Ultimate Self Drive Tour of Tasmania - Britz

Eight nights and 1,134 kilometres in a loop from Hobart in a campervan, round Tasmania by way of the Tasman Peninsula, the central highlands and the east coast.

Eaglehawk Neck comes first on the Tasman Peninsula, where the tessellated pavement is a flat shelf of rock cracked into regular rectangles by salt and weathering, and the sea cliffs nearby are the tallest in the southern hemisphere. Fortescue Bay follows, with the walk out to Cape Hauy.

Lake St Clair comes next inland, the deepest lake in Australia and the southern end of the Overland Track, then Cradle Mountain, where the Dove Lake circuit takes a couple of hours and wombats graze beside it. The Bay of Fires follows on the east coast, named for fires the crew of a passing ship saw burning on the shore in 1773, with orange lichen on white granite boulders, then Wineglass Bay at Freycinet and Seven Mile Beach before Hobart.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Nine days for 1,134 kilometres is about right, since Tasmanian roads are slower than their distances suggest. Snow is possible in the highlands in any month of the year. Vehicle ferries from Melbourne book out well ahead, so most visitors fly in and hire on the island instead. Nine nights also covers the three parts of Tasmania that matter, the Tasman Peninsula, the highlands and the east coast, which a shorter loop has to choose between.