Tasmania Touring Tips

Tips for Planning your Tasmanian Itinerary

How fast do you move and how long have you got?

Consider your pace of travel and your time frame – This is probably your first and most important consideration. Most of us (with the exception of some very lucky grey nomads or lotto winners) have a fairly specific time frame that they will be using to plan their holiday.

Your time frame may influence whether you plan a “Bit of Everything Tour” of Tassy or maybe you’d prefer to concentrate on one area and do it really well eg North West & Tarkine.

Your decision might also depend on whether you are planning to come back to Tasmania in the future – we knew that we could fly back into Hobart in the future and use a hire car to explore the Hobart Region, so we didn’t spend a lot of time there on this trip.

We had 21 days available in Tassy and we particularly wanted to explore the north west and western regions – but we also wanted to finish by doing a quick trip up the Eastern side – we felt it would at least give us a good overview of Tassy. We also would recommend allowing a reasonable time for travelling to/from Melbourne if you’re going by ferry.

Factor in the extra travel times for Tasmania

You’ll notice when you’re in Tassy that many of the road signs list the time to the next destination, not the distance. This may seem strange at first, but you’ll soon discover why. In many areas, the winding roads and steep hills and descents mean that travel time is around double what you would normally expect for the same kilometres on the mainland.

We were trying to be realistic with our itinerary, but even so we were caught out a few times with just how long it took to travel what seemed like a short distance – especially on the Tasman Peninsula around Port Arthur – lots of stops and winding roads makes for a long day!

You can use the http://www.discovertasmania.com.au/travel-information/distance-and-drive-times information to help you get a rough idea of travel times. Don’t forget to factor in those photos stops!

Take it personally

Consider your interests and priorities – What really interests you? Are you a historic churches fan or are you more at home flying through the trees on a flying fox? Make sure you don’t fall into the trap of feeling like you have to see everything you drive past or see on the map – choose the attractions that really interest you and you’ll find you have a much more meaningful holiday.

Remember that there are always alternatives out there – when we arrived in Strahan everyone was booking the 6 hour Gordon River cruise. We felt that we wanted to do something a bit different so we looked around and found a 1 hour scenic flight which landed on the Gordon River – in a really isolated spot which the main boats can’t get to. It was a fantastic adventure and we were so glad we did it.

If you want an itinerary that will really be tailor-made for you then using websites like DiscoverTasmania.com.au and gobehindthescenery.com.au will help you out. These websites allow you to search on either the Type of Attraction eg Historic, Natural, Adventure, Cultural etc or search by the Region eg North West, East Coast, Hobart & Surrounds. This allows you to create an itinerary that will be the most fun for you.

If you enjoy bush walking like us then download the 60 Great Short Walks Fact sheets and App from the Parks website – you could easily build a whole trip itinerary just based on these Walks.

The Parks Factsheets from the same website also give you excellent information about each National Park and the facilities available .

The Wikicamps site is a great source of up-to-date information about various camp sites – we used this to find camping areas as we needed them – but the website could also assist you in making a few itinerary plans.

Itineraries vs Flexibility ? Should we book accommodation in advance?

There is definitely a compromise when deciding whether to make advance bookings for sites or not. On one hand it is great to just be able to stay wherever you happen to end up each night and just go with the flow. On the other hand, you can waste an awful lot of time driving around looking for accommodation if everything is booked out by late afternoon.

We tried to get the best of both worlds – we booked at Cradle Mountain before we arrived in Tassy, we also booked a few days in advance for all our stops up the East Coast (places like Coles Bay, St Helens) – so we could arrive quite late in the afternoon and still pack plenty of sightseeing into our days. For everywhere else in Tassy though we just winged it – it generally wasn’t’ a problem.

We were travelling outside of School holidays however it was still considered peak season, and in the very busy areas such a Strahan, Cradle Mountain and Coles Bay, advance bookings would probably be a good idea. We had booked in for Cradle Mountain as it was our first stop after leaving the Ferry – we were glad we had made a booking when we arrived as it was very busy. We didn’t make a booking for Strahan, we just turned up at about 3pm. There were no powered sites left in any of the van parks by that time – but we managed to get one of the last unpowered sites which actually turned out to be a nice spot. That was probably a bit of a gamble and made us realise that as we got closer to Hobart it would probably pay to ring ahead to check on availability.

Other issues for Tasmania:

Quarantine for all fruit & vegetables going into Tasmania – so plan on stopping in to restock shortly after arriving in Tassy. See the Ferry website for full information. There are no quarantine restrictions when going back from Tasmania to Melbourne.

No Gas cylinders on Ferry – except those plumbed into van – so loose cans for portable BBQ’s are to be handed in before driving on and get them when you arrive.

Drinking water in Tasmania– Despite the “Clean Green” image of Tasmania, there are several towns in Tasmania on Permanent Water Boil Status and others where the water is not potable due to heavy metal contamination. We always asked either the locals or the staff at van parks before filling our tanks anywhere. If in doubt, stick with bottled water. When bush walking don’t fill your water bottles from creeks or streams unless you know for sure the water is OK – eg the streams leading into Montezuma’s falls are contaminated by old Tin mines and the water is not suitable for drinking. Refer to http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/peh/alerts/resources/standing_health_alerts for more information on Standing Health Alerts in Tasmania – there are more than you’d think!