Tasmania

⚠️ Entry rules and local regulations change without notice. Before booking, check entry requirements and local rules — visas, access, nature reserves, visitor quotas — with the official authorities.

Tasmania, the Australian island state separated from the mainland by the Bass Strait, is one of the last wild paradises on the planet. More than 40% of its territory is designated national park or world biosphere reserve. The Bay of Fires, with its rocks covered in bright orange lichen and its turquoise waters, is one of the most photographed beaches in Australia. Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair offer breathtaking hikes through a primeval landscape. Hobart, its capital, is home to MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art), one of the boldest private museums in the world.

Australia's wild island

Tasmania is the island state at the bottom of Australia, 68,000 km² — the size of Ireland — with half a million people and the cleanest air in the world measured at Cape Grim on its north-west tip. Nearly half of it is protected, and a fifth is the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area: temperate rainforest, buttongrass plains, glacial lakes and the jagged peaks of Cradle Mountain and Federation Peak. It is the last stronghold of the Tasmanian devil, and the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger, was hunted to extinction here in 1936.

Its history is heavier than the landscape suggests. Tasmania was Van Diemen's Land, the harshest of Britain's penal colonies — Port Arthur, on the Tasman Peninsula, is the best-preserved convict site in Australia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — and the Aboriginal Tasmanians were almost wiped out in the nineteenth century; their descendants are present and vocal today.

Hobart, the small capital on the Derwent under Mount Wellington, has become a cultural destination for one reason: MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, built into a sandstone peninsula by a gambler with a taste for the provocative, is the most visited attraction in the state. The east coast — Freycinet and Wineglass Bay, the Bay of Fires with its orange-lichened granite — is the island's postcard; the west is wilderness and the old mining town of Strahan on Macquarie Harbour.

December to March, with four seasons in a day

Summer — December to February — is the season: 17–23 °C, long days, the Overland Track and the coast at their best, and Hobart full for the Sydney–Hobart yacht race at New Year and the Taste of Summer festival. March and April are settled and quiet. Winter (June–August) is cold, wet in the west and snowy in the highlands; MONA's Dark Mofo festival in June fills the city. The weather changes fast in any month — the Roaring Forties blow straight in — so pack for everything.

Fly to Hobart or sail from Melbourne

⚠️ EU citizens need an eVisitor authority (free, online, issued within days) before travelling to Australia; a passport valid for the stay. Tasmania is reached by air to Hobart or Launceston from the mainland cities, or by the Spirit of Tasmania overnight ferry from Geelong to Devonport, which carries cars and campervans. There are no direct international flights from Europe; count 24 hours via Melbourne or Sydney.

Hire a car: the island is 300 kilometres across, distances are short by Australian standards, and the roads are good but winding — and watch for wildlife at dusk, when most accidents happen. The Overland Track (six days, Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair) is booked months ahead for summer. Eat the oysters, the salmon, the scallop pies and the cheeses; drink the cool-climate wines of the Tamar and Coal River valleys and the whisky that has made the island famous in the last twenty years.

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