The pit stop: Westbury
From its Town Common and tree-lined Village Green to the surrounding roads lined with hawthorn hedgerows, the northern town of Westbury thrives in its ever-so-English airs.
Eat
Westbury’s best eating comes with a side of gin or Irish moonshine at Western Tiers Distillery. The small menu features ginseng lamb backstrap and house-made gnocchi.
Dine in sight of the stills, beneath lightshades forged from the same copper, then stick around for a distillery tour or tastings.
Drink
Opened at the end of 2022, tiny Love Lucy Boots blends vintage with an up-to-the-moment wine list. Tucked inside an 1870s home, the bar’s focus is small, family-owned vineyards, half of which are Tasmanian, with cheese plates to accompany.
Credit: Tourism Tasmania/Kathryn Leahy
Shop
Once Upon a Time Collectables stocks an assortment of nostalgic household classics – flour tins, meat safes, shoeshine kits – while the well-named Tassie Pickers is an eclectic, Steptoe-and-Son-like jumble of travel clocks, oil cans and ammo boxes. Or maybe you just need a set of traffic lights or a petrol bowser?
See
Stump out to the Recreation Ground for the big cricket wickets, standing 6m high and paying tribute to local cricketer Jack Badcock, the first Tasmanian to score a Test century.
Pearn’s Steam World contains the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest collection of steam engines.
Stay
The gleaming-white Fitzpatrick’s Inn opened as a hotel in 1833 and now serves as bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Behind the classical columns, each of the period-era rooms has an ensuite. Don’t miss the mature English garden.
Westbury Gingerbread Cottages is a collection of half a dozen mid-19th-century homes at the heart of the village.