A FESTIVAL OF THE SENSES IN Tasmania

In a troubled world, it’s wonderful to have a place of such natural beauty and certainty as Tasmania.

You can be swallowing a perfect fresh oyster straight from Barilla Bay within five minutes of collecting your luggage at Hobart Airport. How good is that?

Get on a bicycle at the top of Mount Wellington overlooking Hobart for an exhilarating downhill ride all the way to Constitution Dock, where you can board a catamaran for a trip down to Peppermint Bay for lunch. On the way, you may well see mighty sea eagles swooping down for a snack or a dolphin enjoying a surf in the bow wave of your vessel. Kettering and Woodbridge nestle into the coast on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel opposite Bruny Island. It’s a tranquil setting within a dramatic coastline.

Stop off in the Huon Valley for a jet-boat ride up the river of the same name, following its dark water through swirling rapids, savouring the freshly scrubbed air off the Southern Ocean. All this and you’re barely into your first day of your Tasmanian discovery!

Luxury accommodation & cottages in Tasmania

Head out from Hobart through historic Richmond and its old sandstone bridge to Port Arthur and the former penal settlement from the early 19th Century. It’s a place of great beauty tinged with a poignancy of hardship and pain. It’s a diversion well worth taking, as it really is one of modern Australia’s “sacred sites”.

You can head up through the heart of Tasmania to Launceston, with a stop for coffee at Ross, a picturesque village that seems barely to have changed in half a century. You won’t be able to miss the fine war memorial in the main street. Alternatively, keep heading up the east coast to Coles Bay, the Freycinet National Park and Wineglass Bay, long said to be among the most perfect beaches on the planet.

The Tamar Valley, of which Launceston is the principal town, has become the centre for a thriving wine-growing industry in recent years, and there are plenty of cellar-door operations only too happy to let you sample their various vintages.

Anyone with a taste for beer shouldn’t miss Boag’s Centre for Beer Lovers, housed in an historic hotel directly across the road from Boag’s Brewery, which has been brewing in Launceston since 1883. You’ll get a chance to see the modern beer in production, sample some of the amber liquid and see the equipment and characters in photographs from the early days of Tasmania’s northern city.

The north coast of Tasmania has lots to commend it, with villages such as Port Sorell and Hawley Beach being a favourite fishing and boating playground to generations of Tasmanians. The Port Sorell Conservation Area comprises 70 hectares of foreshore and woodland, from Panatana Rivulet to Squeaking Point.