Bruny Island Gourmet Food and Sightseeing Day Tour from Hobart

Bruny Island and the ferry crossing

Bruny Island lies just south of Hobart, across the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, and is really two islands joined by a thin strip of sand: North Bruny with its open farmland and light bush, and South Bruny with forests, cliffs and wild beaches. It is about fifty kilometres from end to end, with a tiny population, and has become the place Tasmanians recommend first for local food and nature on a day trip from Hobart.

Getting there is part of the fun. Our coach drives south from Hobart to Kettering, then rolls onto the vehicle ferry for a short crossing to Roberts Point on North Bruny, with views of the channel and its forested shores. Many visitors ask how to get to Bruny Island without a car: this tour solves it, with the ferry, transport and timings handled for you, and the same crossing back to Kettering in the late afternoon.

Artisan producers: cheese, fudge and honey

Bruny Island is known across Australia for its small producers, and this tour is built around them. You stop at an island cheesemaker famous for its traditional, cloth-wrapped and washed-rind cheeses, made from local milk and matured on the island, and taste a selection with your guide explaining how each is made. The flavours change with the seasons, which is exactly what makes the stop worth it.

Later you visit private English and native gardens spread over about fifty acres, a peaceful place of lawns, flowerbeds and Tasmanian plants, to try handcrafted fudge and local honey. Meeting the people behind these products is a highlight of any Bruny Island food tour: they talk about their craft, their land and why the island's cool climate suits slow, careful food making.

The Neck lookout

The Neck is the most famous view on Bruny Island. Here the island narrows to a sandy isthmus only a few hundred metres wide, with calm water on one side and the open ocean beach on the other, curving away south towards the hills of South Bruny. A timber stairway climbs the dune to a lookout platform where the whole sweep of the isthmus opens beneath you.

The dunes are protected as a reserve, because short-tailed shearwaters and little penguins nest here in the warmer months, and boardwalks keep visitors off the burrows. Allow time for photos at the top and a stroll on a quiet beach below, where your footprints are often the only ones on the sand. On a clear day this is the picture most people remember from a Bruny Island trip.

Adventure Bay: museum and beachside lunch

Adventure Bay on South Bruny is a long curve of pale sand backed by forest, with a small settlement and some of the island's best views. European navigators anchored here in the late eighteenth century on their voyages of Pacific exploration, and a small local museum tells their stories with maps, documents and objects, alongside the history of the Aboriginal people of the island. Entry is included.

Lunch is served at a beachside restaurant looking straight over the bay, with freshly shucked Bruny Island oysters from the local waters. The island's oysters grow in clean, cold channel water, and many visitors say they are the freshest they have tasted. Take your time here: lunch is one of the slower, most relaxed moments of the day, with the sea just steps away.

Mavista Rainforest on South Bruny

Further south the light bush of North Bruny gives way to dense cool-temperate rainforest. Mavista is a pristine pocket of tall tree ferns, mossy trunks and clear creeks, with a short walking track that feels a world away from the beaches of Adventure Bay. It is a very different side of Tasmania and a peaceful finish to the sightseeing part of the day.

This part of the island is the habitat of diverse wildlife, including the rare white wallabies of Bruny Island, a pale form of the Bennett's wallaby found here. They are wild and shy, so sightings depend on luck, but your guide knows where to look. After the forest the coach heads north again for the ferry back to Kettering and the short drive to Hobart.