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The best day trips from Launceston: Bay of Fires, Cradle Mountain, Bridestowe Lavender, Mole Creek Caves and the Heritage Highway, with drive times.
Northern Tasmania
Lavender fields and penguin colonies north down the Tamar, waterfalls and caves west, white sand and orange lichen east, and a convict road running south through some of the oldest towns in the country. These are the best day trips from Launceston, grouped by direction so you can plan a route rather than doubling back.
Looking for things closer to town? See our guide to things to do in Launceston
Best for: families, animal lovers, a half-day trip
Drive time: 45 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, check current session times
Cost: Separately ticketed at each attraction
Bridestowe at Nabowla is the largest privately owned lavender farm in the southern hemisphere, planted in 1922 from French seed and still harvesting from the same stock. In December and January the rows turn solid purple across the hillside, which is why the photographs travel further than the farm does. Outside those months the fields are green and the crowds are gone, but the shop, café and lavender ice cream run year round, along with the distillery where the oil is made. Allow two hours on site in bloom season, more if you’re photographing. Bridestowe charges entry during peak bloom and is free at other times of year, and January is busy enough that booking ahead is sensible.
Best for: photography, summer visits, a short drive north
Drive time: 50 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, seasonal hours
Cost: Entry fee applies in peak bloom season
Beauty Point sits on the West Tamar, and its two attractions share a wharf. Platypus House is one of the few places in Tasmania where you can reliably see a platypus up close in daylight, in guided sessions that also take in echidnas. Seahorse World runs tours through a working seahorse farm, where you can hold a starfish and watch seahorses being bred for aquariums worldwide. Both run on timed sessions rather than open entry, so check before you set out, and allow an hour for each if you’re doing the pair. Both are indoors and fully under cover, which makes Beauty Point the most reliable wet-weather day trip from Launceston. The drive up the West Tamar Highway is worth the trip on its own, with vineyard turn-offs and river views most of the way.
Best for: families, couples, an evening out
Drive time: 45 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Nightly at dusk, bookings essential
Cost: Tours ticketed
At the mouth of the Tamar, little penguins come ashore at dusk to their burrows in the dunes, and small guided groups watch them land from a boardwalk with red-filtered torches. Tours run nightly year round, but start times shift with sunset, from around 4.30pm in midwinter to after 8pm in midsummer, so check when you book. Allow about an hour, dress far warmer than you think you need to, and leave the camera flash off. Low Head is also worth a daylight visit in its own right, with Australia’s oldest continuously operating pilot station, a maritime museum and a lighthouse on the headland. Pair it with Beauty Point or Bridestowe earlier in the day and finish at dusk with the penguins.
Best for: markets, riverside walks, craft
Drive time: 35 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Always accessible
Cost: Free
Deloraine sits on the Meander River beneath the Great Western Tiers, and is the closest of the western day trips to Launceston. The main street is largely Georgian and Victorian, with antique shops, galleries and cafés along it, and the riverbank walk under the old bridge takes about twenty minutes. Deloraine has a long-standing craft tradition, anchored by the Tasmanian Craft Fair each November, which is one of the largest working craft fairs in the country. A monthly market runs through the year. Most visitors treat Deloraine as the gateway to Mole Creek and the caves rather than a destination, but an hour here before heading west is time well spent, and it’s the best place on that route to eat.
Best for: short walks, rainforest, waterfalls
Drive time: 1 hour from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, daylight hours
Cost: Parks Daily Pass required, $49.15 per vehicle up to eight people or $24.55 per person arriving on foot, by bike or by bus. No other entry fee
Liffey Falls is a series of tiered cascades in a reserve of myrtle, sassafras and man ferns, in the foothills of the Great Western Tiers. From the upper car park the walk takes about 45 minutes return on a well-formed track with boardwalks and steps, following the river down to the main falls. A longer route climbs up from the lower car park and takes closer to two hours. The falls run hardest after rain and through winter and spring, and the reserve is cool and damp year round, so wear shoes with grip. Liffey Falls is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, and a Parks Pass is required to park there.
