Tasmania‘s tourism secrets

Visitors to the Apple Isle are still coming for the same reasons they did 100 years ago, writes Amanda Ducker.

TASSIE TOURISM THROUGH THE YEARS

1893

The way Tasmania has sold itself to tourists has remained mostly unchanged in the last century – it’s all about our marvellous scenery and temperate climate. In 1936, we were “the scenic wonderland of the Australian Commonwealth”. In 2023, we are enticing tourists to come and lie on our grass.

The state’s most-visited tourist attractions are mostly the same places they were a century ago, from Hobart to Freycinet, Mount Field and Cradle Mountain, the latter’s rare beauty having inspired the state’s most famous eco-pioneers, Gustav Weindorfer and Kate Cowie, to open their remote lodge more than 110 years ago.

Beyond nature tourism, there were allusions in advertising 100 years ago to the former penal colony’s dark history, and it was already explorable at Port Arthur. The site of the infamous and scenic waterfront former penitentiary attracted three hotels and two museums by the 1930s and remains a must-do on many travel itineraries to this day.

The industry’s issues are perennial, too, with tourism as an economic activity then as now revolving around what tourism scholar Simon Harris calls the Four As: advertising, attractions, access and accommodation. Tourists’ favourite mode of travel has been around for 100 years, too. Hail the enduring pleasures of a road trip on curly, compelling routes.

Unchanged melody

So, what is Tasmania’s best-kept tourism secret, then? One could theorise that it’s

1915

The Scenery Preservation Board sets aside much of Tasmania’s environment for future generations

1921

1931

RACT proves instrumental in gaining public support and government action to build an airport not about travellers at all. Rather, it’s about Tasmanians responding to an issue facing island communities everywhere – brain drain: the desire of young people to seek opportunity further afield if they do not find it through interesting, well-paid work at home. The motivation for families to retain their children on the isle into adulthood and to attract new families to live here is remarkably unchanged from 100 years ago. And so, the tourism industry keeps growing and evolving.

In November 1922, Tasmania welcomed a wave of visitors and former residents with its ‘Back to Tasmania’ campaign. The fortnight of activity received exuberant coverage in The Examiner newspaper. “Flocking in their hundreds the ‘mainlander’ comes in a neverending and ever-increasing stream,” it reported. “The garden island of Australia offers health, beautiful scenery and almost unexplored riches to all who will look and see.” The campaign, the editorial predicted, would not be “merely a spasmodic fortnight that will be forgotten in a few weeks”, but the beginning of a flourishing new era for Tasmanian tourism. The prediction was right. Today – even following its slamming by the COVID-19 pandemic – tourism in Tasmania directly and indirectly supports about 33,600 jobs in Tasmania. That’s about 13 percent of total Tasmanian employment, the highest percentage in the country.

What has changed – and improved – since The Examiner’s 1922 prediction are travel times, greater emphasis on cultural tourism (hello, Mona), support for Tasmanian Aboriginal

1959

Princess of Tasmania, an Australian-built roll-on/rolloff passenger ship sails on her maiden voyage across the Bass Strait tourism enterprises (see wukalina Walk) and, thank goodness, the quality of the cooking.

An enduring love

Tasmania’s capital city has always loomed large for tourists. And Hobart remains an ideal base for exploring the state, though Launceston – as it did 100 years ago to the tourism associations of the day – would jump up and down to say it was exactly that, too. Today, interstate and overseas travellers routinely ascend kunanyi/ Mt Wellington with its promised view of our southern waterways and return to the city amazed by the experience.

Just as travel scribe CCD Brammall was amazed, back in 1936, when he wrote in Walkabout magazine that “everybody falls in love with Hobart” because “no-one can help it”. Describing the view from halfway up our beloved mountain, he wrote: “See it in the haze of summer, when the sea-breeze sends white horses leaping across the dark-blue waters, and flying sails snore through the fresh, salty air, and see it in winter, when a white cloth is spread over the guardian mountain and Hobart sits serene beneath its snowclad sentinel like a lake city in Switzerland. See all these things, and the beauty of Hobart will never pass from you. See but a few of them, and you must return to see the rest.”

What a timeless invitation.

2011

The Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) opens in Hobart

1972

The world’s longest single-span chairlift is built at Cataract Gorge in Launceston

2022

Tourism contributes around $2.25 billion or 6 percent to Tasmania’s gross state product (GSP)

These beachy, fully self-contained waterfront units will suit any traveller looking for a cruisy coastal getaway.

Fresh salty sea air on your skin and the sand tickling your toes is what you’ll experience when staying here at Pelican Sands Scamander.

Base yourselves here and most places are just a day trip away. National Parks, golf course, the zoo, and endless white sandy coastlines to shell fossick or surf, or just walk and explore…