North East: Dune magic - Launceston to St Helens

Tassie's north-east corner has something for everyone

Time stands still in north-east Tasmania - or at least stretches and bends out of shape until what should have been a three-hour drive morphs into two full days and you've still only clocked up 180km. I call it the Tassie-time theory of relativity, where there's so much to see and do in such a small space that getting from A to B will always take much more time than you think.

In our case, A to B was Launceston to St Helens, which on the map, looked like a fairly straight-forward 150km drive across the north-east corner of the island, city to coast. Should take around two or three hours, plus a stop or two along the way, right? How wrong can you be!

We started off well enough, heading north from Launceston to Lillydale, but we'd only been on the road for around 20km before we stopped at Hollybank Forest Reserve, where for the next three hours we soared above the forest canopy on the new 730-metre-long flying fox adventure ride. It's the only continuous cable tree top tour in the country and the adventure tour takes three hours, but for those that like a bit of adrenalin to spice up their day it's a lot of fun. (See Hollybank Treetops Adventure for the full story.)

With our feet firmly back on the ground we realised it was lunch time, and luckily for us, we're right in the middle of one of the Tassie's best wine regions - the cool climate vineyards in and around Pipers Brook produce some of Tassie's famous sparking wines. Having tossed a coin to choose the designated driver, we spent an hour or so visiting some of the cellar doors ending up at the Jansz Wine Room, which has an Interpretive Centre where you can learn all about why Tassie is so good at putting the bubbles into wine. The cellar door at Pipers Brook next door does a great lunchtime antipasto platter.

Back on the road we pointed the car east towards Scottsdale, stopping to smell the lavender at Bridestowe Lavender Farm. It's at its most colourful and fragrant in December and January but interesting all year. Take a tour of the distillery and then browse the gift shop for all things purple and fragrant, but whatever you do, don't leave without trying the lavender biscuits.

By this stage, we've managed to cover around 70km, but the afternoon light is fading so we decide to pull up stumps near the lovely seaside town of Bridport. Now golf is not normally my thing, given that I'm so useless at it. Indeed, I tend to agree with Mark Twain, who once so famously said, "golf is a good walk spoiled", but after spending a night at the breathtakingly beautiful Barnbougle Dunes, I'm ready to change my mind.

The course, a stunning links course that spills over the dunes on the edge of the wild Bass Strait coast, is Australia's top ranking public golf course and is currently ranked 35th in the world. Normally, to play at such a high-ranking course as this one you would need to be a member and most likely very rich, as a round of golf on these types of courses can often cost several hundred dollars, but being a public course means that you pay just $98 for 18 holes, or $120 for all day, which, according to my golfer partner, is one of the best golfing bargains in the country.

We stay in one of the motel-style cabins overlooking the first tee and eat in the superb clubhouse restaurant which is perched high upon a sand dune between the 9th and 18th greens and overlooks the beach and features a great range of Tasmanian produce and local wines.

Next morning, I bribe my partner into getting back in the car with the promise of returning one day so he can play. It's a beautiful drive across rolling hills and fertile valleys to the coast at St Helens. It doesn't look far on the map (around 100km) but once again, the Tassie-time theory of relativity kicks in and it takes us all day.

We stop for a mid-morning coffee at the Forest EcoCentre in Scottsdale, which is really just a promotion centre for Forestry Tasmania, but it does a great coffee and the eco-credentials of the arrestingly-designed building are quite fascinating - the building is covered by an external shell which is able to control its own environment with the aid of air flows and plants and trees that act as bio-mediators to create its own microclimate. We lose an hour or so as we wander around the historic streets of the tin mining town of Derby and the nearby Chinese cemetery and then several more on the short forest trails at Blue Tier Nature Reserve.

We get even more distracted by a cheese tasting at Pyengana Cheese Factory followed by a cold beer at the Pub in the Paddock, which is exactly just what it sounds like, a pub in the middle of a paddock in the middle of nowhere, which has been there since 1880. It's famous for its beer-drinking pig, and you can buy a special watered down 'pig beer' at the bar for $2 if you want to watch Priscilla in action, but we decided that she already looked like she'd had enough so headed off on our way, determined to make it to the coast come rain or come shine. A few kilometres down the road we stumbled across the sign pointing to St Columba Falls. At 90 metres high they are one of Tassie's highest waterfalls and we can't resist taking a short walk through the forest of tree ferns, sassafras and myrtle to check them out.

By this stage it's almost dark, so we make a vow to drive and keep on driving until we hit our destination, 35km away at St Helens. It's tough, but we keep our eyes on the road and refuse to look sideways at interesting signs pointing to what look like fascinating detours, and finally manage to hit the coast, almost 48 hours later than we had anticipated. But that's travelling on Tassie time for you... it will always take longer than you think, but it will always be more fun than you think as well.

More information

• Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links: 16 self-contained two-bedroom cottages overlooking the first tee. 425 Waterhouse Road, Bridport. Tel: (03) 6356 0094.
• Call the Tasmanian Travel Centre on 1300 655 145 or visit Discover Tasmania.

Article and images by Lee Atkinson, June 2008.

All information was correct at the time of writing but may change without notice.