Best for: a guided experience, wet weather, all ages
Drive time: 1 hour from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, guided tours only
Cost: Visitors to the Mole Creek Karst National Park do not require a Parks Pass to tour the caves, though a pass is required to explore other areas of the park. The tours are separately ticketed: $32 adult, $16 child 5 to 17, free under 5, $25.60 concession.
Marakoopa and King Solomons are two very different caves about fifteen minutes apart, both accessible only on guided tours run by Parks and Wildlife. Marakoopa has underground streams, two large chambers and a glow-worm display, which makes it the pick for children and the busier of the two. King Solomons is smaller, drier and more densely decorated with stalactites, stalagmites and flowstone. Each tour takes about 45 minutes, and a combined ticket covers both. The caves hold a steady nine degrees whatever the weather above ground, so bring a jacket even in summer. Tours book out in January, and there’s no phone signal at either cave, so book before you leave Launceston.
Best for: families, Tasmanian devils, a hands-on hour
Drive time: 1 hour from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, keeper tours at set times
Cost: From $35
Trowunna at Mole Creek runs one of the longest-standing Tasmanian devil breeding and research programs in the state, and its animals live across open bushland enclosures rather than concrete pens. Alongside the devils you’ll find spotted-tail and eastern quolls, wombats, echidnas and free-roaming kangaroos you can hand-feed. The keeper-led tours are the reason to come, with handling sessions and feeding demonstrations that explain the facial tumour disease work the sanctuary contributes to. Tours run at set times through the day, so check before you set out. Trowunna sits a few minutes from the Mole Creek caves, which makes the two an easy westbound day together, with Deloraine on the way for lunch.
Best for: a full day, bucket-list views, keen walkers
Drive time: 2 hours 15 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, shuttle bus from the visitor centre
Cost: Two passes are required. A Parks Daily Pass, $49.15 per vehicle for up to eight people or $24.55 per person arriving by bus, bike or on foot, plus an Icon Daily Pass for Cradle Mountain, purchased at the Cradle Mountain visitor centre: $30.70 adult, $12.30 child 5 to 17, $73.75 family of two adults and three children, under 5 free. The Icon Daily Pass includes the shuttle bus and cannot be upgraded
Cradle Mountain is the longest drive on this list and the one most visitors make anyway. Jagged dolerite peaks rise above Dove Lake, and the classic walk is the Dove Lake circuit, a mostly flat 6km loop of around two hours with the mountain in view the whole way. Shorter options include the Enchanted Walk and the boardwalk to Ronny Creek, where wombats graze at dusk. Experienced walkers take on the summit, which is a full six to eight hours and needs proper preparation. Private vehicles can’t drive to Dove Lake in peak periods, so you park at the visitor centre and take the shuttle. Leave Launceston early, pack layers, and expect the weather to change more than once.
Best for: history lovers, gardens, the shortest day trip on this list
Drive time: 20 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Woolmers daily from 8am, last entry 4pm. Brickendon Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays
Cost: One combined ticket covers both estates: $49 adult, $45 concession, $10 child, $99 family
Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate sit side by side twenty minutes south of Launceston, and are among only 11 Australian Convict Sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Both tell the story of the Assignment System, where convict men and women learned trades, earned their freedom and often chose to stay. At Woolmers, 18 original buildings stand across 13 hectares, alongside a hosted homestead experience, Unshackled: The Assignment Story Exhibition and the expansive Rose Garden. Cross the Macquarie River on the suspension bridge and the 2.8km Convict Farm Walk brings you into Brickendon’s 1820s farm village, with a chapel, blacksmith’s shop, barns and animals the kids can feed. Allow a full day at each estate, or stay overnight in a convict-built cottage and take both at your own pace.
Best for: a Heritage Highway stop, convict history, a coffee break
Drive time: 45 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Always accessible
Cost: Free
Campbell Town is the classic halfway stop between Launceston and Hobart, and worth more than the ten minutes most people give it. The convict-built Red Bridge, finished in 1838 from around 1.5 million locally made bricks, still carries the highway traffic. Along the footpath through town, the Convict Brick Trail sets out thousands of individual bricks, each naming a convict transported to Van Diemen’s Land with their crime, sentence and ship. Reading them as you walk is a quietly sobering way to grasp the scale of transportation. The main street has bakeries and cafés, an old coaching inn and a heritage streetscape largely intact, and it pairs naturally with Ross and Oatlands on one southbound run.
