Tasmania in Two Weeks: Freycinet to Bruny Island - maui

A fortnight is about right for Tasmania, and this loop covers 1,237 kilometres of it without ever feeling like a dash. It starts and finishes in Hobart, where you collect the campervan, and runs anticlockwise: the Tasman Peninsula first, then up the east coast through Swansea and Freycinet to the Bay of Fires, inland to Launceston and Mole Creek, across to Cradle Mountain and down to Strahan before returning through the central highlands.

The driving is undemanding and the legs are short. Most days are under two hours and several under one, while three days involve no transit at all because they are set aside for Freycinet, Cradle Mountain and Strahan. The one long run is the return from Queenstown to Hobart by way of Lake St Clair, around 250 kilometres. You cannot drive inside Cradle Mountain National Park, so that day is spent walking.

The stops are the trip. Port Arthur and the Tasman Arch on the first day, the Wineglass Bay lookout and Honeymoon Bay at Freycinet, the orange lichen of the Bay of Fires, the caves at Mole Creek and the Trowunna wildlife sanctuary, the Dove Lake circuit beneath Cradle Mountain, then the Gordon River cruise and the West Coast Wilderness Railway out of Strahan. The final day crosses by ferry to Bruny Island.

This is a suggested route rather than a packaged tour. What maui sells is the campervan, collected at their Hobart branch, and the itinerary is their recommendation for how to spend a fortnight with it. Everything along the way is yours to arrange, which for a lot of people is the whole appeal. You can stretch a leg, drop a stop or stay put for a day because the weather turned or because you liked where you woke up. Tasmania rewards that. It is small enough to change your mind about and big enough that it matters when you do.