Here is the Santillo boys’ prescription for a fantastic holiday on the little heart-shaped island that hangs like a charm from Australia’s southeast corner:
Melbourne to Devonport
From Melbourne, you can fly to Tasmania in under an hour or make a day/night of it on the ferry. We chose to be awake for the latter, traveling by day across the Bass Strait on the Tasmanian Spirit. This ship is an excellent way to cross, a sort of ‘cruise ship light,’ if you will. On board, there are several lounging and dining options, live music, a play structure for the littlest of tots, and even guest entertainers to help young ones enjoy the eight-hour passage. In our case, Jennifer Cossins, Tasmania’s most famous contemporary children’s author, was on board to read aloud her books to listening ears, and ‘Miss C’ from Circus@Sea taught our boys a bit about juggling. All of this while swaying—sometimes gently, sometimes stumblingly—to the rhythm of the waves.
Since we arrived on the island in the relatively early in the evening and most Devonport hotels were priced expensively, we picked up our rental car, stopped for a terrific gem of a Thai restaurant on the outskirts of town, and made our way inland to bed down for the night. Railton, though touting itself as Topiary Town, is not the showiest of Tasmania’s lodgings, though the locals at the pub were exceedingly chatty; nevertheless, we probably would not bother to repeat this one.
Day 1: Railton to Mount Cradle National Park
The first day’s plan was ambitious. The boys were eager to explore some of Tasmania’s caves at Mole Creek and then carry on to Mount Cradle National Park for a hike to the summit of its eponymous crag, then finishing up by moving on to Queenstown for the night. Before tackling that list, however, I felt it was essential to sidetrack ourselves a wee bit to taste some of Tasmania’s amazingly fresh dairy products—namely, ice cream—for breakfast. So we first headed for the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm and Van Diemen’s Creamery. Sadly, though, to fit in all the spelunking and summiting, the tour organizers urged us to press on after our eggs without the world’s best scoop in our bellies. Next time.
The kids loved the caves! Glowworms, underground rivers, crystals, and spooky formations. Our family-pass admission rate was reasonable, and the requisite tour was delightful; its final feature was a bit of choral singing (at the guide’s invitation) in the dark ‘cathedral’ at the terminus of the underground walk.
Reflected ghostly light in the caves, bioluminescent worms like stars, great columns of stalactites and stalagmites, reaching down like they want to eat you alive (muahaha).
from Leo’s journal
Lunch was a quick picnic of in-season blackberries and a wallaby burger. No joke! Besides being the fantastically cute smaller cousins of kangaroos, wallabies are one of Tasmania’s most sustainable and tasty protein sources. They are also so plentiful that you must be very careful not to careen into them while cruising on the country roads at dawn and dusk. Never before have I seen so much roadkill. Literally scores of them, so sad!
By the time we reached Mount Cradle National Park, the guide at the visitor’s center looked a bit bewildered at our goal of summiting that afternoon. “It’s a six to eight-hour round trip,” he said, “and the last return shuttle leaves the park in four hours, at 7 PM.” Apparently, our tour organizers failed to realize that one is only allowed to enter the park by bus. Besides, he pointed out, clouds completely subsumed the mountain at this point, and the only view we would acquire for our efforts would be a whiteout wall of mist. Again, next time.
So, plan B: a shorter climb to Marion’s Lookout, past several black pools fed by coppery orange creeks that are rich with tannins; along expanses fringed with bushy native grasses; through tunnels of moss and lichen-rich forests; and up a chain-railed outcrop of solid rock. A fine substitute. What with the cool wetness and the saturated greens against black peat, we thought we’d been transported to the heath of Ireland’s Connemara National Park. The prize at the end of this gorgeous walk? A mama wombat and her baby happily munching right beside the trail!
