Summer secrets
As the sun pours down on Tasmania, the difficult decisions begin: do you seek out one of the 1,000-plus beaches, scale one of the hundreds of mountains or head for a cellar door, farmgate or berry patch? We ask four prominent Tasmanians for their special summer place on the island.
Bianca Welsh, restaurateur
Launceston’s Bianca and James Welsh have long loved summer walks into Wineglass Bay, but when kids arrived, the owners of Stillwater Restaurant decided that holidays needed to be easy. And for that, they only needed to look up the road to Bicheno.
“The beaches at Bicheno aren’t too vast – they’re nice and small and pretty safe; we just stop on a beach wherever we’re wandering,” Bianca says.
As restaurateurs, Bianca and James instinctively gravitate towards places with great food, which was another ingredient that drew them to Bicheno. In town, they might stop at the Lobster Shack, or venture out on drives to Freycinet Marine Farm or The Waterloo in Swansea. But at day’s end, it’s always back to Bicheno and a few of their eight-year-old son’s fan favourites, be it a swim at Apsley River Waterhole or a wander among wildlife at East Coast Natureworld.
Such has become the family’s connection to this coastal refuge that Bianca now finds herself scrolling through real-estate websites, pondering a permanent summer-holiday base by the Bicheno beaches.
“We’d love to find a block. We’re on realestate.com.au all the time – we’d love to have the Tassie dream of an East Coast shack.”
Credit: Alivia Riley-Dell
Credit: Prime Perspectives
Troy Ruffels, artist
Forth artist Troy Ruffels draws much of his inspiration from the local environment, so it’s little surprise that summers keep him close to home.
“I think we have particularly fantastic summers on the northwest coast,” Troy says. “It stays pretty green in comparison to much of Tasmania. It’s time to spend in the backyard, and it’s about family and friends, playing beach cricket and having barbecues at local public spaces.”
Troy’s connection to Forth is deep – it’s where his parents grew up, where he now lives in what was his grandmother’s cottage with artist wife Anne Morrison, and where he played and swam as a kid at Turners Beach. That same long beach at the mouth of the River Forth is where summer mornings now ritually begin with a swim, and it often calls again at day’s end.
“Turners Beach is our real hangout. Mornings and evenings, we come down to the beach, and it’s a really changeable landscape. Every time you go down there, the tidal currents and the river flow are just continually shaping and reshaping that landscape. It’s a delight to visit almost every day and see it change.
“We collect rocks, we find strange forms. We just enjoy the weather and swimming and water activities. We feel pretty blessed with all that.”
Credit: Prime Perspectives
Credit: Jess Bonde
Suzy Brett, distillery owner
Suzy Brett has travelled extensively in Australia and internationally, but when it comes to summer, she finds it hard to leave the beach just a few hundred metres from the door of her Spring Bay Distillery.
“We think Spring Beach stacks up with all the international destinations we’ve seen,” Suzy says. “We love spending summers here. My perfect day essentially is taking the boat out from Triabunna, catching a feed of flathead and some calamari, then in the afternoon going down for a swim at Spring Beach and maybe a bit of beach cricket. If we’re lucky, there’s some abalone with our pre-dinner gin and tonic on the deck, and then a whiskey around the fire pit on a clear night marvelling at how amazing the stars are on the coast.”
Spring Beach has been Suzy and husband Cam’s ‘local’ for more than 20 years, and it’s the base from where they venture out to other East Coast favourites. There are days up the coast at vineyards such as Milton and Mayfield Estate, lunches out at Piermont, or even just times mixing things up at neighbouring Rheban Beach.
“Rheban has this wildness to it. It’s not developed in any way, shape or form – it’s just beautiful.”
Credit: Andrew Wilson and Everything Eve
Steve Howell, tour operator
Growing up in Rosevears, Steve Howell always considered Badger Head something of a summer backyard. It was the spot where his brother surfed, where Steve would head with school friends on summer weekends, and where he took his future wife Tara on their first date in 2009.
“We went there in a Volkswagen Beetle that I’d bought when I was 13 and spent 10 years doing up,” Steve says. “It was a place I’d head once I had my licence – it was just the perfect distance from Rosevears – and it felt like the most freeing kind of experience. So I guess I wanted to share that with Tara.”
Fifteen years on from that first date, Steve and Tara are now the owners of mountain-bike tour company Blue Derby Pods Ride, but it’s the walk or run into Badger Head from Greens Beach that brings Steve back to his summer favourite.
“I love doing the coastal walk to Copper Cove and jumping in for a swim. It’s a really special spot, having that low coastal scrub with such a beautiful track that’s only as wide as your feet. There’s something epic about that.”
And this summer, he says, is the time he and Tara will be introducing two new people – their young children – to their special place in Narawntapu National Park. “Tara went there recently for a friend’s birthday and we realised we haven’t taken the kids there yet, so we’ve bumped it up the priority list.”
Credit: Jess Bonde