5 Days in Hobart

Hobart's weekly street market started in 1972 and is now the most visited attraction in Tasmania, with over a million visitors a year. It fills Salamanca Place, a row of nineteenth-century sandstone warehouses from the days when Hobart was a working port and a whaling town, with stalls of local crafts, produce and food.

Go for the people-watching and the snacks rather than the souvenirs. Buy a hot scallop pie (the market is where visitors usually find one) or a coffee, walk the full length once, and note what you want to come back for. Look up at the warehouses too, not only at the stalls.

Walk up the hill behind Salamanca and you step into Battery Point, the old harbor-side quarter just behind the market. It is named after a battery of guns set up on the point in 1818, which fired salutes on ceremonial occasions and never had to repel an invasion, and the site is now Princes Park. Thanks to a green ban in the 1970s most of the original Georgian architecture survived.

The best corner is Arthur Circus, part of one of Australia's oldest subdivisions and one of its few planned circuses. Walk the lanes around it without a plan, then drift back downhill. The streets are steep, so wear shoes you can walk in.

A short walk from Arthur Circus, at 57-59 Hampden Road, is a long-established Battery Point bakery and one of Hobart's institutions. Its pie cabinet includes beef, lamb and, because this is Tasmania, wallaby, a lean native meat that most visitors have never eaten.

Order a pie, a pastry and a coffee and eat at a table, then walk back downhill to the museum.

Walk back downhill to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, known as TMAG, which dates back to 1846 and began with the Royal Society of Tasmania, the oldest Royal Society outside England. Entry to the main collections is free, which makes it the best way to understand the island before you drive around it.

Pick one or two galleries and skip the rest. The Tasmanian history and natural history rooms are the ones that answer the questions you will have on the road: who was here first, who built what, and what lives in the bush.

Constitution Dock is the small rock-walled basin where the yachts of the Sydney to Hobart race tie up after the finish. The dock sits on Sullivans Cove, and the deep water is why big ships could tie up right at the warehouses. For most of the year it is a calm square of masts and moored boats, and in the days after Christmas it is where the race fleet arrives.

Walk the wharves and look for the bronze statues of polar explorers along the waterfront. Hobart has long been a gateway to Antarctica, and it was here that Roald Amundsen announced on 7 March 1912 that he had reached the South Pole.

Mures is the Victoria Dock seafood institution, a Tasmanian family business that has been going for 50 years and runs from fishing boat to plate. It has a casual lower deck and a more formal upper deck, and Kelp Bar on the top floor serves 12 AUD cocktails, drinks and small plates from 4pm to 7pm every day.

Order whatever fish is local that day. Deep-sea trevalla, salmon, scallops and lobster are all Tasmanian specialties.

The best way to reach Mona is by water, and the museum is designed that way. A high-speed catamaran runs between Brooke Street Pier and the museum in about 30 minutes, and you arrive at the foot of 99 steps (an accessible entrance goes through a tunnel). You can sit on sheep or tigers, and there are bars on board.

The standard ride is enough for most people. The Posh Pit is a private lounge and deck with free drinks and small food, and it is a splurge only if you like the idea of it.

The Museum of Old and New Art opened on 21 January 2011 and is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. It shows the collection of David Walsh, whose central themes are sex and death, and Walsh himself has called it a subversive adult Disneyland. The museum stands in the grounds of the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula, and most of it is underground, on three subterranean levels.

Go with an open mind and a phone with the app (The O), which is your guide to the building. The art mixes ancient and contemporary work, some of it meant to shock. You will love some pieces and hate others, and that is the point. A smart way to see it: take the lift to the bottom level and work your way up, so you end near the daylight and the bar.

Plan lunch on site rather than racing back to town. Mona's own advice is to come, catch the ferry, drink wine and eat oysters, and the museum sits in the grounds of the Moorilla winery. A glass of wine and a plate of oysters is the right way to rest your eyes between rooms.

Don't skip the lawns outside. They have a children's play area and plenty of hot chips, and they are the best place to sit and look at the river.

Back in the city, take the road up kunanyi. Wellington Park is free to enter and open seven days a week, and The Springs is a lookout and picnic stop on the way up the mountain, with a coffee stop and several short walks starting from it.

The easiest one is the short, level walk to Sphinx Rock, a sandstone platform with views of the Organ Pipes, Hobart and the Derwent River. The towering dolerite columns of the Organ Pipes are one of Tasmania's 60 Great Short Walks, reached along the Pinnacle Track from The Springs. Wear a windproof layer, since the mountain is noticeably colder than the city.