We finished the day by drying off beside the fire at one of Mount Cradle’s lodges and warming up our insides with hot cocoa. (Isn’t it supposed to be summer here?) Queenstown was a shot in the dark at this point, so we opted for the cheapest lodging nearby, a cheerful bare-bones RV and bunk bed campsite called Discovery Park. The highlights of this choice were a fantastic kitchen for making pancakes with local honey in the morning and a resident wide-eyed bush opossum who scopes out said kitchen each night looking for an easy morsel.
Day 2: Mount Cradle to Strahan
Given our failure to complete the plan for the first day, a little improvisation was in order for day two. The tour guides approved the idea of heading all the way to the wild west coast—they’d read good things about the town named Strahan there. The plan was a given once we realized what fun lies just north of this town—the Henty Sand Dunes.
The Santillo family never misses the chance for a good slide down a dune. After a couple of hours driving twisty roads that snake through bristly landscapes lush in all colors of green (both soft and spiky, just like the touch of an echidna’s back), stopping only to pet an echidna crossing the road, we found them. Beautiful. Enticingly steep. A thrill just waiting for us! As Leo said, “Shooting down a dune, the white blur of sand about to hit my face!”
The wind blows up a bit of sand, which blurs the edges of the dune and moves the whole thing slowly, slowly, slowly, to consume the tall trees like the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that.
from Jack’s journal
Unlike those fated trees, we managed to pull ourselves away from the sugar-fine sand, dust ourselves off, and carry on to town. Strahan is a gorgeous little seaside collection of houses, hotels, restaurants, and points of interest. After a fantastic coffee and toasted sandwich (‘toastie’ if you speak Aussie) from the Coffee Shack, we wandered over to the local mill for a presentation on the 130-year-old saw there. (The boys delighted in deducing the cause and effect chain of events within that machine.) I enjoyed a tasting of local coffee liqueur infused with wild Tasmanian fennel.
We then made afternoon plans to stay in Strahan for Australia’s longest-running theater production, a kid-friendly historical tale of escapee convicts called “The Ship that Never Was.” All three boys were lucky enough to be pulled in as part of the production as a ship’s architect, the helmsman, and a ninety-five-year-old sailor. Even Chris went onstage as a sad jellyfish, and in his words, “it was the best show I’ve seen in years.”
We enjoyed this town so much that we decided to stay the night in the GG Gateway to the Gordon hotel with a beautiful lookout over the bay.
Day 3: Strahan to Hobart
Despite desires to stay forever in the beauty of Strahan, the tour guides suggested we catch up with the itinerary and press on to Hobart. With that goal in mind, we finally saw Queenstown, though only by driving through. Even at 60 kilometers per hour, one cannot help but admire its mineral-rich mountains, with their vivid rust and ochre layers folded and compressed and pointing skywards like so many swords of solid rock. The four or five-hour drive from Strahan to Hobart is a tortuous one, so at the recommendation of our hotel receptionist, we took a break halfway in Derwent, specifically to see The Wall.
Advertised by subtle and swanky rusted panels that flank the entryway, The Wall is an upscale gallery of supreme urban chic dropped in the middle of nowhere. Google lists it as “sculpture.” The cost of entry was a bit of a surprise, but the art, a wall of painstakingly chiseled, carved, and sanded wood, brought tears to my eyes. Such pathos. Chris didn’t care for it. Regardless, they make some of the best coffee we’ve ever had, along with a perfect plate of Tasmanian scones and jam.
At last, we arrived in Hobart. Being bumped around in the car for hours made us all the more grateful for a playground glowingly set in the suburbs alongside the River Derwent. The stroll along the harbor was lovely, and it’s accompanying curated signs were educational. The Indian restaurant we picked for dinner was delicious. The sight of cargo ships being loaded with lumber was mesmerizing—an unfathomable weight of trees bound up like bundles of lincoln logs and lifted several stories high to disappear behind massive retractable decking. Hobart was shaping up to be delightful!
