Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, is not only a lovely city with a world-famous museum but also the perfect base for exploring the broader region. Once you’ve done all the things to do in Hobart, it’s time to hit the road.
I’ve used Hobart as a base for three trips to Tasmania over the last two years, spending much of that time taking day trips into the surrounding national parks, islands and wilderness areas.
For nature lovers, the choice is extraordinary: you can walk among wombats on Maria Island, explore temperate rainforest at Mount Field, search for white wallabies on Bruny Island or cruise beneath the enormous sea cliffs of the Tasman Peninsula.
I’ve taken all of the trips below myself, many of them as organised tours while travelling solo. I’ve ranked them according to the nature experience rather than simply listing everything you can reach from Hobart.
By the way, if you are planning a longer stay in Tasmania, I also have a nature lover’s guide to the best things to do in Tasmania.
My top picks for nature day trips from Hobart
If I had to choose just three top nature trips, I would rank them this way:
Best for wildlife: Maria Island. For reliable close encounters with Tasmanian wildlife, Maria Island is hard to beat. In a single day, I encountered wombats, Forester kangaroos, bandicoots, pademelons, and Cape Barren geese, just to name a few.
Best for rainforest: Mount Field National Park. It is close to Hobart, and a single, easy walk at Mount Field takes you through some of the most atmospheric temperate rainforest in the state, past two beautiful waterfalls.
Best for adventure: Tasman Peninsula cruise. This is the most exhilarating day trip I’ve taken from Hobart, combining spectacular coastal scenery with the thrill of exploring one of Tasmania’s wildest stretches of coastline by boat.
Tasman Island Cruise
Of all the day trips I’ve taken from Hobart, Tasman Island Cruise is quite possibly my favourite. Offered by Pennicott Wilderness Journeys, this tour keeps winning all the awards imaginable, and they are all well deserved.
Home to the famous Three Capes walk, the Tasman Peninsula coastline is all about the impossibly tall hexagonal dolerite columns and mysterious sea caves. The turbulent waters of the Southern Ocean are battered by the roaring 40s – the strong westerly winds that ravage the latitudes 40 degrees south of the Earth’s equatorial plane, which makes for an exhilarating boat ride.
This inhospitable wind-blasted world is home to colonies of fur seals and water birds, and if you are lucky, a curious whale might cruise by. If you are looking for a sense of real adventure, this is the trip! And don’t worry, you get a super warm, long waterproof jacket to wear for the cruise so you won’t be chilled to the bone. For more details and images, see my full guide to the Tasman Island Cruise on a day trip from Hobart.
Maria Island
If you love Australian wildlife, Maria Island (pronounced ma-rye-ah) is one of the best day trips from Hobart. On one of my visits, I spent virtually the entire day hanging out with wombats, bandicoots and Forester kangaroos on the grassy slopes above the jetty at Darlington.
But you certainly don’t have to stay around the jetty all day. Wildlife is widespread across the northern part of the island, so you can explore on foot while looking for animals along the way. Walk to the Painted Cliffs at low tide or head in the opposite direction towards the Fossil Cliffs. If you are hoping to see Forester kangaroos, keep an eye on the open grasslands around the cemetery on the way to the Fossil Cliffs.
Whatever you do during the day, I recommend saving your final hour or two for wildlife around Darlington. Wombats become more active later in the afternoon, kangaroos are often out grazing, and the softer light is much better for photography.
To visit independently, you’ll need to get to Triabunna, about 85 km from Hobart, for the morning ferry. Alternatively, you can join the Maria Island Active Day Tour from Hobart. For more details and images, see my complete guide to Maria Island day trip from Hobart.
Mount Field National Park
Mount Field is my top pick for experiencing Tasmania’s temperate rainforest on a day trip from Hobart. It is only 70 km from the city, and the area around the Visitor Centre packs an extraordinary amount into a relatively small area: giant trees, prehistoric-looking ferns, moss-covered trunks and some of Tasmania’s prettiest waterfalls.