North Hobart is a short drive or bus ride north of the center, along Elizabeth Street, and it is where the State Cinema stands, an independent cinema more than 100 years old that shows local and international films. It is a neighborhood rather than a tourist strip, so you eat among locals instead of among cruise passengers.

Eat early, around 6pm, because you want to be on the mountain before the sun goes down. Pick a place with a short menu and a full room, and ask what's local. Opening days vary, so check that your pick is open on a Sunday. A quick meal takes less time than a long tasting menu.

The Pinnacle is the summit of kunanyi at 1,271 meters, reached by a sealed road about 22 km long from the city center. The enclosed observation shelter looks out over Hobart, the Derwent estuary and, on a clear day, the mountains of the World Heritage Area almost 100 km to the west. Mountain weather changes in minutes, so the view can be crystal clear or wrapped in cloud.

In November and December the sun sets between about 8pm and 8:50pm, which gives you time for dinner first. Dress as if it were winter: the mountain can hold snow even in summer. Drive down slowly in the dusk.

Richmond is 25 km northeast of Hobart and was once on the road to Port Arthur until the Sorell causeway opened in 1872 and took the traffic away. Today it is known for staying as it was, with Georgian sandstone buildings along its streets. Richmond Bridge had its foundation stone laid on 11 December 1823 and was finished by convict labor in 1825, and it is Australia's oldest bridge still in use. In 1832 George Grover, a gaoler whose duties included flogging prisoners, was pushed off it after falling asleep drunk, and no one was ever convicted.

Walk across the bridge, then spend 45 minutes in Richmond Gaol, built over 15 years between 1825 and 1840, open every day from 9am to 5pm. It is a self-guided visit through cells, courtyards and historic buildings at your own pace. If you have time, Old Hobart Town is a handbuilt model village of Hobart in the 1820s, made from original plans and open daily from 9am to 5pm.

Eaglehawk Neck is the doorway to the Tasman Peninsula. It is a strip of land about 400 meters long and less than 30 meters wide at its narrowest, and it was the only land connection for the Port Arthur prison. The authorities fenced it and guarded it with soldiers, traps and dogs, and the administration spread the rumor that the surrounding water was full of sharks.

Stop at the Tessellated Pavement, a flat rock surface at the sea's edge, cracked into polygons that look like a mosaic floor. It is natural, formed by fractures in the rock. A few minutes further south, the village of Doo Town has holiday houses with names that contain the word doo, a joke that began in 1935 when an architect named his weekend shack Doo I 99 and a neighbor answered with Doo Me.

Port Arthur began in September 1830 as a timber-getting camp, and from 1833 to 1877 it received the convicts judged the most hardened, the so-called secondary offenders who had kept offending after reaching Australia. It is one of the 11 sites of the Australian Convict Sites that UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage List on 31 July 2010. The sandstone ruins sit beside a quiet bay, which is part of the strangeness: the setting is beautiful, and the place was built to break people.

Begin with the short guide talks that come with your ticket, then walk to the Penitentiary and the Separate Prison, finished in 1853. The Separate Prison came out of Jeremy Bentham's ideas and marked a shift from physical punishment to psychological punishment, with prisoners kept apart in silence, because whippings were thought only to harden criminals. It was still harsh. In April 1996 a gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur, a tragedy that led to national limits on high-capacity guns. Treat that part of the site with quiet.

The harbor cruise is a complimentary 20 minutes included in your entry ticket, and it shows you the settlement from the side the convicts first saw it. Across the harbor lies Point Puer, where boys as young as nine were held at one of the British Empire's first prisons for boys. They were taught a trade, which in practice meant hard labor such as stone cutting.

If you want more, the Isle of the Dead tour is sold separately, takes about 45 minutes and visits the island cemetery, with more than 1,600 graves of which only a few are marked. The tour price (about 53 EUR, 85 AUD) includes site entry, so the extra is about 19 EUR (30 AUD) over the standard ticket.

There is a café for fresh sandwiches and a sit-down restaurant, the 1830 Restaurant & Bar, which serves Tasmanian seafood and game with local oysters among the starters. Both are on site, so you don't have to leave the grounds. The café is quicker, and the restaurant is the place for a slow lunch.

Eat in the middle of the visit rather than at the end, so you have the energy for the Separate Prison and the second half of the grounds.

On the way back, stop at the sea cliffs of Tasman National Park. The park protects some of the tallest dolerite sea cliffs in the world, at Cape Pillar and Tasman Island, and these two stops show you the cliff coast in a short visit. A 600-meter sealed circuit of about 20 minutes (Grade 1, wheelchair accessible) links Tasman Arch and Devils Kitchen, with views of both formations.

