Tasmania or simply Tassie, as referred to by many Aussies – I always heard really good things about this place from my friends. I had no clue on what we would be going to visit, but I just know that it is a beautiful place. When my friend planned her Australia trip, she wanted to visit Tasmania as part of it, and we were more than happy to explore the place along with her.

Day 1: Sydney to Hobart ->Launceston

We planned to go to Tasmania directly after our Cairns trip, literally from the northern tip of Australia to the southern tip. We had a stop over in Sydney from where we took a flight to Hobart. I reserved a window seat as usual with no clue on what to expect from the window during landing of Hobart. After around an hour of journey, I observed that the flight moved out of mainland of Australia, crossed two islands in between and entered the Tasmania island. I was completely excited by the fact that I could actually see the shape of Australia similar to satellite view.

I started looking out keenly from the moment we entered Tasmania island to check out how our next few days are going to be. I found many mountains, forests and to my surprise some turquoise bays.

Hobart also felt like a small island with water in all directions. By the time we landed, I had a rough idea of how our trip is going to be and expected the turquoise bays as the main highlights.

We landed in Hobart and started driving towards Launceston, the second largest city in Tasmania, where we planned to stay for the next two days. While Cairns was sunny and hot, Tasmania was slightly on the colder side. Hobart city looked cool with a nice bridge and houses built on top of hills. It reminded me of Queenstown.

As we drove towards Launceston, it felt more like New Zealand than Australia with meadows and mountains.

We reached our hotel in Launceston with an amazing view overlooking a river. We relaxed for the day and enjoyed the hotel 🙂

A day filled with surprises and completely out of expectations so far. We were completely excited and looked forward to a great day tomorrow.

Day 2: Cradle Mountain

We packed our lunch and started on our trip to Cradle mountain, the most famous tourist destination of Tasmania.

The day which started as a bright and sunny, turned cloudy by the time we reached closer to mountains. As we got closer, we got a great view of mountains and this drive reminded of Queenstown to Glenorchy drive.

The terrain changed barren for sometime just before we reached the Cradle mountain visitor center. The climate was still cold and looked like the spring hadn’t started there.

We planned to drive till the Cradle mountain, but the road is apparently closed for private visitors. We had to park our car near the visitor center and catch the shuttle bus from there to the mountain. There was an entry ticket to this national park, which also provides discount to other national parks in Tasmania.

On the way, we found a cute little creature, called wombat. It was searching for food in the grass 🙂 I wondered if it looked closer to any known creature I had seen so far.

We found a waterfall on the way and there was a cascade walk near this place, which we planned to do on our return journey. The bus stops at multiple places on the way, where various treks start and we can get in anywhere.

It was a 15min journey on the bus to reach the Cradle Mountain and the first view of the mountain along with the lake looked stunning 🙂

The mountain rises above the glacially formed Dove Lake and it is named after its resemblance to a gold mining cradle. We chose the shortest trek around the mountain, Dove Lake circuit which is around 6km and takes around 2hrs to complete. The track goes around the lake with varied views of the landscape.

After around 15-20mins of walk, it started raining and we had no umbrellas/rain jackets with us. We wondered if we should continue the track or return back. We decided to walk a bit further to see if the rain subsides.

That is when it started snowing. At first, we dismissed it as rain, but slowly as the force increased, we could actually witness proper snowfall in November, which felt quite surprising.

We decided to walk back and by the time we reached the bus stop, we got completely wet. Luckily, our bus driver turned on the heater and it was comfortable. The snowfall continued for a while and it returned into rain by the time we reached our car. We had no option but to return back. We were glad to get a view of the mountain as the clouds completely covered it after we started our walk. It was one crazy fun experience to witness unexpected snowfall.

As we got down the mountains and reached the main road to Launceston, it turned sunny again and we wondered if it rained only in the mountains. We reached Launceston in the evening and we wanted to spend more time outside exploring the city. We found a good sunset spot, Batman Bridge and started driving to that point. We found many wine gardens along the way and the route is called Tamar Valley Wine Route, which were planted along the Tamar river.

