Australia's Natural State

Discover Tasmania Australia’s Natural State discovertasmania.com Front cover: Tasmanian devil Bay of Fires Disclaimer: Tourism Tasmania has made every endeavour to ensure that details are correct at the time of Photographic acknowledgments: Tourism Tasmania.© All rights reserved. Southern Cross Television, printing (December 2010) but can accept no responsibility for any inaccuracy or mis-description contained in George Apostolidis, Manabu Kondo, Darren Dickson, Brett Fernon, John de la Roche, Chris Bray, Michael Walters, this brochure as a result of information supplied, and can accept no responsibility for subsequent change or Lap Fung Lam, Adrian Lander, Owen Hughes, Kevin O’Dally, Estelle Phillips, Rob Burnett, Simon Kenny, Dan Fellow, withdrawal of prices, details or services shown. ©Tourism Tasmania Joe Shemesh, Brett Boardman, Lynette Graham, Neil Creek, Sean Fennessy, Nigel Honey, Richard Eastwood, Gary NORTH AMERICA Libson, Gary Moore, Nick Osborne, Diane & Lindsay Stockbridge, Geoff Murray Our island, Tasmania, is about the same size as the state of West Virginia or twice the size of Vancouver Island, and is renowned for its great natural beauty. Recently a luxe front has been moving across our island. The change has been in the air for some time now. You can still spend a lot of your time surrounded by unspoiled wilderness, but there are now also plenty of opportunities to spoil yourself. Luxurious accommodation combined with mountains of fresh produce and mouth-watering cool-climate wines can ensure merciless pampering at the end of a day’s adventuring. During your wanders on a deserted white sand beach the only signs of other people might be found sipping local wines or nibbling freshly shucked oysters in the luxury beach front standing camp where you are staying. Go trout ﬁ shing in our highlands and afterwards lounge in an intimate 5-star lodge with a single malt whisky from a Tasmanian distillery. Take an eco-cruise then dine out on tales of encounters with dolphins, sea eagles and a mighty coastline in an award-winning restaurant where regional produce is a feature of the menu. If history or art are your passions, in Tasmania we can introduce you to a thriving art scene as well as galleries and markets. And of course there are the rollicking tales and the grand sandstone buildings of authentic colonial villages that help deﬁ ne our convict past. Tasmania remains gloriously unspoiled. But these days our island caters to passions as diverse as our island’s cherished natural attributes. Michelle O’Byrne, Minister for Tourism TASMANIA fantasy island BY JEAN-FRANÇOIS LÉGARÉ First appearing in enRoute Magazine, April 2010. Copyright enRoute Magazine. Moorilla Estate With groundbreaking architecture, award-winning pinot noir and an arresting art scene, the small Australian outpost of Tasmania thinks big. The waitress looks at me, amused. As a Montrealer used to the “still closes the door and plunges our tiny isolation cell into darkness. “This or sparkling” water routine in restaurants at home, I’ve just ordered is where prisoners were sequestered when they broke the rules,” a bottle out of habit. The young server diplomatically suggests tap he explains before turning on a single light bulb that only partially water instead. I watch as she fi lls my glass and, unsure, I take a sip. relieves my anxiety. Luckily, my sentence is short. Back outside It tastes clear and pure, as if it had come from an Evian spring. in the fresh air, I stroll around the old prison complex, along rows “In Tasmania, a lot of people collect rainwater,” says my dining of roses and lilies of the valley, and I can’t help but reflect on the companion, Kim Seagram, co-owner of the Launceston restaurant contrast between the flowers’ delicate beauty and the dark past of the we’re in, appropriately named Stillwater River Café, Restaurant & surrounding buildings. (In the 19th century, this is where thousands Wine Bar. She explains that studies conducted by a weather station of outlaws from across the British Empire were shipped and locked on the northwestern side of the island have shown that the air in up.) On the road dotted with villages that takes us back to Hobart, this part of Tasmania is among the cleanest in the world, the result my guide tells me that many of the families descended from these of weather systems sweeping across thousands of kilometers of prisoners spent decades trying to erase their criminal past. It wasn’t ocean before they reach the coast. As I fi nish my glass, I feel as until the late 20th century that Tasmanians