Day 4: Hobart
The morning in Hobart, however, had a hiccough. We learned not to test the parking meter monitors here; they are on foot, they are stealthy, they are punctual, and they will fine you! Other than that, we had a lovely day. Outdoor chess and piano playing in Franklin Square were the highlights. We also enjoyed playing cards in the botanical gardens, sampling creative vegetarian entrees in Hobart’s eateries, shopping for ‘brekkie’ in a bulk/organic/vegan store, and sweating in an early morning yoga/pilates/HIIT class. All the joys of city living distilled down into just a few blocks overlooking the sea!
Had we to do it all over again, we would have either stayed put along the water as pedestrians or taken the car to and from Hobart’s inland points of interest—the city is not laid out for peaceful strolling from place to place. It was hot, sweaty, and noisy from cars zipping by at breakneck speeds. Also, in our day of exploring, we really ought to have climbed Mount Wellington to gaze out toward Antarctica. It’s right there! (The mountain, not the South Pole.) As it was, we were content to marvel at the view of the peak from a city bluff akin to San Francisco’s steep streets.
Day 5: Hobart to Port Arthur and Coles Bay
Our tour guides respected the FiveBackpacksFamily mission for education and steered us toward Port Arthur the next morning. On the edge of a peninsula that hangs off Tasmania’s southern coast by just a thread of a sand spit, it is where the worst of the worst criminals were sent for reformation. It was as far from civilization as possible. Ferocious guard dogs and legends of shark-infested waters ensured that no criminal ever returned from Port Arthur.
Expecting scenes of misery and destitution, you could imagine our disappointment in the absolutely gorgeous day. Sun streamed, breezes sighed, flowers cast their scent like cheerful eucalyptus sprites, a silver-clad trailer offered sustainable coffee, woolen cushions, and dreamy lilting music on a cliff overlooking the gorgeous Tasmanian coast. Hard to imagine the woe.
Port Arthur’s tour guides tried their hardest to paint a painful picture, however. A visit to this site includes a short cruise past Puer Peninsula, where 800 boys were stashed for reform, and past diminutive Death Island, where all the deceased were crammed into rocky graves. A walking tour crosses the grounds where ruins of prison walls are crumbling, and you can still see the church where inmates were shut into individual boxes to view religious services. Hymns were the only sounds they were allowed to utter. Pretty tough.
From here, our guides led us up the coast to Coles Bay, the last township before Freycinet National Park. Lodging prices are a bit steep here, probably because you are surrounded by exquisite natural beauty at every turn. The most popular excursion in this area is to Wineglass Bay—you can travel on foot, by boat, by helicopter, heck, it’s Australia, so you could probably even kite surf to the remote white sand beach and turquoise water there. We planned to take the ninety-minute hike up and over the Hazard Mountains of Freycinet National Park, thinking there is no better way to face a dip in the frigid Tasmanian sea than by first working up a fantastic sweat. We booked two nights in a lovely little beach cottage to have enough time for this incredible experience.
Day 5: Freycinet National Park, Coles Bay
We got our early start as planned; snacks packed, sunscreen applied, ample water supply at the ready. Just a short drive up the hill to the car park and… What’s this? All trails past this point closed for bush fire danger? Today and tomorrow? Unreasonable thoughts start flying. Surely they don’t mean us. What’s one little group of hikers going to harm? Doesn’t the sky look smoke and lightning-free? Why today? How could we miss fabulous Wineglass Bay?
A sigh of defeat. Next time.
Once those few manic moments passed, we backed our way down the hill in search of Plan B. Our first pull-out opportunity was a short hike to a place called ‘Sleepy Bay.’ Why not give it a go? All I can say is, ‘WOW!’ This was like meeting the much more talented, complex, and mysterious cousin to the popular celebrity that is Wineglass Bay. Our little nook was a symphonic palette of colors and textures—scraggly greys and greens of gum tree forest meeting time-worn layers of black granite striped with orange lichen flocking, which turn brick red where they touch the blues of the gently surging sea. In this water, swirling like playful otters amidst white foam, are the leaves of dark olive, maroon, and tawny kelp strands. Gorgeous.