We expected the Batman bridge to be somehow related to Batman, the superhero. But we realized that it was named after a person called John Batman, who was a businessman and co-founder of Melbourne. He apparently traveled along Tamar river to reach the ocean and then the mainland Australia and founded a settlement which is now Melbourne. He supposedly offered tools, blankets and food to the native Aboriginal people of Australia in 1835, in exchange for thousands of hectares of land stretching from Melbourne to Geelong, but the colonial government in New South Wales did not acknowledge the treaty. Although his proposed transaction was exploitative, Batman’s treaty stands as the only attempt by a European to engage Australian Aboriginal people in a treaty or transaction rather than simply claiming land outright. His story was an interesting read and marks an important point in history.

We couldn’t see colors in the sunset sky as it was cloudy. Neverthless, we enjoyed the serenity of the place and the drive 🙂

It was a great day in nature witnessing its beauty, surprises and unexpected gifts 🙂

Day 3: Bay of Fires, Wineglass Bay

We started early from Launceston, as we had a long drive planned for the day. We were completely prepared for the rain, but we prayed for a good sunny weather. The weather kept changing on the way from clouds to bright sun.

We stopped at a small park beside a coffee shop on the way for a small break. It was extremely sunny that we pondered how unpredictable the weather in Tassie had been so far.

The drive was amazing as we came close to the east coast. The color of bays simply blew our minds. I got reminded of those Turquoise bays that I saw during landing. The color of the sea looked very beautiful and I don’t remember seeing this color anywhere so far.

The beach was completely empty and it felt like a private beach.

The beach has a set of stones coated in orange color naturally, and therefore they are called bay of fires. The Bay of Fires is a region of white beaches, blue water and orange-hued granite produced by lichen, a kind of algae found in that region.

We continued our drive further south along the coast and all the beaches on the way looked similar and beautiful. It was an extremely scenic coastal drive. We thanked sun for being there for us during the day, otherwise we could have missed this beautiful color.

We had our lunch at Binnalong bay and continued our journey towards Wineglass bay. We had to take a ticket to the Freycinet national park and started our trek to Wineglass bay lookout. This was the only place in my bucket list of Tasmania trip initially, as the wineglass bay lookout happened to be one of the google wallpapers that appear on my phone screen regularly. I checked its source one day which is when I realized that it was from Tasmania 🙂

Though we planned to do this track on the next day, looking at the weather prediction, we decided to finish it the same day. It was a moderate trek of around 3kms, which had a considerable number of steps along the way to reach the lookout point.

After an hour of trek with a few view point stops in between, we finally reached the wineglass bay. The place had a scary story behind the name. While we assumed that it was named after its shape, the actual story is something different. When the whaling stations operated there in 1800’s, the water in the bay used to turn red with the slaughtered creatures’ blood. From the lookout points on the hills it looked like a glass being filled with red wine. The whaling luckily stopped and the water is back to its original color 🙂

It was a beautiful lookout point overlooking the bay with coles bay on the other side of the hills. There was a further walk to the top of this hill from where the actual wallpaper photo was shot, which was a very long one. We decided to go back from the lookout point after a couple of photographs. I would love to go back to this place again and trek down to reach the bay. There was no road route to reach this bay, it can be reached through boats or trekking.

We reached our hotel with a beach view by sunset time and the sky looked beautiful.

It was a tiring day after the trek and long drive. We prepared our dinner and rested for the day hoping to catch sunrise from our room’s balcony the next day.

Day 4: Port Arthur

I set my alarm to 5:40am to catch sunrise and luckily managed to wake up to watch the magical sight from our balcony. It was completely worth waking up early 🙂 The sky color and reflections of the cloud created the magic and it was absolutely stunning! Though I planned to sleep after watching sunrise, I couldn’t sleep after watching this. I sat down in the balcony just watching sun move along the sky.