fi nally accepted this though I’ve tasted a small miracle that’s dropped right out of the sky. weighty heritage. It’s as if they had fi nally regained their pride. Of course, Tasmanians aren’t the only ones who can lay claim to The only thing missing is zero gravity. At least, that’s what I’m a clean environment, but they may be the only ones putting it to thinking as I lower the lights at the private villa where I’m spending use so well. It wasn’t always that way. “When I fi rst came here, the night. The rhomboid-shaped structure is made of glass, steel people would apologize for being from Tasmania,” says Seagram, and wood, and among its features is a cathedral ceiling that serves a Canadian (and a descendant of the famous distillers) who’s lived as a projection screen for art videos. I watch one distractedly (a here for 18 years. Looking out the window of her restaurant – an old fi lm by Israeli artist Tamy Ben-Tor, in which a man tries to slip on a flour mill dressed up in barn chic, complete with original beams and suit and tie), but my attention keeps drift ing, drawn to something pine floors – and watching the Tamar River flow by, I can’t fi gure out glowing in the night sky – the enormous three-floor penthouse I why. And when I sample her Cape Grim beef tartare with combava can see through the immense bay window in my temporary sitting and pears served alongside a delicately salted seaweed salsa, I even room. The hexagonal aluminium structure reminds me so much of feel a pang of jealousy. the starship Enterprise that I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been But a few days later at the Port Arthur Historic Site, an hour and a designed by a Trekkie. For the fi rst time since arriving in Tasmania, I half east of Hobart, the capital, all I’m feeling is panic as my guide truly feel like I’m at the end of the world. 4 discovertasmania.com Pipers Brook, Tamar Valley In reality, I’m at the Moorilla Estate, just 15 minutes north of Hobart on the Derwent River. A sort of haven devoted to all things hedonistic, the complex is home to a vineyard, a microbrewery, a restaurant, an outdoor theatre and eight architectural pavilions furnished by local and international designers. (When I wake up the next morning, I have fantasies of moving all my worldly possessions Port Arthur Convict Site here.) The man behind this eccentric project is David Walsh, an equally eccentric Tasmanian millionaire. Unfortunately, I can’t visit what will soon be Moorilla’s pièce de Pirie paid his dues in France before deciding to take a gamble on résistance: the Museum of Old and New Art, slated to open in 2011, the island’s cool climate (not unlike that of Burgundy) to kick-start which now looks like not much more than a simple (albeit immense) the region’s fi rst serious wine production. “Tasmanians are proud of construction site. Built almost entirely underground into a cliff along their land, and that’s reflected in the quality of our wines,” he says. the river, the building will be home to nearly 6,000 pieces from And he’s right. The wine I sample – deemed one of the New World’s Walsh’s private art collection, which ranges from ancient Egyptian 50 best pinot noirs by Decanter magazine – is so full-bodied I have artefacts to works by Damien Hirst. If Tasmania still has any doubts to sniff it over and over again to fully appreciate its complexity. It’s about its worth, David Walsh might be just the man to at least more than enough to make me forget the big names from mainland partially solve the issue. Australia that take up so much shelf space at my local wine store back home. The other part of the solution, if you ask me, lies in the belly of Tasmania (and in mine, too). Taking a drive along the island’s east That evening, on the balcony of my apartment, I’m overcome by coast, I’m struck by how the green hills evoke the bucolic charm something I haven’t felt in a long time. For a North American who’s of the Irish countryside, complete with farms and herds of sheep. regularly overwhelmed by news about the dangers of climate (All that’s missing is Bono and a fi fe player.) We’ve entered the change, Tasmania is more than just a pristine environment; it’s an Tamar Valley (the Tasmanian equivalent of the Niagara Peninsula), island that restores my sense of hope. No surprise, then, that its renowned for its agriculture and vineyards. I can’t help but smile inhabitants are so good at celebrating its merits. And no wonder I’m with pleasure as Andrew Pirie, the man at the forefront of Tasmanian still envious.

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