The top 10 outdoor adventures in Tasmania

06.10.2024 - 03:35 / lonelyplanet.com

Oct 4, 2024 • 7 min read

Blanketed in mountains and rainforest and lashed by the Roaring 40s winds, Tasmania is a wild place with wild ways. Australia’s island state could not have been better designed for lovers of adventure. The country’s most famous hiking trails are here, along with its most dramatic peaks. Rivers pour through forests thick with moss and some of the planet’s tallest trees. It’s an environment that’s created one of the world’s greatest rafting trips and a similarly world-class collection of mountain bike trail networks has also emerged in the last decade. It’s brought this island in the Southern Ocean to the attention of many who crave a shot of adrenalin – be it a week in the wilds or a half-day adventure, with plentiful activities accessible to families and those with limited mobility. 

Here’s our pick of Tasmania’s top outdoor adventures.

Best for an epic journey

Declared the world’s greatest rafting trip by Outside magazine, the Franklin River is a fast and furious waterway, crashing for 125km through steep gorges, with turbulent stories to match. The fight to save this wilderness river from dams in the early 1980s was the most famous environmental story (and a rare conservation success) in Australia’s history, while the discovery of Aboriginal cultural remains in a cave on the river’s banks helped sealed the deal on Tasmania’s vast Wilderness World Heritage listing.

Guided rafting trips, such as those with outfitters Water by Nature Tasmania and Tasmanian Expeditions, put in at Collingwood River and quickly meet the Franklin, which stutters between flat floats and unruly rapids. The deep and mystical Great Ravine, in particular, is a day-long epic of rapids. Expect to be on the river for at least seven days.

Best for wildlife, families and wheelchair accessibility

Tasmania’s largest island national park is dotted with the relics of its convict past, but the wildest things here are its critters. In the 1960s, a number of threatened species were introduced to the mountainous island, just a 30-minute ferry ride from the east coast town of Triabunna, where they thrived. Step off the ferry today and you’re quickly in the company of wombats – dozens of them – nibbling the lawns around the old penitentiary. Forester kangaroos, wallabies and colorful Cape Barren geese graze beside them. If your luck is in, this is also the surest place in the world to spot a beloved Tasmanian devil in the wild. Devils were introduced to the island in 2012 as an insurance population against the cancer that is threatening the species’ survival. 

The Maria Island ferry is wheelchair accessible, with the area around Darlington (the convict penitentiary that operated in the 1840s) also manageable for most.

Bes