The recruiting pitch for Hobart is a geography lesson: almost everything worth a weekend sits within an hour or two of the wards. This chapter is what people do with that — season by season, because in Hobart the seasons are not weather. They are the calendar.
Close to home
kunanyi’s summit and foothill tracks are fifteen minutes up the mountain road, with the Organ Pipes track a local favourite. Bruny Island’s oysters and sea cliffs are a twenty-minute drive and a car ferry from Kettering. Mount Field’s waterfalls, including Russell Falls, are an hour out through World Heritage forest. And the Tasman Peninsula’s Three Capes cliffs — with Port Arthur’s sobering, essential history — are ninety minutes away.
Driving times from the city, to scale against each other. The marked row is the one no other Australian capital can match — an alpine summit inside a quarter of an hour.
Indicative driving times. Winter mornings bring black ice on the mountain road, so the fifteen minutes becomes twenty-five and the locals’ advice is worth taking.
The festival year
Ten weekends, to start
- kunanyi’s summit by road, then down the Organ Pipes track
- Bruny Island via the Kettering ferry — cheese, oysters, the Neck at dusk
- Mount Field: Russell Falls and the tall-tree forests, an hour from town
- Port Arthur and the Tasman Peninsula’s sea cliffs
- Salamanca Market, walked slowly, coffee in hand
- A Coal River Valley cellar-door lunch
- MONA by ferry, then a long lunch back at the wharf
- Kingston Beach at golden hour
- Dark Mofo’s Winter Feast, booked the week tickets open
- Freycinet and Wineglass Bay, on a long weekend
Nine chapters on Hobart; the rest of the island — Launceston, the north-west coast, the wild west — lives in the Tasmania guide, and everything national in Moving to Australia. When you’re ready to talk about roles here, send us your CV.