the median strip, there's three lanes headin' the other way, where are they?" he asked.

We told them that, in Lonnie's case, the three-lane traffic moving northward was on Bathurst St, "the median is a whole block wide."

They were very impressed.

The pair had stopped this columnist and asked for directions to the Gorge.

We asked them where else they had been in Australia. The astonishing reply was they had flown direct to Launceston from the good ol' US of A.

We wanted to know whether Lonnie's one-way street system had attracted some sort of international status bordering on notoriety.

"Not really," the guy replied with characteristic American earnestness.

"It's just we've done most places, including Europe" (pronounced 'Yerp'), "then we saw your island under Australia and, especially, heard about your foods and wine."

No dramas. Perhaps you have noticed how much more relaxed and comfortable we have become concerning gormandisers in our midst.

Much to do with a confidence structured around knowing we have some of the world's best land and sea tucker plus a generally amiable population.

A far cry from the view on rubberneckers of late great premier Eric Reece, who during the 1950s (before one-way streets) defined a tourist as "someone who comes here with a clean shirt and a 10-pound note and doesn't change either".

Mind you, by 1998, and aged 89, "Electric Eric" had softened his stance a little and conceded that tourism was "quite important" even if our "winters are too cold and we're a dead-end."

Either way, and if you're a CBD pedestrian, be careful out there and look both ways.

Especially when you're crossing The Avenue.