Best of all, you can experience it on a single 6 km circuit. The walk takes you through wonderfully atmospheric rainforest to three waterfalls, including the famous three-tiered Russell Falls and my favourite, Horseshoe Falls, before passing through a grove of enormous swamp gums, among the tallest flowering trees in the world.
You don’t have to walk the full circuit either. Russell Falls is an easy 15–20-minute walk from the Visitor Centre, with Horseshoe Falls another 20 minutes uphill. Keep an eye out for Tasmanian pademelons as you walk through the forest.
Mount Field is an easy drive from Hobart. Alternatively, there are Mount Field tours from Hobart that visit all three waterfalls, the Tall Trees Walk, plus a bonus visit to the wonderful Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.
You can find more details and images in my complete guide to visiting Mount Field National Park.
Bruny Island
For wildlife lovers, my biggest reason to recommend Bruny Island is the chance to see its famous white Bennett’s wallabies. I went to Bruny specifically hoping to find one and, on an organised day tour from Hobart, we spotted one browsing alongside its brown cousins in Adventure Bay.
Bruny is also an exceptional birdwatching destination. All 12 of Tasmania’s endemic bird species occur on the island, including the endangered forty-spotted pardalote, making it one of the best places in the state for anyone hoping to add Tasmanian endemics to their list.
Then there is the landscape. Climb to Truganini Lookout for the classic view along the Neck, the narrow isthmus joining North and South Bruny, and continue south into South Bruny National Park for wild coastline and the historic Cape Bruny Lighthouse.
You can visit independently by taking the car ferry from Kettering, 33 km from Hobart. But there is a lot of ground to cover once you reach the island – Cape Bruny is around 60 km from the ferry terminal – so an organised Bruny Island tour from Hobart is an easy option if you want to see the major nature highlights without worrying about ferry times.
For more wildlife-watching tips, including where to look for white wallabies and birds, see my complete Bruny Island wildlife guide.
Cradle Mountain National Park
Yes! It is possible to visit Cradle Mountain on a guided day trip from Hobart (I wouldn’t recommend the self-drive option – it’s a 4-hr drive each way). The guided tour is a long day, departing Hobart at 6 am, but that means you get a sunrise and a sunset thrown in for free.
The first stop is breakfast in Deloraine, followed by 5 hours of hikes and viewpoints at Cradle Mountain, including the park’s most famous walk around Dove Lake and an optional visit to the Interpretation Centre set in a patch of magical mossy rainforest.
Or, if you are feeling weary after the day’s adventure, you can opt to chill out by the fire at Cradle Mountain Lodge. In the afternoon, the grassy lawns around the lodge are teaming with wombats, pademelons and Bennett’s wallabies.
If you have several days to spare, I would stay at Cradle Mountain rather than visit from Hobart. But if Hobart is your base and this is your only opportunity to see one of Tasmania’s most spectacular landscapes, an organised Cradle Mountain day tour makes it surprisingly achievable.
For more walks, wildlife and things to do if you have longer, see my complete guide to things to do in Cradle Mountain.
The Southern Forest & Hastings Caves
If Mount Field is the easy way to experience Tasmania’s temperate rainforest from Hobart, the Southern Forest feels like a journey much deeper into Tasmania’s wild Far South.
The southern forest is home to some of Tasmania’s oldest trees. It’s a magical place at the end of the world with impossibly tall trees, a lush understory of ferns, and tendrils of moss hanging down the tree branches.
One way to experience this landscape is Tahune AirWalk – a canopy walk 30 meters above the forest floor. The return journey is via the 3 km loop trail along the banks of the Picton and Huon Rivers with swinging bridges spanning across both rivers.
Further south, Hastings Caves adds an entirely different dimension. The only publicly accessible cave, the Newdegate Cave, extends 3 kilometres into the hillside. It is perhaps not as ornamental as Gunns Plains cave in north west Tasmania, but it is vast. It is the largest dolomite cave in the country and one of the largest caves of this type in the Southern Hemisphere.
