Tasmania Highlights

If you like nature, wildlife, and delicious food, add Tasmania to your list of places to visit. Our Tasmania road trip featured all that and more. I had previously envisioned Tassie as a mini New Zealand, but the state stands out as it’s own place with it’s own slow pace and friendly personality. Australia is a casual country, where even in Sydney, its biggest city, you’ll often see barefoot surfers waiting for the bus. Tasmania, with the world’s cleanest air and loads of natural scenery, is even more relaxed. If you have months, take them to explore this beautiful state. We had too little time and jammed it with these Tasmania highlights.

Tasmanian Islands

The state of Tasmania is made up of 334 islands. The two we visited, Bruny and Maria (pronounced Mariah, as in Carey) islands, were easily among our Tasmania highlights.

BRUNY ISLAND

Located south of Hobart and a twenty minute ferry ride across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, Bruny Island is known for its natural beauty and fresh and delicious food.

We took a tour of the island on our first full day in the state, and it remains one of our Tasmania highlights. Less than one thousand people live on Bruny, but it has a booming economy of tourism and food and drink exports.

While on our day trip to Bruny, we visited the rain forest, climbed an ocean lookout, visited a museum, and sampled a lot of food. The highlight were the oysters, the best I’ve ever tried, but we also had beer and cheese and local honey. Consider a visit to Bruny if you go to Tassie.

maria island

A bit different to Bruny, Maria Island is a National Park with interesting history. At one time it was a penal colony, but now it has no residents aside from park rangers, and is a wildlife sanctuary.

We took a ferry to Maria and self-guided for our day visit. The highlights of Maria Island are the walking trails, the beautiful beaches, and the wildlife.

Hiking options on Maria Island range from relatively easy to a multi-day Great Walk. We hiked the challenging 7.4 mile Bishop and Clerk track, with some rocky scrambles and a scary cliff at the end. It was a great workout with some very rewarding views.

Tasmania Highlights: Wildlife

Speaking of, one of our Tasmania highlights was the wildlife. This isolated state is home to animals like Tasmanian devil, penguins, and wombats. One animal not indigenous to the state is the koala, but we saw plenty of other cute animals on our visit. I even got a very quick view of a running Tassie devil whilst hiking on Maria Island, way too fast for Brian to see or for me to get a photo.

wombats

Maria Island was one of our favorite places in no small part for the proliferation of wombats. These absolutely adorable marsupials were near the beach, the ferry terminal, and all over the grass on the island. They were in pairs of mommas and babies, and solo, snuggling up eating the grass.

Everywhere on the island and on the ferry were signs warning people to stay 10meters away. Most people didn’t, but we used our zoom lens. There were times we had to back away as the wombats would buzz along eating paying no attention to the paparazzi.

little penguins

Little penguins are a distinct breed of penguins, also known as blue or fairy penguins, and they only live in Australia. Most of these penguins are found in Tasmania, so I made it a mission for us to see them, and we did!

We chose to see the penguins in Burnie, for a few reasons. First, the colony is conveniently located near downtown. Second, the little penguins are observable in their natural habitat, which is important to us. Finally, anyone can just show up right before sunset to see the penguins.

Little penguins are unique to this part of the world and a dream came true that I got to see them in Tasmania! They are adorable and it was a really cool experience. The volunteers gave us a nice overview about the colony and ensured no one got to close or disturbed the creatures. It was a Tasmania highlight for sure.

kangaroos and wallabies

I still can’t tell these creatures apart, but we definitely saw some of both while traveling Tasmania.

Even while hiking just outside of Hobart, the main city, we saw kangaroos in the woods.

A highlight near Burnie was the Fern Glade Platypus Reserve, with walking trails and lots of wildlife. While we still haven’t seen platypus since Queensland, we saw what we thought were wallabies, but were told they were bush kangaroos by the Aussies in the park. I am already having a hard time telling wallabies and roos apart and now they added a different breed!

Tasmania Highlights: The Cities

We spent a few days in both if Tassie’s biggest cities, and enjoyed both of them! Here’s what to do if you visit Hobart and/or Launceston.

hobart

This port city reminded us of Halifax, with it’s boating culture, waterfront bars, and excellent seafood restaurants. With a population of a quarter of a million people in the Greater Hobart area, it felt bigger and busier than expected. We also went during prime summer season with multiple festivals adding to the excitement while we were there.

One of our Tasmania highlights was Hobart’s MONA museum. That place is a trip, and it’s all intentional. From the quirky decor on the ferry up river, to the underground tunnel system of the museum, and the wild modern art exhibits, MONA is a unique experience. This is a world renowned museum which has been drawing attention to Hobart since 2011. You can spend a whole day at MONA, viewing the art, listening to music outside in the gardens, and eating and drinking from their on-site winery, brewery and restaurants.

Hobart is an accessible city. We walked and took the bus most everywhere. Getting to the airport was the biggest and most expensive challenge, but otherwise it’s easy to get around. With lots of excellent restaurants, fun day trips, and outdoor adventures on land and sea, it’s worth at least a long weekend.

launceston

Located in the north of Tasmania, Launceston is the gateway to Tassie’s biggest wine region, the Tamar Valley, also home to many farms and food purveyors. We spent two nights in the city of over 70,000 residents, where we dined at a winery, hiked a gorge, and saw the local sights.

Downtown Launceston is walkable, with bridges over the river, cute cafes and lots of craft breweries and beer bars.

One of the interesting sights is the macaque monkey troop in the city park. The monkeys, a gift from a sister city in Japan, have lived in the park since 1979, and are accessible for public viewing during daylight hours.

The troop is prone to disease and the city council has decided to stop them breeding, which means they will die out in 20 years.

One of our favorite stops in Launceston was the Cataract Gorge. We spent a gorgeous afternoon hiking the paths and enjoying the scenery and fresh air in this beautiful part of Tasmania.

If you’re heading to Tasmania, this map shows some of the key spots mentioned in this post.

While our trip to Tasmania was way too short, we are happy we went. Have you been to Tassie and do you agree with my Tasmania highlights? Let me know your favorites in the comments.