Tasmania Region Guide

Tasmania has the cleanest air measured anywhere on earth, a fifth of the island under World Heritage protection, and a food and drink scene out of all proportion to a population of half a million.

The friction is that it is an island and it behaves like one. Everything must be flown or shipped in, which is why prices run above the mainland; the roads are slower than the distances suggest; and the weather changes without warning, which on the highland tracks is a genuine hazard rather than a nuisance.

Allow more days than the map implies — a week minimum — and drive rather than plan a circuit. Come between December and March, when the walking is reliable and the light lasts until nine, and book the Overland Track and MONA well in advance.

If you travel slowly

Base in the south and use Hobart as a hub. Bruny Island, the Huon and the Tasman Peninsula are all day trips, and none is improved by hurrying.

If you want to see the essentials

MONA, Port Arthur, Cradle Mountain and Freycinet. A week driving, which is genuinely the minimum for those four.

If you seek local character

A Saturday at Salamanca Market, oysters bought at the farm gate on Bruny, and a cool-climate winery in the Tamar or Coal River valleys.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

The southwest wilderness — no roads, reached by light plane or boat — and the Tarkine in the northwest, the largest temperate rainforest in Australia and largely unvisited.

Tasmanian Aboriginal people were not wiped out. The palawa community survives, and the widely repeated claim that Truganini was "the last Tasmanian" is false and deeply resented. Aboriginal-guided experiences exist — wukalina Walk among them — and are the right way to encounter this history.

Port Arthur is a place of suffering twice over: a convict penal station, and the site of a 1996 massacre. The memorial garden is not a photo opportunity, and staff will not discuss the perpetrator by name.

Phytophthora and chytrid — root-rot fungus and frog disease — are spread on boots. Use the wash-down stations at track heads; they exist for a reason and are the main defence for the highland flora.

Roadkill is a serious problem here, including of Tasmanian devils, which then feed on carcasses and are hit in turn. Do not drive between dusk and dawn if you can avoid it.

December to March is the best window: warm days, long light, and the highland walking tracks reliably open.

February is the driest and busiest month, and the one to book well ahead.

April and May bring the turning of the fagus — Australia's only native deciduous tree — in the highlands, a short and genuinely distinctive event.

June to August is cold, wet and dark, with snow on the highlands. Dark Mofo in June is the exception that fills Hobart deliberately.

Whatever the month, the highlands can produce snow, sun and gale in the same afternoon. Plan for it in summer too.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs region average