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The Ultimate Guide to Australia’s Most Historic Road
Hobart to Launceston · 200km
Some roads were built to move people. The Heritage Highway Tasmania was built by people who had no choice.
In the 1820s, thousands of transported convicts broke stone, shifted earth and laid the inland route connecting Hobart to Launceston by hand. They were assigned to the work from private properties along the way, supervised by overseers, and housed in roadside stations that still dot the landscape today. When the road was finished, it became the artery of colonial Tasmania: the route along which wool, wheat, livestock and people moved between the island’s two major centres for the better part of two centuries.
Almost half of all visitors to Tasmania actively seek out heritage experiences, and it is not difficult to understand why once you are on this road. Drive it today and you are following exactly the same line those convicts cut through the Midlands. The towns they built are still standing. The bridges they carved from sandstone still carry traffic. And just off the road near Longford, two UNESCO World Heritage Sites preserve the most complete picture of convict life and Australian colonial history anywhere in the country.
This is the complete guide to the Heritage Highway Tasmania: every town, every stop, and every heritage attraction worth visiting, from the convict bridges of the south to the UNESCO World Heritage destinations at its northern end, and a practical itinerary you can follow from either end.
The Heritage Highway Tasmania is the historic inland route between Hobart and Launceston, running approximately 200 kilometres through Midlands Tasmania. It follows the B31 and A1 roads through the Central Midlands and Northern Midlands, passing through some of Australia’s oldest continuously occupied towns.
The route is one of the most significant heritage drives in Australia, passing through some of the finest historic sites in the country. Midlands Tasmania attractions range from convict-built bridges to intact Georgian streetscapes, and the region contains the largest concentration of Georgian sandstone architecture outside Britain, a series of convict-built bridges that are among the finest examples of colonial stonework in the world, and a pastoral landscape that has changed remarkably little since the 1840s.
For visitors interested in Tasmania’s colonial history, Australian convict heritage, and the heritage sites Tasmania is famous for, the Heritage Highway is not a detour. Among all Tasmanian heritage sites, the Midlands corridor is the most concentrated and the most intact. It is the destination.
Tasmania’s colonial history cannot be understood without the Midlands. When the British established Van Diemen’s Land as a penal colony in the early 19th century, the fertile interior was quickly identified as prime pastoral land. Large land grants were issued to free settlers and former officers, and transported convicts were assigned to those properties to clear the land, build the homesteads and work the farms.
The Assignment System was the engine of this colonial expansion. Rather than languishing in penal stations, the majority of transported convicts were sent to work on private properties across the Midlands, where they developed trades, built skills and earned their freedom through a Ticket-of-Leave. This is the convict history Australia tends not to tell: not punishment and chains, but labour and opportunity, and eventual freedom for many of those who came here against their will.
The Heritage Highway Tasmania was the physical product of this system. The road, the bridges, the coaching inns, the farm buildings and the township streetscapes along its length were all substantially built by convict labour under assignment. What you see today is not a reconstruction. It is the real thing, still standing after 200 years.
Most visitors to Tasmania arrive through Hobart, making it the natural starting point for a Heritage Highway drive heading north. Allow a day in Hobart before joining the highway: the city’s Salamanca Place, Battery Point and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery provide important context for the colonial history you are about to explore in depth.
The Heritage Highway begins in earnest at Bridgewater, where the causeway across the Derwent River marks the transition from the greater Hobart area into the Midlands proper.
Richmond is technically a short detour off the main Heritage Highway route but is almost universally considered essential. It is one of the most intact colonial towns in Australia, and its sandstone streetscape along Bridge Street has changed little in 170 years.
The centrepiece is Richmond Bridge, completed in 1823 and widely considered Australia’s oldest bridge still in regular use. It was built by convict labour under the direction of colonial engineer John Lee Archer and is a masterpiece of dry-laid sandstone construction. The bridge’s arches are still perfectly intact, and the road across it carries modern vehicles without complaint.