After several iterations of heating up and cooling down in this sublime environ, we hiked back out in pursuit of a coffee and a sandy swimming beach. We found both back in Coles Bay. Chris explored the downtown area, which is the size of half a block and consists of an ice creamery, a rental shop, a cafe, a convenience store, and a post office. Meanwhile, the boys and I took a quick walk to the beachfront, where crystal clear water lazily laps up onto the sand, depositing purple scallop and shiny oyster shells. It was a great place for a swim.
This area is famous for its shellfish, so we made sure to visit the top-rated food experience at Freycinet Mussel Farm. Did you know that pound per pound, mussels have more iron than beef? And all they need in order to exist is a bit of rope to cling to in the right kind of sea? Sustainable food! Furthermore, did you know they are delicious with a bit of fennel-infused curry? It was some of the freshest seafood I’ve ever tasted. For the full experience, I also tried some local sea urchin and abalone; I confess, I don’t want to eat those again unless desperately hungry on a deserted island with a good supply of soy sauce.
Day 6: Friendly Beaches, Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Mount William National Park, and Bridport
Before breakfast, we aimed to sneak in just a bit more of the breathtaking Freycinet Peninsula by visiting the Friendly Beaches. (Our tour guides were quite pleased that the early start paid off in friendly wallaby sightings!) Stretching for miles, these pristine waters are clean, clear, and uncrowded. The waves on this side were much more active and absolutely perfect that morning for teaching kids to bodysurf. And, to their delight, the boys discovered that the sand squeaks when you run on it!
According to our guides’ itinerary, we then traveled north along the coast through Tasmania’s wine country, arriving in Binalong Bay just in time for lunch. The sea was mysteriously shrouded in mist, a lovely view while dining on gourmet pizza and local wine from the tap. From there, we carried on to the Bay of Fires, yet another spectacular show of natural beauty in contrasting extremes.
[Picture] us flying through the air, jumping from rock to rock, turquoise blue water surrounded by fiery orange rocks—the place where elements all come together.
from Jack’s journal
After exploring the tide pools and scrambling around on the boulders here, we could not resist the temptation for one more dip in the sea. The white sand and clear turquoise waters that peek out from behind the green scrub that lines the road are too beautiful to drive past without jumping in!
If we had a chance to revise our tour destinations, I think this next part is where we may have acted differently. In their planning, our guides wanted to be sure to see the northeastern coast of the island, as they’d heard it was some of the most beautiful scenery on Earth. In retrospect, I think we saw that beauty in the Bay of Fires. Making it to Mount William in the Northeast corner seemed a noble goal, but it translated to a lot of time in the car in exchange for little more than mediocre forest and a nondescript lighthouse. We never did see anything resembling a mountain—perhaps too gradual of an incline to know you’ve climbed it. Next time we’ll make a beeline straight for Launceston.
Dirt roads through farmland finally brought us to a little town named Bridport, which we picked for its reasonable accommodation rates. This seaside village had a big surprise in store for us, though: an incredible playground! Never before have I seen a rope climbing structure as high as this one. Right by the sea, it was like shimmying up the spars to a ship’s crow’s nest.
Day 7: Bridport to Launceston
Our flight back to Melbourne departed from Launceston in the afternoon. When you plan your trip, be sure to give this town a full day! In my opinion, it is better than Hobart—more hip, lovelier parks, quirkier eats, and a better river view. Perhaps it’s a hasty analysis, as we only had time for a quick bite and an even quicker stroll in town. I definitely felt a longing for more time to explore. They even had an art festival opening that weekend.
Thank you!
Thanks for reading, and thanks to our children for planning a fantastic week in one of the world’s most wonderful places for natural beauty and small-town living.
spectacular!!!
What?! A wombat!? Awesome.