‘What a treat’: The perfect Tassie road trip itinerary

Looking for the perfect Tassie road trip itinerary that unearths stunning vistas, charming accommodation, renowned wineries and memorable food? This is the trip to take.

A trilby-hatted musician is rocking Paul Kelly’s Careless in the beer garden of an historic pub in rural Tasmania.

“How many cabs in New York City?” seems an incongruous line in these parts but on this wintry afternoon the children are dancing, literally running rings around their parents who move to the 1989 hit song.

The Red Feather Cooking School owner Lydia Nettlefold.

Sunday afternoon at Evandale’s Clarendon Arms hotel is magic. And if it wasn’t for the pub’s owner, Lydia Nettlefold, who for years ran the sumptuous Red Feather Inn where we’d been staying in nearby Hadspen, we might have missed the experience altogether.

Nettlefold insisted we call in for a drink at the 1847 pub she has been lavishly restoring over five years.

What a treat. Every room – and there is a multitude upstairs and down – has a different aesthetic but all brim with opulent vintage treasures collected over a lifetime of travelling.

There’s much to love about Evandale. A 10-minute drive south of Launceston, it has well-preserved heritage buildings, bespoke boutiques, and quality Sunday markets.

It is also where the acclaimed Glover Prize for contemporary landscape painting is held every March, and the National Penny Farthing Championships in February. Ten years ago, you could have snapped up a characterful cottage for less than $80,000, an antique dealer tells us. Now, you need to add another zero, thanks to Covid and the influx of people from Sydney and Melbourne working from their new home.

Today is the last of our 11-day Tassie road trip and we’re in no hurry to leave. When we hatched our plan six months earlier – three school friends escaping the daily grind – we envisaged chatter over wine and cheese, long walks in the wilderness, and a gentle reframing of reality after pandemic chaos.

Author Kylie Lang at a Tasmanian winery.

We insisted on our own bedrooms – raising seven sons between us, a modicum of luxury was the least we deserved – and didn’t want to be loading suitcases into our hire car every other day. The goal was relaxation. Tasmania delivered, uncoiling once-tight springs at every turn.

Our first three nights were in North Hobart, in a rose-gardened cottage found on Airbnb. It was ideal for sampling the restaurants on Elizabeth St – try the Chinese fried chilli omelette at Room For A Pony and Vietnamese meatballs at Boodle Beasley – and the culinary attractions of Hobart a half-hour’s walk away. Put Suzie Luck’s (Asian), Blue Eye (seafood) and Da Angelo (Italian) on your list, and Saturday’s Salamanca markets for Bruny Island oysters, kebabs and farm produce.

The Museum of Old and New Art, best reached by ferry from Franklin Wharf, was high on our agenda. Architecturally impressive, MONA is the epitome of edgy with its three-level gallery space cut into an ancient sandstone cave. The grounds are superb, there’s cool jazz on the outdoor stage, and a raft of food options including the Spanish-inspired Faro restaurant.

Set aside 45 minutes for a wine tasting at Moorilla’s upstairs cellar door, where the pinot is as pretty as the view.

In all fairness, we didn’t drink any bad wine in Tasmania. Not that we could ever cover all 95 cellar doors but the handful we did left lasting impressions.

Wineglass Bay in Tasmania.

Stefano Lubiana, 25-minutes’ drive north of Hobart in Granton, is a grand estate dripping with rustic Italian charm. We loved its chardonnay. The vineyard is also not far from the village of New Norfolk which has a glamorous antique gallery, The Drill Hall Emporium.

The picturesque Pooley Wines, in Richmond east of Hobart and conveniently on our route to Coles Bay and Freycinet National Park, does wood-fired pizza on a Sunday, and a terrific Matilda sparkling.

From our base in Coles Bay we found our favourite pinot. While Freycinet Vineyards’ tasting room is modest, the wine is anything but, and Claudio Radenti, who knows the region inside out, also makes a sparkling to rival the French.

The slick Devil’s Corner, also in Apslawn, is worth a stop, especially for the ocean views and fish and chips.

Coles Bay itself is a pretty spot but we found next-level wow factor hiking the 2.5km Wineglass Bay trail in the national park. Framed by the pink granite Hazards mountains, the perfectly curved bay shimmers from the lookout. You can also head down to Wineglass Bay beach if you’re happy to navigate the 1000 steps down and back.

Our last four nights were in Hadspen, and we broke up the trip north-west with a pit stop in Bicheno, a casually chic coastal town where the lobster rolls and oysters at the windswept Lobster Shack are matched by views of seals basking on the rocks of Governor Island.

Delicious lobster roll.

Cutting across through St Mary’s, where an old railway station has been converted into a museum, we made Hadspen’s Red Feather Inn at dusk.

It is a gorgeous heritage property and we count ourselves lucky to have experienced it before Nettlefold handed the reins to the Tasmanian Walking Company in June.

Hadspen is 15 minutes’ drive from Launnie – or Lonnie, depending on which local you ask – where we marvelled at the Cataract Gorge, savoured artisan cheeses at the Saturday Harvest Market, strolled through City Park and the magnificent John Hart Conservatory, and dined at Stillwater where the Clover Country lamb rump with mixed grain and herb salad was hands down the dish of the trip.

North in the Tamar Valley wine region we adored the sparkling rose at Delamere, the gamay at Sinapius (a tribute to the late Vaughn Dell who died in 2020 at age 39, leaving wife Linda to take over winemaking), and the savagnin rare white at Stoney Rise in its lofty architecturally designed cellar door.

The Clarendon Arms Hotel at Evandale.

South of Launceston is Josef Chromy, which in April sold for $55m to liquor giant Endeavour Group.

The sprawling estate created in 2004 by Chromy, who emigrated in 1950 after fleeing Soviet and Nazi occupation of what was then Czechoslovakia, is simply stunning.

It seemed only fitting on our last day to toast the Tassie wine pioneer with a glass of his pinot, at the Clarendon Arms Hotel.

Tasmania had been good to us, and for us.

The writer flew courtesy of Virgin, with some travel courtesy of Tourism Tasmania