Richmond Gaol (1825) is the oldest remaining gaol in Australia. It operated for more than a century and the cells, solitary confinement areas and punishment infrastructure are preserved in extraordinary detail. For visitors interested in convict history Australia, Richmond Gaol provides a sobering counterpoint to the pastoral assignment story: this is where convicts who broke rules ended up.
The town also contains a fine collection of colonial architecture Tasmania rarely matches in terms of concentration: St John’s Church (1836), the Old Court House and a series of sandstone Georgian commercial buildings that together make Richmond one of the most photographed towns in Tasmania.
Distance from Hobart: 26km. Recommended time: 2–3 hours. The town is walkable and free to explore. The Gaol charges admission.
Oatlands holds a distinction no other town in Australia can claim: it has the largest collection of Georgian sandstone buildings in the Southern Hemisphere. The main street, High Street, is lined with more than 150 colonial buildings, most of them original and most of them still in active use as homes, businesses and accommodation.
The town was surveyed in 1821 and developed rapidly through the 1820s and 1830s as the pastoral Midlands expanded. The sandstone came from local quarries worked by convict labour, and the quality of the construction throughout the town reflects the skill those convicts developed under the assignment system.
Callington Mill (1837) is Oatlands’ most iconic structure: a restored windmill that dominates the townscape and is the last operational colonial windmill in the Southern Hemisphere. It produces stone-ground flour using methods unchanged since the 1830s.
The Oatlands Historic Walk is a self-guided walking tour of the town’s significant buildings, available from the visitor centre on High Street. It takes around 90 minutes and covers the courthouse, churches, military barracks and domestic buildings that collectively represent one of the finest intact examples of colonial history in the state.
Distance from Hobart: 84km. Recommended time: 1–2 hours. Free street parking. Callington Mill charges admission.
Ross is arguably the Heritage Highway’s most celebrated town, built around a bridge that many consider the finest example of convict stonework in Australia.
Ross Bridge (1836) was designed by colonial engineer John Lee Archer and constructed by convict stonemason Daniel Herbert. Herbert was transported from Ireland for his alleged role in a political uprising and arrived in Van Diemen’s Land as a skilled craftsman. His carving on the Ross Bridge is extraordinary: 186 decorative panels featuring Celtic knotwork, human faces, animals and floral motifs, each one individually conceived. In recognition of his craftsmanship, Herbert was granted his freedom before the bridge was complete. His story is one of the clearest examples of how the assignment system could function as a genuine pathway out of convict status.
The town itself is a heritage site in its own right. The crossroads at the town centre is framed by four colonial sandstone buildings representing, according to local tradition, “temptation, salvation, recreation and damnation”: the Man-O-Ross Hotel, the Catholic Church, the Town Hall and the Gaol. The symbolism is almost too neat, but the buildings are genuine and the streetscape is remarkable.
The Ross Female Factory site marks where women transported to Van Diemen’s Land were housed and put to work. It is a sobering site that adds important complexity to the convict history narrative: women’s experiences under the assignment and factory systems were substantially different from men’s, and often significantly harder.
Distance from Hobart: 120km. Recommended time: 2 hours. Bridge and town centre are free. Excellent accommodation in historic cottages and the Man-O-Ross Hotel.
Campbell Town is quieter and less visited than Ross but contains one of the Heritage Highway’s most distinctive landmarks: the Red Bridge, completed in 1838 and built from distinctive red brick rather than the sandstone more common to the region. The bricks were made from local clay by convict workers and the contrast with the green Macquarie River below it creates a striking visual that has made it one of the most photographed bridges in Tasmania.
The town’s Heritage Walk follows the main street and surrounding area, incorporating 56 convict footsteps set into the footpath, each inscribed with the name of a convict who was transported to the area. It is one of the more quietly affecting memorials to the human scale of convict history: individual names, individual lives, permanently inscribed in the footpath of the town they helped build.