We got ready, said goodbye to the place and started our journey to Port Arthur. On the way, we stopped at Kates berry farm. The Desserts cafe there is very famous, with several fresh berry ice creams, which overlooks rows of berries to breathtaking views of Great Oyster Bay. It was a good ice cream break in between 🙂

We continued our journey along the bay to our first stop, Spiky Bridge on convict’s trail. The bridge was constructed by convicts for the removal of water from the bridge roadway. The reason why the “spikes” were incorporated in the design remains a mystery. One of the often quoted reasons for the spikes was to stop cows from falling over the edge into the gully. Another reason given is that when the bridge was constructed, the convicts responsible for the construction wanted to exact some form of revenge of their supervisor and thus started sticking the rocks in the wrong way, thereby starting a decorative trend that became responsible for the bridge’s name!

We continued our journey further to reach unpaved road and it felt shocking to see this kind of road in Tasmania. Though we initially thought that google maps misguided us, we realized that there was no other alternate route and it took really long time to get over this patch.

I loved the color of the water as we reached closer to Port Arthur.

We reached the entrance of the Port Arthur heritage site, which was a huge campus. It felt funny to pay an entrance ticket to go to a jail 😀 The tagline of the jail says “A machine to grind rogues honest”. We wanted to explore the Australian history and took an entry ticket, which includes a guided tour and boat trip along the other convict sites. There were many other tours there like Isles of Dead cemetry tour and Ghost tour. This was the first time I saw a Ghost tour and I wondered what they would show as part of that 😛

The only jail that i have visited so far is the Nazi Concentration camp in Munich which was grueling and emotionally draining experience. I was little apprehensive to enter a jail again. To my surprise, the campus looked like a huge garden with a set of forts and palaces. It nowhere looked like a jail, which felt interesting.

Many buildings on the campus were destroyed by bush fires a century back.

We went on a boat tour which showed us a cemetery and juvenile prison, it was a bit boring.

We skipped the guided tour and explored the museum. It felt funny to see the kind of crimes few people are convicted for, like “stealing a handkerchief”. I wondered if that was the correct reason documented or if they just wanted to reduce the population of their country by sending some here. I found the same reason listed for many convicts there.

The convict site map looked like Australia, particularly areas around Sydney had many convict sites.

I don’t remember marketing around Nazi camp in Munich, it felt very real. This place had a lot of books, memoirs, souvenirs, cafe etc..at this place. This is supposedly the first convict site in Australia.

After spending around two hours there, we drove to our hotel near Hobart.

The weather had been unpredictable today as well, it changed from sunny to cloudy and rainy by the evening. We stayed at night in a house in Franklin, a suburb of Hobart. It was a huge house for three of us in a proper residential area. We enjoyed the place, cooked dinner and relaxed for the day.

Day 5: Hobart, Bruny Island

As soon as we woke up, we could clearly see the peak of the mountain with slight snow from our house window, which was covered by clouds the previous day. We decided to check-out places around Hobart and explore the city today.

Our first point was Mount Wellington summit, from where we get to see the complete view of Hobart city.

Unfortunately, the road was closed beyond a point due to some issues and we could get only a partial 180 degree view of the city.

There were many treks starting from that point and we decided to take a small one. We took upon the circle track, with an Octopus tree as attraction in the middle of the track. It was a moderate bush walk which took around an hour to reach the tree.

We were relieved after looking at the Octopus tree board, as many people going back on our way informed us that they missed the tree and it was not easily visible from the trek path. We were skeptical on if we were aiming for something in the dark, but luckily we found it.

The specialty of the tree is that it was a giant one with eight roots going under the ground to find water. That could be the reason it grew really big. No other tree nearby looked even closer to this.

We drove to the city center from there, parked our car and walked along the streets towards Salamanca market. The buildings of the city looked old, yet stylish.

Salamanca Market is located on Hobart’s waterfront and is one of Australia’s largest and most vibrant outdoor markets. It is open on only Saturdays till afternoon and we were lucky to be in the city on a Saturday. There were more than 300 stalls set up along the gracious, tree-lined and historic Salamanca Place to showcase arts, crafts, jewellery, fresh food and produce, collectables and homewares. It was fun roaming around the streets exploring these stalls. We had our lunch there at one of the food stalls.

