Responsibletravel.com take you on a tour of a place with the cleanest air on the planet – Tasmania.
Enjoy the best of Tasmania, Australia’s wilderness island state, with a self-drive tour that takes you from north to south, and east to west. You will be staying in authentic farm stays and family run bed and breakfasts, wilderness cabins and convict-built cottages where you will have the chance to meet local islanders, including many who are deeply immersed in wildlife and environmental conservation on this magical island that has become the life-raft for mainland Australia’s long-lost species over ten thousand years ago.
Your drives, from 45 minutes to no more than three-hours at a time, will take you through some of the most stunning landscapes in the Southern Hemisphere, with innumerable opportunities to stop and walk to dramatic tumbling waterfalls, vast, deep silent lakes, through pockets of rainforest, the tallest flowering trees in the world towering above you at over 100 metres and surprise lookouts giving way to vistas across endless mountain ranges
Each new B&B will hold a wonderful surprise, with a warm welcome and a host of surprises guaranteed. Some are a short drive away from Tasmania’s iconic beauty spots, others are tucked away in Land for Wildlife spots – most are so far off the tourist trail that you won’t find them in any other tour operator brochure. Enjoy absolutely unique wildlife experiences from the endangered Tasmanian devils on your porch at night to the normally elusive platypus in your own back garden stream. Enjoy mouth-watering home cooking with local produce, sometimes collected from your own back garden, and Tasmania’s acclaimed wines. Stay in World Heritage-listed convict sites and get an insight into Tasmania as it existed in the 1800s, when it invoked fear into the wretched souls who were transported to ‘Van Diemen’s Land’.
Get off the beaten track into some of Tasmania’s most stunning and bird and wildlife-rich hideaways. Stand on the Edge of the World and gaze across to South America or south to the Antarctic, with no landmass between you and there, as you breathe the cleanest recorded air in the inhabited world. Discover the very spot that launched the world’s first eco-tourism movement and changed the face of Australian politics.
Some of the daily highlights
Arrive in Launceston and drive just over twenty minutes to pretty rural working Brickendon Farm and colonial Estate, which was settled in 1824 and has been in the same family of Tasmanians for seven generations. The neighbouring property, connected by a lovely walk across the land, is the glorious Woolmers Estate and National Rose Garden. Stay over and take the family pig for a walk and catch your dinner in the river.
