Hobart: City Sights
Salamanca Place
This is Hobart’s favourite hangout. The facades of Georgian sandstone warehouses that once stored grain, wool, whale oil and apples make Salamanca regal. Nowadays, you can wander under heavy stone arches to find jewellers, cafes, restaurants, the Peacock Theatre, subterranean bookshops, fashion boutiques and artists’ galleries.
Wafted scents of incense and bratwurst will tell you that the Salamanca Markets are on. Retro fashions, Antarctic images, fruit loaves, organic vegetables, and jewellery by emerging Tassie designers are found right here. If you need a rest, take up a spot in a cafe or bar, or on the extensive lawns under the shade of a boulevard of plane trees.
Every Friday night from 5.30 to 7.30pm, a cavernous courtyard rocks to the sounds of Rektango. This is one of Hobart’s funkiest attractions. Bands play gypsy, jazz and swing music.
Island Cycle Tours
Take a thrilling 22-kilometre ride from the 1270-metre peak of Mount Wellington into Hobart. A downhill rush that is every bit as hair raising as a roller coaster. Island Cycle Tours offers a range of tours for adventurers. If your adrenalin is still pumping when you get into Hobart, you can add a two-hour sea kayak around the waterfront with Pedal ‘n’ Paddle tours.
Cascade Brewery Tour
At 175 years old, the Cascade Brewery Company claims to be the nation’s oldest manufacturing enterprise. The brewery’s historic facade dates back to the 1820s. On a tour, you can learn a lot about beer here, including the beer lovers’ secret that making good beer is a more complex process than wine making. Wonderfully, beer tasting is part of the tour.
The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens
The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens’ first superintendent, William Davidson, was appointed in 1828. He set about importing plants from England and collecting native species from Mount Wellington. There are stately and significant trees all over the garden. There is a conservatory, the sub-Antarctic house and a carefully tended Japanese Garden – Hobart has a
sister-city relationship with Yaizu in Japan. A restaurant is nestled between the trees and flower displays.
Cadbury Chocolate Factory
Indulge your chocolate craving and polish up your history at the Cadbury Chocolate Factory, Claremont. A tour includes entry to the Visitor’s Centre where you can try some tasty treats. The Cadbury Chocolate Shop offers exclusive factory discounts on a huge range of products.
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
An eclectic and extensive insight into Tasmanian life, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery has displays of indigenous culture and artefacts from the whaling and convict era, and models of extinct mega fauna and the Tasmanian tiger. Special interest collections – minerals, fossils, exquisite glass and jewellery, and colonial art – also feature. Our most celebrated landscape artist, John Glover, is on show here. Hobart’s role as the base for Australia’s Antarctic activities comes to life at the Antarctic and Southern Ocean displays. See expedition equipment and curios from the great white continent. Special displays and art exhibitions are a regular feature.
Female Factory Historic Site
The Female Factory in South Hobart is a significant historic site that was once the Cascades Female Factory, a euphemistic name for a terribly overcrowded prison for Australian women in the 1820s. It was the setting for Bryce Courtenay’s novel The Potato Factory. You can walk about the site at your leisure or take a guided one-hour tour.
Something Wild
This Wildlife Park nurtures orphaned and injured animals for release back into the wild. The park is by the Tyenna River, only 40 minutes from Hobart. Spot a platypus from a viewing area set above the river. Other animals here include Tasmanian devils, golden possums, masked owls, and squirrel gliders.
Yacht Race
The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is a gruelling 628 nautical mile event. Thousands of people cheer the crews as the sailors arrive in Hobart. This race has captivated Australians since 1945, and is renowned as one of the most demanding ocean races in the world.
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