Once home to the headquarters of the Van Diemen’s Land Company, today Stanley attracts plenty of historians, but also bushwalkers exploring the nearby Tarkine wilderness, beachcombers and wildlife lovers out to spot fur seals and penguins on Tasmania’s north-west coast. Its streets are a chocolate-box collection of colonial buildings and quaint cottages, and a new boutique hotel set in an old sailors’ tavern has just created another reason to visit. Built as a pub in 1849 by a prime minister’s grandfather, the Ship Inn Stanley is now a storytelling hotel that combines a boutique stay with the chance to be immersed in the area’s many layered history.

You’ll find Moss Hotel retrofitted into two historic Georgian buildings on the waterfront of Hobart’s Salamanca Place. Access is gained through a green glass door that hints at the experience to come. Climbing the sandstone-lined staircase, a cosy lounge space that effectively serves as the property’s reception opens up in front of you. With its subdued lighting and requisite open fire burning low, the area envelops guests rather than merely welcoming them.

Flinders Island is the largest in the Furneaux Group, all at sea in the Bass Strait, north-east of Tasmania. Renowned for its pristine, if wild, waters that harbour some of Australia’s best seafood, it’s long been a chef’s secret pantry. Some 900 islanders live on Flinders, among them farmers, growers and producers who are passionate about producing food the way it used to be done. Terrestrial spoils include beef, lamb, garlic, honey, fruit and vegetables, as well as premium Tasmanian whisky, gin and beer.

Sure, we’re a sucker for a slick new design hotel or a carefully curated Airbnb, but we have a particular soft spot for a classic, too. Especially if that classic sits right on the doorstep of Tasmania’s spectacular, World Heritage-listed Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park.

Crisp sheets on king-size beds and warm croissants in the morning – in a wilderness camp on Bruny Island. That’s the premise of Tasmanian Walking Holidays’ Bruny Island Long Weekend, an award-winning three-day trip that makes for the perfect escape on this much-loved island off the island: a microcosm of the best Tasmania has to offer in terms of food, wildlife, scenery and seclusion.

A road trip to Australia’s southernmost pub is really just an excuse to explore Tasmania’s beautiful Deep South: a journey that will first see you driving out of Hobart and into the apple-abundant food bowl that is the Huon Valley. Stop for an organic cider tasting or slice of apple pie at Willie Smith’s Apple Shed, just outside Huonville, then take the meandering Huon Highway further south still.

Picnic Island is a privately owned island in Tasmania’s Coles Bay, within Freycinet National Park, that’s available in its entirety for holiday lease. Owner Clem Newton-Brown originally used the island for rugged camping trips with his family, but it now boasts two beautifully weathered copper-clad buildings primed for an escape.

Kittawa Lodge was dreamt up to be a place where busy people can unwind and breathe deeply – its island home, in fact, has some of the cleanest air in the world. Welcome to a unique new accommodation offering on Tasmania’s King Island, which lies, rugged and beautiful, off the state’s north-west coast (accessible by plane from the mainland or a 30-minute flight from Melbourne).

On the west coast of Tasmania, you might come across depressions that were once Aboriginal huts: large beehive-shaped structures of wood and bark that would accommodate up to 14 people. This is just one fascinating example of the Indigenous culture that is hidden in plain sight in a state where a pervasive myth throughout much of the 20th century did its best to erase it. Today, the word palawa refers to Tasmanian Aboriginal people as a whole, but encompasses the many different groups from all around Tasmania. Here are ways you can experience this culture through both a contemporary and historical lens today.