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Natural State News
Issue 5 2007
Top Tastes in Tasmania Voyages Cradle Mountain Lodge will play host to Tastings at the Top in June - a deliciously indulgent food and wine event.
From June 23-26, against the backdrop of Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park, Tastings at the Top will be some gourmands' version of the hereafter. Food consultant Helen Waterworth and Peter Bourne, otherwise known as Sydney's Wine Man, will take guests on this culinary journey.
Now in its 13th year the event has become synonymous with Tasmania's reputation as a gastronomic haven. Providores displaying their wares this year include boutique cheese producers Heidi Farm, Elgaar Farm and Tasmanian Highland Cheese, inland salmon farm 41 Degrees South and Springfield Deer Farm. There will also be a host of emerging specialty producers. All food can be washed down with quality wines from Devil's Corner, Pirie Estate and Hardy's Bay of Fires.
From degustation dinners and lively cooking demonstrations, to wilderness walks and fly-fishing tutorials, Tastings at the Top encompasses classic Tasmania.
Four-night (minimum stay) packages for Tastings at the Top start from $1,330 per person twin share in a Pencil Pine cabin at Cradle Mountain Lodge. The package includes a full buffet breakfast daily, and all scheduled events, dinners, workshops and activities, as well as gala food and wine dinners.
www.cradlemountainlodge.com.au
The Tahune AirWalk's newest attraction - swinging bridges across the Huon and Picton Rivers - was launched in May.
The swinging bridges complete a 3-hour walking loop around the Tahune Forest Reserve. The walk links the World Heritage Area and the Warra Long Term Ecological Research site, which gives visitors an insight into Tasmania's wet forests.
The swinging bridges add an element of adventure to one of Tasmania's great short walks. With a span across the Picton River of 67 metres and across the Huon of 107 metres, visitors experience the exhilaration of being suspended above these mighty rivers.
Actors Enliven Guided ToursProfessional actors Chris and Judith Cornish have developed a professional theatrical approach to guiding.
The combination of acting skills and crafted scripts take audiences on historic journeys. Live History's hallmark tour is the dramatisation of 'Louisa's Walk'. Using prose, song and characters from the era, the Cornishes recreate the story of the transportation and imprisonment of female convicts in the infamous 'Female Factory', or women's prison. Woven into the tale is the story of Irish woman Louisa Regan.
The remains of the original prison in Hobart are the backdrops for Louisa's Walk.
Antarctic Midwinter Festival: June 21-22
Celebrate winter's shortest day and longest night during the Antarctic Midwinter Festival.
The festival is also a celebration of Tasmania's historic links with the world's flattest, driest, windiest and coldest continent. The festival highlights the heroic age of Antarctic exploration and explorers such as James Cook, Dumont d'Urville, Roald Amundsen and Douglas Mawson, and the role Hobart played in their great adventures to the South Pole.
It also explores the scientific discoveries undertaken in Antarctica and has a look behind the scenes to see how local companies supply, support and transport Antarctic expeditioners. At the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery the Islands to Ice exhibition tells the story of the people who have explored this vast and mysterious continent.
There are loads of events and lectures, the huskies picnic, the Longest Night Film Festival and much more. Remember, too, that Tasmania is the best place to see the great southern lights of Aurora Australis.
www.antarctic-tasmania.info
www.discovertasmania.com
Walk with Charles Wooley in Old Hobart
High profile Australian journalist Charles Wooley is to release a walking guide to Hobart. Written with fellow journalist and author Michael Tatlow, A Walk in Old Hobart includes photographs, facts and lively inside stories about the colourful capital of Australia's island state.
The 80-page book translates to a two-hour leisurely stroll while exploring buildings and other reminders of the tough and brave colonial days after White settlement. Short snapshot sections will present scenes on one day at various locations in the 1800s.
The book has an end of June launch. A walking guide to Launceston, including a guide to the superb Tamar Valley Wine Route, is to follow.
The Port Arthur docks were once the busiest and most productive in Van Diemen's Land. Hundreds of craft, from whaleboats to brigantines and barques, were produced here. Now visitors to Port Arthur can experience the industry with a new interpretation.
Until recently visitors to the dockyard could only gaze at two locked houses and vacant lawns. It was difficult to conjure the noisy and productive space the yards once were. Now a 25-metre sculpture of a ship, created by local artists Ben Booth and Colin Langridge, sits in the larger of the two slips.
Dotted around the lawns are rusty steel outlines of the former buildings - boat sheds, a sawpit, an overseer's hut and a blacksmith's shop. When passing the outlines a burst of sound - clattering hammers, sawing, and capstans rattling - alerts visitors to each building's former function.
The product of years of archaeological and documentary research and presented using engaging technologies, this project represents a new direction for interpretation at Port Arthur. The dockyards opened on May 23.
Piners and Miners The Piners and Miners Tour has been collecting stamps of approval since it launched earlier this year. "If there is a better one-day introduction to wilderness anywhere in the world’s hotspots I would be amazed," wrote Mike Bingham, Travel Editor, of the Sunday Tasmanian.
The history of Tasmania’s once isolated west includes chapters of extraordinarily ancient rainforests, wealth from mining, greedy codgers with self-destructing vendettas, and redoubtable improvisation. Fascinatingly, the Piners and Miners Tour touches on much of it.
Guests travel by Hi-rail vehicle (a 4WD that can also run on train tracks), walk along one edge of Tassie’s World Heritage Area and, after a gourmet lunch, return to Strahan on a motor boat.
The Piners and Miners experience operates from Strahan and each tour is limited to just eight guests.
Tasmania's Great Colonial Houses Pass
The grand colonial homes of Clarendon, Entally and Woolmers are all near Launceston.
The triumvirate forms a rich concentration of nationally significant rural heritage and stand in settings that have changed little from the colonial era. The properties' custodians have recently launched their own heritage trail.
While visiting an early 19th-century manor house may not be everyone's ideal outing premium wine and food are also available at the homesteads. So is an insight into early entrepreneurial success in Tasmania.
The Great Colonial House passes cost $24 per adult and $50 for a family. They are available from the three properties and will soon be available from tourism information centres.
Clarendon House: (03) 6398 6220
www.woolmers.com.au
www.entally.com.au
The Salamanca Collection is running a series of shows and exhibitions from June 3. Meet the artists and hear guest speakers. Some exhibitions include dinner with a glass of wine, good company and the latest exhibitions (from $35). Winter Eclectic Shows will run through until August.
www.salamancacollection.com.au
Festival of Voices to Warm the Soul
The Festival of Voices returns to Tasmania July 5-8 in a four-day celebration of song and performance.
Festival organisers are describing the 2007 event as 'a well-balanced meal to share with good friends. The program features theatrical cabaret, aperitivo concerts, workshops and social activities that will open the festival up to the general public and invite local participation.
Some performances are integrated into local Salamanca businesses. For example, Italian choir singers will perform near an Italian restaurant. Free events include a Song and Mulled Wine Trail on the Saturday night and an ABC radio Live to Air broadcast from the Atrium of the Henry Jones Hotel.
Tasmania Set To Grow With Resort Expansion
Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific is further developing its resort at Seven Mile Beach injecting up to $15 million into the Tasmanian economy.
The resort was previously known as The Pines and has already undergone a $2 million renovation to upgrade the existing 20 units.
www.wyndhamvrap.com/resorts/sevenmilebeach
Check the Events Tasmania website for upcoming events
For further information:
travelmedia.tourismtasmania.com.au
www.discovertasmania.com
www.eventstasmania.com