Road Test Mazda CX-5

In the faint light of a Launceston dawn, Cataract Gorge’s dark walls are slowly brightening in my rear-view mirror. The city is almost empty and, in the near darkness, the heads-up display on the windscreen of the Mazda CX-5 GT SP is a bright tattoo of numbers. As I zigzag through the streets, the vehicle’s adaptive front headlights turn corners ahead of me like searchlights.

The day is young but has so much promise because I’m setting out on a drive between two of northern Tasmania’s signature natural features: the deep cleft of Cataract Gorge and the high volcanic plug of The Nut in Stanley. Getting me there is this CX-5 GT SP, the second-to-top model in the range of one of Australia’s biggest-selling medium SUVs.

As the city rubs the sleep from its eyes, I’m soon gone, swinging west onto the Bass Highway, though the highway is not my goal. When you drive to Tasmania’s northwest, the highway feels like the lowest of ways. I stay with the highway only until Elizabeth Town, turning off onto the backroads that wriggle through fertile farmland towards Sheffield. As one of the smallest of the medium SUVs on the market, the CX-5 is a vehicle that feels in its happy place out of the city and on these open roads. Its compact shape gives it a nimble nature, booting out of bends and corners like an escapee – even in this 2.5-litre non-turbo model, which has a soothing, throaty purr that’s not intrusive but just enough to remind me that I have power patiently waiting under my right foot. The GT SP also comes in a more powerful turbo version, which is akin to stowing a sports car under the bonnet of an SUV.

Fittingly, the GT SP’s trim profile is sporty enough to catch the eye with its 19-inch black alloy wheels and dark interior brightened by a power sliding and tilt-glass sunroof. The leather steering wheel is paired with heated black leather seats with sexy red stitching. Rear boot space – with the tailgate opening and closing by a hands-free remote sensor – is also slightly smaller than in some other medium SUVs, but it feels plentiful for most needs.

Beyond Elizabeth Town, the countryside comes in primary colours – vibrant red soils, lush green grasses and crops – but the most colourful thing here is Sheffield, the town that reinvented itself in the 1980s by turning its streetscape into a gallery of murals (there are now said to be more than 200 murals around the town and region).

I grab my first fortifying coffee of the day at Mountain Mumma and continue west, where the settlements surrounding Sheffield – Promised Land, Paradise – amply describe the joy of the drive. Watching over it all is the ever-present, craggy Mount Roland, its summit scraped by cloud this day, adding mood to the morning.

One of the north’s great joys is its backroads, which run like grey squiggles through some of Tasmania’s most productive farmland. By the time I approach Forth, I feel almost as though I’m driving through the vegetable aisle of a grocery store – quite appropriate since Wilmot, the town that was home to Australia’s first Coles store in 1910, is just down the road.

Briefly, north of Forth, I return to the Bass Highway, though there continues to be better ways west than the fast way. Out of Ulverstone, the coast-hugging Penguin Road rounds the rugged shores into the seaside town both named Penguin and with an obsession for penguins, from its snazzily dressed, three-metre-high Big Penguin to its penguin-adorned rubbish bins. To me, this road is one of the most fun short sections of coastal driving in the state, running for 10km like a balcony above beaches and volcanic shores, with Goat Island rearing out of the seas and low tide transforming the coast into a constellation of rock pools.

Past Wynyard, my hide-and-seek game with the Bass Highway ends, for the highway is pretty much the only way to Stanley. It’s a chance to ease the CX-5 into radar cruise control, which holds the vehicle in its lane as true as tracks, and let the 10 Bose speakers settle into a road soundtrack. The 10.25-inch dashboard infotainment screen is controlled by a dial beside the transmission – in easy reach from the driver’s seat – that feels a little like using a joystick and takes away the need and distraction of reaching for a touchscreen.

In an age of chatty vehicles, the CX-5 is decidedly quiet and companionable, with few beeps and bells, at least until it pings to tell me that, in its programmed opinion, I need to take another break from driving. Fortunately, the welcome stop of Boat Harbour Beach, one of my favourite Tasmanian strands, is just a few minutes ahead. With a second coffee in hand from beachside Seekers, I sit on a bench looking out over its brilliant white sands and glowing blue seas, where a couple of surfers are trying their luck in the choppy swell beneath Table Cape.

Continuing west, the road quickly climbs inland over the tail of the Rocky Cape hills and then edges back to the coast, crossing tannin-darkened estuaries, with The Nut (Munatrik) now rising ahead like an island out of Bass Strait.

Finally, late in the day, I turn off the highway and onto the finger-like peninsula that ends so dramatically and beautifully at Stanley and The Nut, the rugged and rocky remnant of an ancient volcano. The road is momentarily empty and I punt the CX-5 into sport mode, which takes hold with a decided kick. We are both eager, it seems, to be in Stanley.