The road to Hobart

Our final two days in Tasmania were spent driving through to Hobart, followed by a morning exploring Hobart’s popular Salamanca weekend market. We spent several days in Hobart on our last visit so we decided to spend more time visiting the area’s regional sights on our way into town.

Our road trip took us through the scenic London Lake district. Here you can find a stone cairn marking the geographic centre of Tasmania. We then took a detour to visit the picturesque Russell Falls on the fringe of Mount Field National Park. Here we stopped for a picnic before moving on to Salmon Ponds.

The Salmon Ponds is Australia’s oldest trout hatchery. It was founded in May 1864 and today it’s still supplying more than a million trout for stocking Tasmania’s lakes. Rivers and dams. The attraction includes a series of display ponds filled with fish including Atlantic Salmon, Rainbow Trout and some impressive Albino Rainbow Trout. 

Our final stop on the way to Hobart was Pulpit Rock Lookout. This spectacular outcrop looks out over a scenic bend in the Derwent River and the floodplains beyond. It was a fitting way to end our rural adventure before we drove on into the city.

As luck would have it. We arrived in Hobart on the final night of the Taste of Tasmania festival. This is Australia’s largest and longest-running food and wine festival. This year The Taste showcased 98 small to large food and beverage producers and 710 artists. We send several hours that evening wandering the harbourside event tasting all manner of delicious food. However, the real highlight was a chance meeting with Justin Arnold, the wine-maker at Ghost Rock, my favourite Tasmanian winery.

On our final morning in Hobart we stopped in at the Tasmania Museum & Gallery to see this venue's Tasmanian Tiger exhibit.  It's a modest room near the back of the building.  Inside are the preserved remains of Tasmania's famous extinct marsupial carnivore. Much of the room is kept in darkness to reduce the bleaching effects of light.  A timer switch briefly illuminates them before they're cast back into darkness.  It a rather poignant set up. I don't how we missed this on our first trip to Hobart?