Near the thermal pool, by the visitor center, there is a short rainforest walk following the creek where platypus can sometimes be spotted. Your best chance would be early in the morning or around dusk, so I wouldn’t specifically count on spotting a platypus during a day tour.
For me, it’s the combination of ancient forest above ground and an extraordinary subterranean landscape below that make this trip particularly special. Again, if you prefer not to drive, you can visit the Southern Forest on the Hastings Cave tour from Hobart.
For more details and images, see my full guide to the Hastings Caves & Tahune AirWalk day trip from Hobart.
Wineglass Bay & Freycinet National Park
This one you probably expected. The vivid image of Wineglass Bay welcomes you to Tasmania from posters and billboards at practically every major transport hub. It is one of those iconic views that inevitably ends up on the Tasmania bucket list — and yes, it is worth ticking off.
Just be prepared to work a little for it. The walk to Wineglass Bay Lookout is essentially a continuous climb on the way up, followed by a somewhat steep descent on the way back. It is also one of Tasmania’s most popular walks, so don’t expect to have the trail or lookout to yourself.
Freycinet is more than Wineglass Bay of course. On my day trip from Hobart, we also walked along the coast at Cape Tourville, stopped at beautiful Honeymoon Bay and wandered along the enormous sweep of Friendly Beaches.
I took this trip in winter when the days are shorter, and we drove out of Hobart into a fiery sunrise and watched an equally fiery sunset on the way back. And it was light jumper weather for the hike to Wineglass Bay lookout.
The drive from Hobart to Coles Bay is just under 200km, about 2.5 hours. If a 400km round trip sounds a bit much, I highly recommend the Wineglass Bay tour from Hobart.
For more details and images, see my guide to the Great Short Walks in Freycinet National Park.
Mount Wellington
I recommend kunanyi / Mount Wellington for a different reason from the other trips on this list: it is right on Hobart’s doorstep. If you wake up to a clear day and have a few hours to spare, you can be exploring alpine landscapes 1,271 metres above sea level without committing an entire day to an excursion.
The trick is to visit on a clear day. Because the summit of the mountain rises 1,271 meters (over a kilometre!), it is often shrouded in clouds.
I’ve had the worst luck catching a sunny day for a hike at the summit of Mt Wellington. And when it’s cloudy, you can’t see the fingers on your outstretched hand at the observation deck on the summit.
Here’s the view I’ve been trying to catch:
And here’s the view I got on my last trip:
There is, of course, more to Mount Wellington than the view from the summit. There is an entire tourist drive with a number of stops at trailheads.
If you have a car, great. This is an easy half-day trip from Hobart. Although keep in mind that in winter, the windy road to the summit might be covered in snow and ice. An alternative is the Hop-on-Hop-Off shuttle that goes all the way to the summit and stops at the key stops.
So, if you find yourself in Hobart on a sunny day with a few hours to spare, consider a quick and easy escape to nature on Mount Wellington.
More Nature Adventures in Tasmania
- 6 Things to Do in Hobart for Nature Buffs, Including Platypus Spotting & the Aurora
- Hastings Caves and Southern Forest – a journey to Far South Tasmania
- Gorgeous Beaches in Tasmania: North-West Coast
- The Absolute Best Place to See Platypus in Tasmania – The Tasmanian Arboretum
- 8 Best Day Trips from Hobart for Nature Lovers
- Edge of the World Tasmania: Visiting Arthur River’s Wild Coast
- Visiting Gunns Plains Caves in North West Tasmania
- Leven Canyon Walk: Lookouts, Forest Stairs & What to Expect
- Best Things to Do in Tasmania: The Ultimate Nature Lover’s Guide
- Best Bruny Island Wildlife Experiences: White Wallabies, Penguins, Seals & Endemic Birds