The big capes need a long walk: Cape Hauy is 4 hours return from Fortescue Bay. If you have 15 more minutes, the Remarkable Cave near Port Arthur has a viewing platform reached by steep steps. Stay behind the barriers at every cliff edge and keep children close.

Kettering is a 35-minute drive south of Hobart, and from there the car ferry crosses to Roberts Point on Bruny Island in 20 minutes. The service is run by Island Connections and operates every day of the year. It works on a queue, so your ticket is not for a specific sailing but for the next available ferry. All fares are return and the return ticket is open.

From 28 September 2026 visitor fares come in two types, Regular and Saver, and from 1 December to April the Regular fare costs more. A Saver fare, at designated off-peak times, is cheaper: about 32 EUR (50.90 AUD) for a car. Pedestrians cross free, but you won't get far on the island without a car.

Get Shucked is a locally owned and operated oyster farm and bar on the Bruny Island Main Road at Great Bay, not far from the ferry. The oysters are harvested, shucked and plated up daily, and you eat them on the spot. The oyster bar is open from 9:30am to 4:30pm daily.

Order a half-dozen natural oysters, add one cooked dish if you are hungry, and keep it simple. It's an early stop on the way down the island, so you can eat a long lunch of oysters and still have the afternoon for the cheese and The Neck.

A few minutes from the oyster bar, on the same road, is the island's cheese factory and craft brewery. It sits on a dairy farm that its makers call small-scale and sustainable, and they offer a free sampling of their cheeses and beers, and a chance to watch the cheesemakers and brewers at work.

Buy a few cheeses and a bottle of beer for a picnic. It is open seven days, from 10am to 4pm, and the shop also stocks a selection of Tasmanian wine, spirits and produce from other makers.

Bruny Island is really two islands, North and South Bruny, joined by a long, narrow sandy isthmus known as The Neck. It is the signature view of the island: a ribbon of sand with the sea on both sides. To see it, climb the timber stairs to Truganini Lookout, a few hundred steps up to a platform with a view in every direction.

The lookout is named after Truganini (1812-1876), an Aboriginal woman, and a memorial at the top honors her and the Nuenonne people who lived on Bruny Island before European settlement. Take time to read it. Truganini is often called the last Aboriginal Tasmanian, which is a myth: other Aboriginal Tasmanians outlived her, and their descendants are a living community today. The island is also an Important Bird Area, home to the world's largest population of the endangered forty-spotted pardalote.

Little penguins return to their burrows in the sand dunes at The Neck at dusk after a day fishing at sea. Boardwalks and a viewing platform let you watch them quietly, and the viewing season usually runs from spring to late summer.

Be honest about the clock: the last summer ferry from Roberts Point leaves at 7:15pm on weekdays and 7pm on weekends, and in November and December the sun doesn't set until about 8pm to 8:50pm. The penguins come ashore after that, so this stop only works if you sleep on the island. On a day trip, skip it and use the time for the lookout and a slow dinner before the ferry.

Wineglass Bay is the postcard of Tasmania: a curved white beach and crystal-clear water, backed by the pink granite of the Hazards, the mountain range that rises dramatically from the sheltered bays. Freycinet National Park was reserved in 1916, making it the oldest national park in Tasmania along with Mount Field.

The lookout track is 2.6 km return, Grade 3, and takes 1 to 1.5 hours, on a formed track with short steep hills. Go early to beat the day-trippers. A valid park pass is required: a daily pass for a vehicle with up to 8 people costs about 31 EUR (49.15 AUD), or 15 EUR (24.55 AUD) per person on foot, by bus or by bike.

If you are fit and have the energy, continue past the lookout and down to the beach. The full track is 6 km return, Grade 3, and takes 2.5 to 3.5 hours, which includes the lookout on the way. The reward is standing on the beach you saw from above.

Bring water, sun protection and something to eat. If you'd rather skip the beach, the lookout alone is a perfectly good morning, and you will have time for the other stops. Wineglass Bay is only reachable on foot or by boat.

Drive to Cape Tourville, on the eastern tip of the peninsula, for the lighthouse and a short walk along its lookouts. On a clear day you may be lucky enough to see white-bellied sea eagles circling above the cliffs.

On the way, stop at Sleepy Bay, a rocky bay with turquoise water and orange lichen-covered rocks. The walk down is 500 m return, Grade 3, and takes about 20 minutes. Both are an easy way to end the day without another big climb.

On the road back out of Coles Bay, at 1784 Coles Bay Road, is a working oyster farm with a sales room. Listings give its hours as 9am to 5pm, seven days a week, from October to May, and the sales room closes in July and August.

It is the obvious late lunch for a Freycinet day, and it sits on your way home, so you don't backtrack: oysters again, but this time from the east coast. Buy a dozen to eat on the spot or take away.