A writer who recently moved to Tasmania thought she knew her new home state. Then she spent 12 days circling it with Outback Spirit's Tasmanian Wilderness Explorer tour — and came back floored. The itinerary covers nearly 2,000 kilometres from Hobart, and the highlights read like a greatest-hits list of the island.
The centrepiece is Cradle Mountain. On day six, the group walks the six-kilometre Dove Lake circuit beneath the 1,545-metre dolerite peak, spotting pademelons in the Ballroom Forest and wombats (one named Willamina by the group) around the visitor centre. Rain is always a risk in Tassie, but skies cleared enough for the mountain to appear in full definition against a blue sky.
Before that, the tour dips into the state's convict past at Port Arthur, flies by helicopter over Freycinet National Park for a look at Wineglass Bay's pink granite meeting aqua water, and stops at Woolmers Estate to sniff through 350 rose varieties in its UNESCO-listed gardens. There are scones at the Van Diemen Ice Creamery before climbing The Nut, Stanley's flat-topped volcanic plug, plus a stop at Australia's oldest bridge in Richmond.
The second half heads west and south. Queenstown greets visitors with its lovingly restored 100-year-old art deco Paragon Theatre and the rust-coloured Queen River, still stained decades after mining ceased. A Gordon River Cruise crosses Macquarie Harbour through Hells Gates to the Franklin Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, where a 400-metre boardwalk runs under 500-year-old myrtle beech. Sarah Island, once a brutal penal outpost for reoffending convicts, now has daisies and wattle growing over the ruins. Then it's Lake St Clair, Greg Duncan's extraordinary 100-metre Huon pine carving at The Wall in the Wilderness, and an open-air boat ride past Bruny Island's sea cliffs and seals — all capped by snow falling on cue atop Mount Wellington.
What makes the format work is the vehicle and the crew. Travellers ride a 26-seat Mercedes-Benz coach-body truck with big windows and leather seats, driven by husband-and-wife team Maddy and Robin Gentle, who summer in Tasmania and winter running similar tours in Queensland. They orchestrate multi-course roadside lunches of local cheese and fruit, keep tea on tap, and enforce wombat right-of-way. Meals lean local: share plates of beef carpaccio with garlic flowers and gnocchi at Launceston's Grain of the Silos, plus nightly cheese tastings.
The tour costs from $10,190 per person for the 12 days, with all meals and experiences included — premium pricing, but you're buying logistics-free access to a big, spread-out state where driving yourself means narrow roads and long days. It suits travellers who want depth without planning, wildlife encounters on the animals' terms, and a group atmosphere that loosens up by the third dinner. If you'd rather go it alone, the itinerary doubles as a ready-made route: Hobart, Freycinet, Launceston, Cradle Mountain, Stanley, Queenstown, Strahan and Bruny Island make a very solid self-drive loop.
