Tasmanian holidayers take think global, act local axiom to heart

Tasmanians are taking more holidays in the Apple Isle, helping to keep the local tourism industry afloat.

Angela and Daniel Longey, with their children Ayla, Sage and Henry, explore Coles Bay on Tasmania’s Freycinet Peninsula. Picture: Peter Mathew

When Daniel and Angela Longey and their three children checked in at Freycinet Lodge on Thursday afternoon, there was time to relax on the west-facing beach at picturesque Coles Bay with some 15 members of the extended Longey family: grandparents, siblings and children.

Angela Longey, a stay-at-home mother, and husband Daniel, an engineer, live in Huonville, south of Hobart. They had planned family trips to Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast before border restrictions scuppered their plans.

“We felt it was time to get out and about and enjoy Tasmania,” said Angela after the three-hour drive north to Coles Bay. “After all, we can’t go anywhere else.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has rendered Tasmania largely in­accessible to outsiders, and hammered home the moat-encircled island state’s remoteness, but a mere two cases of the virus in the past few months has encouraged locals such as the Longeys to embrace the wild places and scenic spots in their own backyard.

That this has happened in winter, traditionally a dead tourist season, has given the state’s tourism industry a dash of unexpected good cheer.

Pumphouse Point, at Lake St Clair, opened its doors to Tasmanians for weekends in July. “While the market here is too small to sustain our normal seven-night operation, it’s hugely positive to see a strong demand for locals to have new wilderness experiences in their own backyard,” said marketing manager Susie Cretan.

“Our weekends are almost fully booked until November.”

Cretan traces Tasmanians’ renewed passion for the state’s landscape to March 26, when the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service closed off national parks amid peak COVID panic. “There was a sudden realisation of how much those parks mean, and how much we take them for granted,” she said. “Tasmanians started to feel really cooped up. Ever since then, they’ve been thinking, ‘We need to make the most of these special places’.”

Partly as a result of this, advanced bookings for the six-day Overland Track from November to January 2021 sold out within hours when they opened in July.

Many small country and coastal inns and B&B’s are also thriving in adversity. “It’s been absolutely incredible,” said Kerry Houston, owner of the seven-room Ship-Inn Stanley in the state’s northwest.

“Our occupancy this winter is higher than in the peak of summer. We’ve got wait lists and we’re turning people away. Some are coming because they had a trip booked in the south of France or hiking in Croatia and they can’t go — but they really seem to be enjoying this isolated corner of the state.”

Nicole Bauche, media manager at the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, said weekends and school holidays had been among the busiest times. “The shuttle bus at Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park carried over 14,000 Tasmanians into the park in July. This is only 11 per cent below numbers in July 2019, despite no visitors from interstate or overseas.”

The University of Tasmania’s Institute for Social Change has been tracking Tasmanian attitudes during the pandemic to help shape public policy. In two surveys a month apart, 2300 respondents listed “access to nature” as the third-most important priority behind access to quality healthcare and affordable housing, and ahead of access to quality education and the arts.

When asked what restrictions they would like lifted first, 70 per cent said national parks, reserves and beaches. In contrast, only 39 per cent of men and 30 per cent of women wanted restrictions on schools lifted first.

Institute director Libby Lester says while many Tasmanians were enjoying reclaiming the island’s natural assets from the up to 1.35 million tourists who were visiting annually prior to COVID-19, no one knew how long enthusiasm for local places would last. “Only about a quarter of respondents wanted border restrictions to lift, but I am not sure if that will last beyond one Tasmanian winter.”