Best for: Georgian villages, photography, a slow lunch
Drive time: 55 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Always accessible
Cost: Free
Ross is one of Tasmania’s most complete Georgian villages, built around a crossroads where the four corners are known locally as temptation, recreation, salvation and damnation, marked by the pub, the town hall, the church and the former gaol. The 1836 Ross Bridge is why most people stop, carved by convict stonemason Daniel Herbert with 186 individual designs across its arches. The Female Factory site on the edge of town was one of the main convict women’s establishments in Van Diemen’s Land, and is free to visit. Elm-lined streets, a well-known bakery and antique shops fill the rest of an easy couple of hours. Ross sits 35 minutes south of Woolmers, closer than it is to Launceston.
Best for: sandstone streetscapes, windmills, a longer drive
Drive time: 1 hour 15 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Always accessible, Callington Mill ticketed
Cost: Free to walk the town
Oatlands holds one of the largest collections of Georgian sandstone buildings in Australia, with more than 80 along the main street alone, built by convict labour from stone quarried nearby. Callington Mill, built in 1837, is a restored working windmill, one of very few of its kind still turning anywhere in the country, and the adjoining distillery produces whisky on site. Lake Dulverton on the edge of town is good for birdlife and an easy walk. Oatlands is the furthest of the Heritage Highway towns covered here, which makes it best combined with Ross and Campbell Town on one long southbound day, or tackled on the way through if you’re driving to Hobart.
Best for: snow in winter, alpine views in summer, a short drive for a big landscape
Drive time: 55 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Daily, ski season roughly July to September
Cost: Parks Daily Pass required, $49.15 per vehicle up to eight people or $24.55 per person arriving on foot, by bike or by bus. Ski lift tickets are separate in winter
Ben Lomond is Tasmania’s main ski field in winter and an alpine plateau of wildflowers, cushion plants and dolerite scree in summer. The memorable part either way is Jacobs Ladder, six unsealed hairpin bends climbing the escarpment with no guard rail, which is spectacular from the passenger seat and not for nervous drivers. In snow season chains are compulsory and conditions change fast, so check the Parks website before setting out. In summer the plateau is one of the easiest alpine landscapes in Tasmania to reach, with short walks from the car park and views back across the Midlands.
Best for: beaches, photography, a long but worthwhile drive
Drive time: 2 hours 35 minutes from Launceston CBD
Open: Always accessible
Cost: Free
White sand, clear water and granite boulders covered in vivid orange lichen make the Bay of Fires one of the most photographed coastlines in Australia. The bay runs roughly 50km from Binalong Bay north to Eddystone Point, and Binalong Bay is the closest access point and the easiest for a day trip. St Helens, ten minutes south, is the largest town on the north-east coast and where you’ll find lunch, fuel and the Bay of Fires Conservation Area information. The drive out runs through the Sideling and the forests behind Scottsdale, which is scenic but slow and winding. This is a full day from Launceston, so leave early, or better, make it an overnight.
“Woolmers really is the jewel in the crown of heritage properties in Australia, a must see.”
Half the drives on this list run south or west, and every one of them is shorter from Longford than from Launceston. Woolmers Estate sits twenty minutes below the city with heritage cottages on the grounds, which turns Campbell Town into a 25 minute run instead of 45, Ross into 35 instead of 55, and brings Oatlands, Deloraine and the Mole Creek caves each about twenty minutes nearer. Over four days of driving that’s most of a morning handed back. Heading north instead, to Bridestowe or the Tamar, town is the smarter choice.
The cottages are convict-built, self-contained and sleep between two and six, from $250 a night. Devonshire tea, breakfast and general admission to both estates are included, along with after-hours access to the grounds once the day visitors have gone.
Cradle Mountain is about 2 hours 15 minutes from Launceston by car, roughly 145km via Deloraine or Mole Creek. It works as a day trip, and thousands of people do it, but it means around four and a half hours of driving before you have walked anywhere. Leave by 7am to have a full day at the mountain. Private vehicles cannot drive to Dove Lake during peak periods, so you park at the visitor centre and take the shuttle bus in, which is included in the Icon Daily Pass. Pack layers whatever the season, because the weather at the mountain changes quickly and often.
