Top Oz Tours offers a great range of Tasmania tours and experiences. You can book a Bruny Island Tour from Hobart here.
The sure-fire route to adventure is to grab a map of Australia and a pen, close your eyes, and randomly drop the pen point on a new travel destination.
After doing this dozens of times and having the lifelong memories, scars, and friendships to show for it, I finally land on Bruny Island — located just a short distance south of the Tasmanian capital Hobart. I begin to envisage a modern-day Robinson Crusoe scenario; of having to survive adrenalin-fuelled challenges in one of our southernmost wildernesses. Fortunately, it turns out that British and French explorers have previously charted the landscape, and paved the way for modern adventurers like me.
Watch our video of top things to do on Bruny Island:
Top Things to do on Bruny Island, Tasmania | Bruny Island Safaris Tour Review
Welcome to Top Oz Tours’ YouTube channel! No visit to Hobart in Tasmania would be complete without a day trip to sublime Bruny Island – just a short ferry ri…
Boarding the car-ferry at Kettering (30 minutes’ drive south of Hobart), we cruise across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to the island — a journey of around 20 minutes. Back on dry land, the decision is made to head south to The Neck — the narrow isthmus that joins North and South Bruny.
There are few places in the world where you can walk with the ocean to your left and right simultaneously. A boardwalk links the two sides of the isthmus and timber steps lead up to Truganini Lookout (named in honour of the Tasmanian Aboriginal woman who was said to be the last full-blooded survivor of her people). Reaching the peak, we’re serenaded by squawking gulls as we drink in the 360-degree view of the island’s north and south, the channel, and the Tasman Sea. There are no sightings of the little penguins that inhabit The Neck rookery (it’s too early in the day).
A short drive south on unsealed roads takes us to the start of Luggaboine Circuit in South Bruny National Park. It offers 90 minutes of easy hiking through wooded bushland and grassy heaths, and past coastal cliffs and sweeping beaches. This circuit is one of many walking trails on the island, and we encounter plenty of wildlife — including a snake slithering under a toppled tree after sunning itself on the warm sand.
Hunger pangs are raging by the time we reach Hotel Bruny for a late lunch. The menu is filled with tasty pub grub options that champion Tassie produce. I tuck into the Bruny Island salmon with smashed pink eye potatoes, greens and salsa verde, but the scotch fillet steak with Huon Valley mushrooms is earmarked for a return visit.
Eager to see more, we head to historic Cape Bruny Lighthouse at the southern end of the island. Our footsteps echo on the 185-year-old tower’s wrought-iron spiral steps as we climb to the top to take in another epic 360-degree view. The vista seems to stretch to infinity, and eagles soar on the strong winds that endlessly torment the venerable structure.
Dimming afternoon skies and heavy Tasman waves crashing against the island’s steep cliffs urge us to depart for the 70-minute drive back to the ferry terminal. The lighthouse fades forlornly into the darkening landscape behind us, no longer lighting the way for passing ships. That’s a job now done by a modern solar powered lamp nearby.
For more travel inspiration, visit www.brunyisland.org.au.
Browse our range of Tasmania tours and experiences here.
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Additional images: Bigstock
About the writer
Barry Johnson is a freelance travel writer living in Sydney, but with previous homes in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East. His love of adventure led to getting lost in a Californian forest a week after The Blair Witch Project went viral, building a giant Buddha on a Cambodian mountain, camel racing in an Egyptian desert, and teaching English to Peruvian children as they taught him Quechuan — the language of the Incas.