Campbell Town also has a strong connection to the pastoral history of the Midlands. The Red Lion Inn (1840s) remains operational and is worth a stop, as is the Fish Hatchery, which has been producing freshwater fish for Tasmania’s rivers since 1864.
Distance from Hobart: 137km. Recommended time: 1 hour. Heritage Walk is free and self-guided.
Near the northern end of the Heritage Highway, just south of Launceston, Evandale is one of the best-preserved historic villages in Australia. Almost the entire town centre is protected under Tasmania heritage legislation, and the streetscape of late Georgian and early Victorian buildings has survived with extraordinary integrity.
The Sunday market in Falls Park draws visitors and locals with fresh produce, crafts and antiques, giving the village a living character that many heritage towns struggle to maintain. The National Trust operates a visitor centre and heritage trail through the significant buildings.
Evandale sits just minutes from Clarendon House, built in 1838 for wool merchant James Cox and regarded as one of the finest examples of Georgian colonial architecture Tasmania has produced. The National Trust manages tours of the interior, which contains a significant collection of colonial furnishings and tells the story of Cox’s rise and spectacular financial collapse.
Distance from Launceston: 20km south. Recommended time: 2 hours. Clarendon House: check current opening times with the National Trust Tasmania.
Longford Tasmania sits just off the Heritage Highway, 20 minutes south of Launceston. Longford’s heritage runs deep, and a stop here reveals far more than most travellers expect. This is where two centuries of colonial history come into sharpest focus.
For visitors wondering what things to do in Longford Tasmania include beyond passing through, the answer is more than most expect. The town centre is a significant heritage site in its own right. Christ Church (1839) is one of the finest examples of colonial Gothic architecture Tasmania has produced. The town square, the streetscape of Federation and colonial buildings along Wellington Street, and the connection to the Archer family pastoral empire that dominated the Northern Midlands for generations all make Longford worth more than a passing stop.
But the reason to come to Longford, and the reason the Heritage Highway Tasmania earns its name, sits just outside the town on either side.
Distance from Launceston: 20km south. Recommended time: A full day minimum. Overnight heritage accommodation on site means you never have to rush.
Just off the Heritage Highway near Longford, two UNESCO World Heritage Sites sit side by side on the same pastoral landscape the road was built to serve.
Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate are recognised UNESCO World Heritage properties, two of only 11 convict sites Australia has inscribed on the World Heritage list, and among the finest Tasmanian convict sites open to visitors today. They are the only UNESCO World Heritage convict sites in Northern Tasmania, and the anchor of northern Tasmania heritage tourism. Among all convict sites Tasmania has preserved, these two are the most complete. Together they contain 38 original heritage buildings, 200 years of unbroken colonial history, and the most complete picture of the Assignment System anywhere in the country.
They are 20 minutes from Launceston. They are less than five minutes off the Heritage Highway. And they tell the story the highway was built on.
Woolmers Estate was established in 1817 by Thomas Archer and remained in the hands of six continuous generations of the Archer family until 1994. That unbroken 177-year occupation is central to what makes Woolmers extraordinary among the historic homesteads Tasmania has to offer. As a heritage estate, Tasmania has produced nothing quite like it: among all the colonial estates Tasmania has to its name, none has been occupied continuously by a single family for longer. Nothing was cleared out or repurposed when the family left. The estate passed to the Woolmers Foundation as a complete, intact colonial property with all original contents in place.
The result is one of the most significant intact colonial heritage sites in Australia. All 18 buildings are original, not reconstructions. The Wool Shed (c.1819) is believed to be Australia’s oldest wool shed and is still in use today. Inside, a massive beam above the front door carries a hand-stencilled inscription: “England expects that every man this day will do his duty, Admiral Nelson, Trafalgar 1805.” It is believed to have been placed there during the agricultural depression of the early 1840s, when wool was so worthless it was being burnt rather than shipped to England. The Blacksmith Shop (1822) retains its slate roof and unglazed windows. In the early 1820s, Woolmers’ blacksmith also repaired tools for the nearby convict road gang, a detail that directly connects the estate to the Heritage Highway itself. Woolmers House (c.1820 and 1840s) contains six generations of Archer family heirlooms in their original rooms, displayed as they were lived with rather than arranged for exhibition. The interiors are largely unchanged since 1859.
