Places To Visit In Tasmania?

[discostig]

Hey all. I'm hiring a car for a week long visit to Tasmania over xmas. Staying in Bridport but planning to drive to see some sights. So far we have Port Arthur and Cradle Mountain as possibilities.

Interested in any other suggestions on areas that are interesting to see, and decent roads/views in between. Cheers!

Also it looks like it will be an FG G6...no XRs left dammit, open to other suggestions! Looking at just under $900 for Launceston airport hire of the FG G6 with Avis. Almost choked when I saw prices, even for a Yaris type...$600! I'm used to $30 a day metro rates. Spewing.

[Never had any say Panda]

Drive Hobart to strahn.. But go cross country..

Can stop at a big hydro electric station if that floats your boat..

Strahn does boat cruises.. Bloody awesome..

[Never had any say Panda]

Strahan* sorry..

The river is called the Gordon River.. Book a cruise on the Lady Jane Franklin II.. If you go 'Captains premium' or whatever it's called you get top deck, free piss all day, free food. If you like history you'll love that boat cruise.. Oh an dolphins..

Also the drive from Hobart to Strahan is windy/steep and if the curve warning sign says 15 it means 15.. You'll also pass through queens town which has a bit of history..

If you drive around the top of the island and do the main highways between cradle and launceston, I would recommend taking almost every exit and checking out the small towns your bypass..

[Never had any say Panda]

Not far from Bridgewater.. Small town called Hamilton.

Little old fashioned bakery there.. Makes scallop pies..

Seriously that pie was worth the entire cost of the trip to Tasmania..

[Dagabond]

Watch out for excess K charges, I got stung by that going from Alice to Darwin.

[discostig]

NHASP with the triple threat! Thanks man.

Yeah it has unlimited kms listed on the page. Does that really mean "Unlimited" though? Was yours?

[Never had any say Panda]

Our hire car was unlimited kays in Tasmania.. But we didn't do a lot of distance.. Chewed a sh*t load of fuel in the windy stuff though..

We did Hobart - Strahan - Cradle - launceston..

But we also checked out Mt Wellington.. Didn't get to Port Arthur.. But we stopped at a heap of other places as we drove around..

[Rab]

West Coast is brilliant for the drive itself.

Best roads and every corner brings a new vista to look at.

As said ^^ - the "suggested speed" signs are (unlike everywhere else) honest.

Reducing radius corners, proper camber on the roads, well maintained tar makes the Tassie roads my favorite to spend a week on the bike on.

West Coast (Strahan up to Cradle Mountain) is a friggin brilliant ride/drive

The road out of (towards Hobart) Queenstown is a great hill for a blast up.

That said - the stretch from Queenstown to New Norfolk is one of the most boring stretches of road I've ever come across - painful. Not to mention that all you get at the end is New Norfolk - Take all the bad bits out of a bogan lifestyle and put them together in one place; that's New Norfolk.

Things to see:

Richmond - bit of a touristy old town, but you have to get a photo with the misses under the old bridge. It'll be a shot for the mantle peice

Cadbury Chocolate Factory - Can't do a Tassie trip without doing the tour

Seafood at Mures in Hobart docks - make sure you book for upstairs

Wineglass Bay

More than anything else - Stop often at the tourist interest points along the drive. As I said above - it's a totally new region every corner and some of the most spectacular places to see aren't highlighted by anything more than a single brown signpost.

Devils Marbles (or something - may have also been called a Blowhole or similar) at/near Eaglehawk Neck (on the way to Port Arthur) was one such place. Just before Queenstown (Hobart side) there's some magnificent rainforest trails and waterfalls

Try to do the ghost tour at Port Arthur after spending the day there (Eaglehawk Neck was a decent motel for us to spend the night at - made the trip back the next day a lot easier)

Other than that - take your time and enjoy the place. Can get from one end to the other in a day and see nothingn or you can have a fantastic day full of highlights, sights and photo ops, end up exhausted at the end of the day and not have even covered 200km's

[discostig]

Excellent, cheers Rab. Hopefully the G6 suspension doesn't bug me. Also both of you good to know the suggested corner speed signs are worth taking seriously...over here in the XR I can add 20 to them if driving enthusiastically...but I'll be in a barge in unfamiliar territory over there.

[Never had any say Panda]

Come to qld..

You can double suggested speed signs..

First one that said 15 I took around 30-40ish in a Kia carnival and had a people mover that smelled like sh*t when we got out the other side of the curve..