An island like a cooler, wilder Australia: forests, deserted beaches and the best food in the country – Tasmania is the insider tip for your second trip to Australia.
Photo: Sam Mozaffari (Unsplash)
Full disclosure: I only know about Tasmania because friends who'd already been to Australia twice went nowhere else on their third trip. The island is the size of Switzerland and has 500,000 inhabitants – roads without traffic, national parks without people, wombats by the roadside.
The loop starts in Hobart with the Salamanca Market on Saturday and MONA, the maddest museum in the southern hemisphere. Then up the east coast: Freycinet with Wineglass Bay, which you can see from the lookout or, after an hour's descent, from the beach, the Bay of Fires with its orange lichen-covered rocks, and via Launceston to Cradle Mountain, the hiking mountain in the north-west.
Tasmania is a land of good food and drink: oysters, salmon, cheese, whisky and wine from the Tamar Valley. The weather is as unpredictable as Scotland's, even in summer – pack layers. Ten days with a hire car is enough for the loop; from Melbourne it's an hour's flight or the overnight ferry with your car.
Hobart: Battery Point or Salamanca. Freycinet: Coles Bay. Cradle Mountain: lodges at the park entrance (book early).
I almost always compare hotels, apartments and guesthouses on Booking.com – with genuine reviews and usually free cancellation.
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