Tasmania on a loop, from Hobart to Cradle Mountain

Around the island

The loop starts in Hobart and goes round the island. In the east, the road follows Great Oyster Bay, facing the pink granite peaks of Freycinet. The Wineglass Bay lookout is an hour and a quarter’s walk there and back. Further north, at Bay of Fires, the granite rocks are covered in an orange lichen.

On the north coast, the village of Stanley sits below The Nut, the core of an old volcano. Further south, you leave the car at the Cradle Mountain visitor centre: a shuttle bus takes you to Dove Lake, and the walk around it is 6 kilometres. Wombats graze in the meadows nearby.

The west is wilder and wetter. The road crosses the rainforest to the harbour town of Strahan, then passes through Queenstown, ringed by hills still bare after a century of copper mining. It also passes near Lake St Clair, the deepest lake in Australia, then by Russell Falls. kunanyi, or Mount Wellington, towers over Hobart; to the south, a ferry takes you to Bruny Island.

Five of these eleven sites are in Tasmania, including the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart, where women were held, and the village of Darlington, on Maria Island, a car-free island. Not on the list, the bridge at Richmond, finished by convicts in 1825, is the oldest stone bridge in Australia. On the west coast, Sarah Island was one of the harshest penal stations in the colonies; the cruises from Strahan stop there.

In 1856, the colony took the name Tasmania, partly to make people forget the penal colony. The name comes from Abel Tasman, the Dutch navigator who sighted the island in 1642.

An island of national parks

The island’s two oldest national parks, Freycinet and Mount Field, date from 1916. At Cradle Mountain, the Austrian naturalist Gustav Weindorfer campaigned to protect the valley, which became a reserve in 1922.

In the 1970s and 1980s, two dam projects divided the country. The one at Lake Pedder led in 1972 to the founding of the United Tasmania Group, often described as the world’s first green party. Then the dam planned on the Franklin River brought a blockade and more than 1,200 arrests; the High Court upheld its ban in 1983. In the meantime, in 1982, the Tasmanian Wilderness was added to the World Heritage List; today it meets seven of UNESCO’s ten criteria.

What not to miss

1. 1kunanyi / Mount WellingtonThe summit road climbs to 1,271 metres, above Hobart.
2. 2The Tasman PeninsulaTasman Arch, Remarkable Cave and the Tessellated Pavement, a rock cracked into slabs, worn by salt and waves.
3. 3Bay of FiresNamed in 1773 by Tobias Furneaux after the Aboriginal fires he saw from the sea.
4. 4Cataract GorgeA gorge a quarter of an hour’s walk from the centre of Launceston, with its chairlift.
5. 5MONADavid Walsh’s art museum, opened in 2011, 30 minutes from Hobart by catamaran.
6. 6Bruny IslandThe isthmus called The Neck, Adventure Bay and the Cape Bruny lighthouse, first lit in 1838.

Tasmania in pictures

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Rocks covered in orange lichen at Bay of Fires.

The Tasmanian table

Tasmania is nicknamed the “Apple Isle” for its orchards. You eat oysters at Freycinet and on Bruny. At Pyengana, the dairy makes a clothbound cheddar. In bakeries, you find the scallop pie, a pie of curried scallops.

The cool climate suits pinot noir and the sparkling wines of the Tamar Valley. The island also makes single malt whiskies. In Hobart, the Cascade brewery, which traces its beginnings back to 1824, presents itself as the oldest brewery in Australia still in operation.