Tasmania covers 68,401 square kilometres and holds about 570,000 people — roughly the population of a mid-sized city spread across an island the size of Ireland. That ratio explains the appeal.
The wilderness
The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, inscribed by UNESCO in 1982, covers around 1.58 million hectares — close to a quarter of the island. Air monitored at Cape Grim on the north-west coast is among the cleanest measured anywhere on the planet, having crossed the Southern Ocean with no land upwind.
Cradle Mountain (1,545 m) rises above Dove Lake, and the boat shed on its shore is the most photographed structure in the state. The six-kilometre circuit of the lake is flat and manageable for most people.
The Overland Track runs 65 kilometres from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair over about six days. Between October and May it is one-way north to south, with a booking system and a fee. Lake St Clair itself is the deepest lake in Australia at over 160 metres. Mount Ossa, the island's highest point, reaches 1,617 metres.
The east coast
- Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park — a curve of white sand between granite peaks; the lookout is a steep 45 minutes, the beach an hour beyond it.
- Bay of Fires — white sand and granite boulders covered in vivid orange lichen. The name came from Aboriginal fires seen from a ship in 1773, not from the colour.
- Bruny Island — a short ferry from Kettering, known for oysters, cheese and a lighthouse from 1838.
Hobart
Founded in 1804, Hobart is the second-oldest city in Australia after Sydney. Salamanca Market has filled the sandstone warehouses on the waterfront every Saturday since 1972.
MONA — the Museum of Old and New Art — opened in 2011, built by the gambler David Walsh and cut three storeys into a sandstone cliff north of the centre. It is the largest privately funded museum in the southern hemisphere, deliberately provocative, and best reached by its own ferry.
Convicts and extinctions
Port Arthur operated as a penal station from 1830 to 1877 and held some 12,500 convicts. It joined the World Heritage List in 2010 as part of the Australian Convict Sites. The ruins are beautiful and the history is not.
The thylacine — the Tasmanian tiger — was hunted under government bounty until the last known animal died in Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. That date is now National Threatened Species Day. The Tasmanian devil is fighting a transmissible facial cancer first recorded in 1996 that cut the wild population by around 80 percent; captive insurance populations and disease-free islands are the response.
Practical notes
- Getting there: fly to Hobart or Launceston, or take the Spirit of Tasmania ferry overnight from Geelong.
- A car is essential. Allow ten days for a full loop; a week covers Hobart, the east coast and Cradle Mountain.
- Weather changes fast in the highlands even in summer — carry waterproofs on every walk.
- The aurora australis is visible from southern beaches on strong nights, facing south.