We left the market around 3pm when the stalls are about to be closed. We didn’t have any plan in our mind for the second half of the day and a quick google search suggested Bruny Island trip. Though it was a full day tour, we decided to go and explore the island on our own for a half day.

Bruny Island is an island which is not connected to Hobart through road route, a transport boat takes us to the island. It is always fun to be on a boat in a car with great views across and we enjoyed the ride across the sea 🙂

It took around 10-15mins to reach Bruny island after which we drove to the Neck, the place where two sides of the island is separated by just a small piece of land and it felt like a bird Neck. I expected to see water on the both sides of the road, but we had to climb to a point to observe this shape 🙂 We were completely enthralled by the beauty of this place.

And then comes the best part of the day, a double rainbow over the sea. It was raining on and off during our drive and I looked all over to spot a rainbow. I couldn’t explain my excitement when I found this and I jumped like a small child looking at this beautiful rainbow :). My first sight of rainbow on the ocean and it was impeccable.

The place looks isolate and completely serene and we wished to get into the waters of the ocean. There was a place near the beach stating penguin viewing area. They provided timings of penguins, which is after sunset. We just went around the beach for sometime in a hope to spot atleast one of them 😉 We wished to stay there till sunset time, but we had no option but to leave as our last transport boat was around 7pm and sunset is after 8pm 😐

There are other interesting places in this island like lighthouse etc, but we had to start our journey back to catch our transport boat and we regretted reaching this island in the late afternoon.

We took our transport boat back and we were surprised to find another rainbow there 🙂

As we drove further, the sky is filled with dark clouds and it felt as if it was dusk.

The clouds slowly cleared with few drops and a rainbow on the other side of the road 🙂 I just wished to see one and these are all bonus, felt like a perfect rainbow day.

Just before we reached Hobart, we stopped by a small village(Huonville) in Huon Valley. It was a very beautiful river flowing along this village.

To our surprise, we found one more rainbow there too after a light shower 😀

Wow, what an amazing day filled with rainbows and beautiful nature 🙂 Seriously, we had some bit of luck and blessings showered upon us to witness this magic! Bruny Island is a must visit place for anyone visiting Tasmania.

Day 6: Hobart, Back to Sydney

Today we have our flight in the afternoon and we had to check-out our room by 10am. Having nothing much to do, we drove around Hobart to explore the beaches and different suburbs. Our first stop was at Clifton beach and we found many kids learning surfing there. It was a perfect family beach.

We further drove to Opossum Bay, where we found a strange animal and we had to google it to find its name – “Alpaca”. It felt like cross breed of two animals. One more strange species got added to our list after coming to Australia 😀

There was a beautiful jetty with Tessellated pavement beside it. It was a beautiful spot on the other end of Hobart.

Look, what we found, a star fish. Don’t know how it reached that place though.

Lol, time is running slow today 🙂 We had to search for few more spots on our way to airport. The Richmond Bridge is a heritage listed arch bridge located near Hobart. We relaxed in the park for sometime with kids and ducks playing around us. We could see the Sunday mood all along the city with families coming out to relax in beaches and gardens.

We found a beautiful lookout near the airport – Rosny Hill lookout, which overlooks the Tasman bridge and the city.

We had our lunch and reached the airport recollecting our trip memories. The only place I felt we could have done better in our entire trip was the Bruny Island. I seriously didn’t expect to see this much wilderness in this place. Southern lights was also in our bucket list as part of our trip, but we were happy with the places around that we didn’t get a chance to think about them. Also with the clouds in the sky on most of the days, it would have been a tough task spotting them.

Overall, it was an amazing experience filled with surprises all along. This small island has everything that nature can bless it with: Mountains, Forests, Rivers, Turquoise beaches 🙂 Kerala in India is called God’s own country, I can easily give that title in Australia to Tassie, may be something like God’s own state in Australia 🙂 Otherwise, how can it be the only state in Australia without a desert!