Road Tripping Tasmania

You might not have heard the good news, but I’m heading off on a trip to Tasmania! As part of my extended holiday break to Australia, during which I have a few other awesome events planned, I’ll be taking a ferry across to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. So Tassie, I’ll be seeing you soon! Here’s the not-to-be-missed stuff that I have planned for my excursion so far:

Day 1:

The first day we’re intending to spend on and around Cradle Mountain. Getting some exploration done and just enjoying the fresh air. I may have had some slight influence in us coming here but I’ve heard so many great stories about that place that I decided I just had to check it out for myself. After all, it does look pretty epic. It’ll also cut out a lot of driving as we won’t be heading to the south side of the island first. Super smart planning by us, right?!

Day 2:

After spending the first night on Cradle Mountain (yay, stars! hopefully) we’ll begin our trip south towards Hobart, via Queenstown and anywhere in between that we decide to stop at. There’ll probably be a lot of places, but this is quite a large chunk of the island that we’ll be passing in a mere day. Might be that we need to come back, but hey, we’ll see when we get there! Long story short, we’re intending to explore the western side of Tasmania today, before putting our heads down in Hobart.

Day 3:

On our third day we’ll be making the trek over to Port Arthur. It’s another one of those highly significant historical sites, and definitely a must see for anyone going to Tassie. So I’m told. Either way, I couldn’t really miss this out. Shame that I don’t have a few months to spend exploring. Anyone else think we should bring back galleys and make explorer a well paid profession once again?

Day 4:

Our fourth day will be spent making the trip up through Freycinet national park and heading to watch sunset at the Bay of Fires. That’s the plan in my head anyway. Likely to change but hey! That’s part of the fun. So we’ll be spending the entirety of our fourth day exploring the eastern side of Tasmania.

Day 5:

We’ve reserved the last day for “all the rest”. Our return ferry isn’t until late in the evening which gives us plenty of time to pick up the parts that we’ve missed, go anywhere else we want to go, and have a mooch about Launceston. We’ve got plenty on our plates for this brief trip and there’s always room for more. If you think I’m going to be seriously missing out on something, do let me know. I wouldn’t want to not see something awesome because I just didn’t know about it!

A few things to note: I’ll be heading over to Tasmania with my cousin on the 14th December in the evening. That means that apart from having a pretty cool overnight ferry trip, we also get a fresh run at our journey starting on the Monday morning. I’ve largely left a lot of the planning to him (AKA accommodation) because he’s one of those guys that enjoys his luxury. No hostels or tents for us!

I don’t know exactly where we’ll be staying, but as you can see we’re doing a rough circle of the raw Tasmanian circle or whatever you want to call it.

We don’t have many particular things planned for certain days. The idea is that we get over there with a backpack and the car, and explore to our hearts content. In the evening we’ll pitch down in some luxury hotel and eat our share of meat and drink our share of beer. Then the next day we continue. There are a couple of “must see” places that I’ve noted, but if anyone has any more, lesser known information that they’d like to share, I’d be more than happy to hear it. After all, I can’t find all of the amazing but hidden places in Tassie in a few days.

I’ll keep this post updated as we add more to the itinerary, and once I’m there I’ll try to get a few pretty pictures to go along with it, I’ve added a few pictures from along the way!

The beautiful picture in the header for this post is by Scott Creswell, who has a ton of awesome pictures from Australia on his Flickr page. Go check that shit out.