Explore Tasmania - Britz

Four nights and 761 kilometres in a loop from Hobart in a campervan, across Tasmania to the west coast and north to Cradle Mountain.

Mount Wellington comes first above Hobart, where the road climbs to over twelve hundred metres and the summit is in cloud more often than not, with the whole city and the Derwent estuary below it when it is clear.

Queenstown follows across the island on the A10, a mining town where a century of smelting stripped the surrounding hills bare and left them a strange bronze colour, now slowly regrowing. Montezuma Falls comes next, the highest in the state at over a hundred metres, reached along an old tramway formation, then Cradle Mountain, where the walk round Dove Lake takes a couple of hours and wombats graze beside the track. Sheffield and MONA close the loop, the latter a private museum built into a cliff on the Derwent and unlike anything else in the country.

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. Five days for 760 kilometres sounds generous and is not, because Tasmanian roads are slower than their distances suggest and Cradle Mountain alone deserves a full day. Snow is possible on the Cradle and Wellington roads in any month of the year. Vehicle ferries from the mainland book out well ahead, so most visitors fly in and hire on the island.