The Bay of Fires is about 2 hours 35 minutes from Launceston, with Binalong Bay the closest access point and St Helens ten minutes further south. As a day trip that means roughly five hours of driving return, on roads that wind through the Sideling and the north-east forests. It is doable if you leave early and treat the drive as part of the day. Most people who have made the trip recommend staying a night in St Helens or Binalong Bay instead, which also puts you there for sunrise, when the orange lichen on the granite is at its most vivid.
It depends how far you want to drive. Under an hour, Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate at twenty minutes are the shortest, and the only UNESCO World Heritage sites in northern Tasmania. Deloraine is 35 minutes, Beauty Point and Low Head 45, and Ben Lomond 55 for alpine scenery. Between one and two hours, the Mole Creek caves and Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary make one westbound day, and Ross and Oatlands one southbound. Beyond two hours, Cradle Mountain and the Bay of Fires are the big ones, and both reward an overnight stay.
If you’re planning several of these, the southern and western trips are all around twenty minutes shorter from Woolmers Estate at Longford than from Launceston, which is worth knowing when you decide where to stay.
For some of them, and Cradle Mountain needs two passes rather than one. A standard Parks Daily Pass covers park entry for up to 24 hours at $49.15 per vehicle for up to eight people, or $24.55 per person arriving by bus, bike or on foot. That pass is what you need for Liffey Falls and Ben Lomond. Cradle Mountain requires an Icon Daily Pass in addition to the Parks Daily Pass, bought at the Cradle Mountain visitor centre, at $30.70 per adult, $12.30 per child aged 5 to 17, or $73.75 for a family of two adults and three children. The Icon Daily Pass includes the shuttle bus and cannot be upgraded, so budget for both before you set out.
No. Visitors touring Marakoopa or King Solomons Cave do not need a Parks Pass, though one is required to explore other areas of the Mole Creek Karst National Park. You pay only for the tour: $32 adult, $16 child aged 5 to 17, $25.60 concession for Australian seniors, pensioner or healthcare card holders, $80 for a family of two adults and three children, and free for under fives. Each cave is ticketed separately, tours run 45 minutes, and bookings are essential and can be made up to 14 days ahead. The caves sit at a steady 9 degrees, so bring a jacket even in summer.
Neither cave is accessible for people with mobility impairments. Both Marakoopa and King Solomons have naturally narrow sections too tight for wheelchairs and other mobility aids, along with flights of stairs, uneven surfaces and low ceilings. King Solomons is the easier of the two, with fewer steps, and the Underground Rivers and Glow Worms tour at Marakoopa suits all fitness levels, while the Great Cathedral tour needs medium fitness for the stairway. Parking at Marakoopa’s upper car park is limited and the access road is narrow, so motorhomes and caravans must park at the lower car park and walk 800 metres to the cave.
Tasmanian lavender flowers through December and January, with peak colour usually in the first half of January and harvest running from late December into early February. Bridestowe Lavender Estate at Nabowla, 50 minutes from Launceston, is the best-known place to see it. Outside those weeks the rows are green rather than purple, and the estate charges entry only in peak season. If you are visiting specifically for the flowering, aim for the first three weeks of January and check the estate’s own bloom updates, since the timing shifts each year with the weather.
Approximate driving times from Launceston CBD: Brickendon and Woolmers Estates 20 minutes, Deloraine 35, Beauty Point 45, Low Head 45, Campbell Town 45, Bridestowe Lavender Estate 50, Ben Lomond 55, Ross 55, Liffey Falls 1 hour, Mole Creek caves 1 hour, Trowunna Wildlife Sanctuary 1 hour, Oatlands 1 hour 15, Cradle Mountain 2 hours 15, and the Bay of Fires 2 hours 35. Times are for normal conditions and do not allow for stops. The roads to Ben Lomond, Cradle Mountain and the Bay of Fires are slower than the distances suggest.
Last grounds entry: 4pm
Grounds close: 6:30pm
20 minutes from Launceston
17 minutes from Launceston Airport
FREE entry when bringing interstate or overseas guests
