Leaving for Australia soon, Need Advice
 

We are leaving March 17th. Here is our tentative itinerary. 19Mar Melbourne@9:25AM ????? drive GOR to Adelaide 21Mar Hobart@7:05PM ????Would like to lots of hiking 26Mar Cairns @3:30PM ?? daughter at James Cook Univ. 29Mar Sydney@10:05PM ?? Blue Mountains a must 02Apr leave Sydney@1:45pm back to reality! We have not reserved anything else yet but would like moderate accomodations (B&B's ok) would rather spend our budget on best tours and activities. Thanks in advance!

Do I understand correctly that you'll be in Tasmania for 5 days?

For walking in Tassie I can suggest the following:

Mt Field National Park - several nice walks - good place for a day trip from Hobart (a 90 minute drive).

Freycinet National Park - there's a nice walk that takes you up to the Wineglass Bay Lookout (awesome views!), then continues on to Wineglass Bay, crosses Hazards Beach, and follows the coastline around the base of Mt Mayson - 11 km - takes 4-5 hours return.

Cradle Mountain - several nice walks here - you can begin at the Ronny Creek car park and walk the Overland Track to Crater Falls, Crater Lake and up to Marion’s Lookout. Sections of this walk are steep. One option is to return via Wombat Pool, Lake Lilla and the Cradle Valley Boardwalk. This is a nice hike (took us 3:15).

The most popular walk in the area is the 6.5 km Dove Lake Circuit (took us about 1:40).

I can also recommend the following moderate accommodation:

Pelican Bay B&B near Freycinet
Motel 429 on Sandy Bay Road in Hobart
Cradle Valley Wilderness Village

We booked all of these through www.wotif.com

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick reply Melnq8. Yes, we thought that 5 days would give us an enough time to want to go back given all there is to do. Do you think it is too many or too few?

As far as time goes - we spent 16 days in Tassie our first visit and we're going back for two more weeks next month, plus we're dedicating three days to the GOR and Apollo Bay.

Five days will give you a nice taste of Tassie, but I can almost guarantee it will leave you wanting more.

The drive on day 1 is a bit ambitious, I hope you can sleep on planes so you will be somewhat rested and therefore safe. It's a long drive, not always excitingly scenic, sometimes long and boring through forests, sometimes winding and narrow, speed limit 100 km, but always road construction somewhere that slows you to a crawl - don't doze off.

Pull in at, say, lovely Lorne, for the night, then make it a longer drive the next day.

In a perfect world, you should really allow three days for this segment.

Emjoy!

WK