The original bell system for summoning servants still survives, as does the benzol plant purchased by William Archer in the 1840s to light the house: among the earliest private gas lighting systems in colonial Australia.
The Archer family’s influence extended well beyond the estate. Thomas I served on the Legislative Council for almost 20 years; Lady Franklin, wife of the Governor, once described him as “the bulk of the Legislative Council” in reference to his considerable size. After his death in 1850, the estate’s reputation endured: HRH the Duke of Edinburgh lunched at Woolmers in 1868, hosted by Thomas I’s widow Susannah.
The Unshackled digital experience at Woolmers connects visitors to 75,000 individual convict stories: the real people who worked this land, learned trades here, earned their freedom and built their own lives in colonial Tasmania. It is the most comprehensive engagement with convict heritage Tasmania has created, and it transforms the Woolmers visit from a heritage walk into a genuinely immersive encounter with history.
The National Rose Garden at Woolmers holds 5,000 roses across 460 varieties, making it one of the finest rose collections in Australia. It blooms from October through February, creating one of the most spectacular seasonal attractions in the state.
Guided House Tours of the Woolmers House interior run at 11am and 2pm daily. Numbers are strictly limited. For visitors seeking convict tours at their finest, these guided sessions are consistently praised as the highlight of any Woolmers visit and provide access to rooms and family history unavailable in the general admission experience.
The estate’s collection extends to two original vehicles: a 1913 Wolseley purchased by Thomas V for his honeymoon, still in entirely original condition including the tyres, and a 1934 Dodge. A small child’s car bought around 1922 for the five-year-old Thomas VI, complete with one-cylinder engine, gears, clutch and brakes, also survives. These are not exhibits brought in from elsewhere. They have simply never left.
Heritage accommodation in six convict-built cottages is available from $250 per night: the only opportunity in Australia to stay overnight in original 1840s convict-built buildings on a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After the day visitors leave at 6:30pm, the estate belongs entirely to accommodation guests.
Tickets from $35 per adult. Open daily from 8am (closed Christmas Day). Less than five minutes off the Heritage Highway at Longford. Excellent caravan and motorhome access with ample on-site parking.
Brickendon Estate was established in 1824 by William Archer, brother of Thomas Archer who founded Woolmers. It remains a working farm today, managed by seventh-generation Archer descendants who are still farming the same land their convict workers cleared two centuries ago. This living continuity makes Brickendon unique among convict heritage sites: it is not a preserved relic but a functioning property where history is embedded in daily life.
The 1820s Farm Village at Brickendon is one of the most remarkable collections of original convict-built structures in Australia: a Gothic chapel, Sussex barns, a blacksmith’s shop with its original tool collection, a cookhouse, woolshed, smokehouse and timber pillar granary. The Farm Village as a whole received UNESCO World Heritage inscription as an outstanding example of the assignment system’s physical legacy.
The estate’s Convict Interpretation Centre uses QR-code guided stories to connect visitors to the individual convicts who worked here: their names, their crimes, their sentences, and what became of them. Many received their Ticket-of-Leave and went on to establish their own farms and families in the Northern Midlands.
Daily animal feeding at 10:15am on the 465-hectare working property connects younger visitors to the agricultural life that has continued here uninterrupted since the 1820s. The 4-hectare heritage garden surrounding the 1829 Georgian homestead, and 30km of original hawthorn hedgerows planted by convicts, complete a landscape that is essentially unchanged from its colonial-era appearance.
Tickets from $35 per adult. Open Tuesday – Sunday from 10am. Combined ticketing with Woolmers Estate is available.
Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate are connected by the Convict Farm Walk, a 2.8km walking path that follows the routes convicts themselves walked between the two properties. This convict heritage trail crosses the suspension bridge over the Macquarie River and passes through the pastoral landscape that the convict workers cleared and farmed for their Archer masters.
Walking it today is one of the most quietly affecting experiences the Heritage Highway Tasmania has to offer: a physical connection to the people who built this landscape, following the same lines they walked, between two UNESCO World Heritage Sites that preserve what they created.
Combined ticketing covers both estates and the Convict Farm Walk. Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate together deserve a full day: the two properties contain 38 original buildings across more than 200 years of history, and the 2.8km Convict Farm Walk between them adds time and perspective that rushing through either estate would sacrifice. The best way to experience both is to stay. Heritage accommodation in the convict-built cottages at Woolmers means the estates are yours once the day visitors leave at 6:30pm: the grounds, the silence, the history, all to yourself.
Not all heritage sites along the Heritage Highway Tasmania are equal in what they offer. As you plan your itinerary, three questions are worth asking about every stop.
Authenticity vs recreation: Is what you’re looking at original, or has it been reconstructed? The best stops on the Heritage Highway, from the sandstone bridges of Ross to the UNESCO World Heritage estates at Longford, are the real thing: untouched, unreconstructed and unrepeatable elsewhere.
Depth of interpretation: A plaque on a wall is very different from a guided tour with someone who knows the history intimately. Sites that offer expert-led convict tours, or immersive digital experiences like the Unshackled exhibition at Woolmers, deliver a qualitatively different experience from self-directed walking.
Pacing and atmosphere: The best heritage stops let you set your own pace. Estates that offer sprawling grounds, on-site dining and the option to stay overnight allow the history to settle rather than rushing you back to the car.
Apply these questions to every stop and your Heritage Highway Tasmania itinerary will quickly sort itself into the essential and the optional.
It depends on your travel priorities. The East Coast offers spectacular coastal scenery but adds significantly to your driving time. The Heritage Highway is the direct inland route and is globally recognised for its colonial architecture, convict sites and heritage estates. For visitors specifically seeking heritage experiences, history and cultural depth, the Heritage Highway is the stronger choice. Many visitors combine both: Heritage Highway one way, East Coast the other.
The direct drive takes around 2.5 hours without stops. Doing the route properly requires at minimum a full day, with two days significantly better. Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate at Longford alone justify a dedicated day: 38 original buildings, the Unshackled digital experience, the Convict Farm Walk and the National Rose Garden are not experiences to rush. Overnight heritage accommodation in the convict-built cottages at Woolmers is available from $250 per night and is the most immersive way to end a Heritage Highway journey.
Yes. The convict history told through the Heritage Highway is genuinely gripping: individual stories of transportation, skilled labour, earned freedom and new lives built in a new country. Sites like Woolmers Estate have integrated the Unshackled digital experience specifically to present this history in an interactive, visually engaging format. The Heritage Highway is also on the Australian curriculum for History, making it a natural fit for educational visits.
The heritage cottages at Woolmers Estate offer something unavailable anywhere else in Australia: an overnight stay in original 1840s convict-built buildings on a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From $250 per night, guests have after-hours access to the estate grounds once day visitors have left. Staying here turns a day trip into a genuinely immersive experience.
Both directions work well. Driving north from Hobart to Launceston lets you build through the sandstone towns before arriving at the UNESCO World Heritage estates at Longford as the journey’s climax. Driving south from Launceston means starting with Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate while you are fresh, then working through Ross, Oatlands and Richmond toward Hobart.
The Heritage Highway is worth visiting year round, but the peak season from October to April offers the best weather and the widest range of seasonal experiences. The Woolmers National Rose Garden peaks from late October through January. Winter visits (June to August) have a raw, atmospheric quality that suits the historic landscape particularly well, and visitor numbers are significantly lower.
The Ross Sunday market operates year round. Evandale’s National Penny Farthing Championship (February) is one of the more extraordinary annual events in Tasmania.
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
