Tasmania’s best family-friendly hikes

Leave the couch behind, drop those screens and get active with the whole family amid Tasmania’s wilderness. Begin your next Spirit of Tasmania journey and discover towering trees, amazing animals, striking waterfalls, geological gems and more natural wonders: it’s time to choose your own family-friendly adventure with these walks for children of all ages.

Watch little kids’ eyes light up when they hear about Goblin Forest Walk. This 20-minute circuit through north-eastern rainforest is so easy you can even show toddlers in prams the wonders of nature.

The 30-minute Creepy Crawly Nature Trail on Southwest National Park’s edge will get young bug enthusiasts excited. Wriggly critters abound in this cool, moist rainforest, plus there are interpretive displays about the fauna and flora.

On the 20-minute Enchanted Walk near Cradle Mountain National Park’s entrance, see all sorts of plants including pencil pines, moss and fungi. Children will love following the creek, scrambling through a tunnel made just for them, and spotting wildlife like wombats and pademelons. During winter, everything might be magically draped in snow too.

In Mount Field National Park an hour from Hobart, take an easy-peasy 25-minute walk among nature to one of Tasmania’s most spectacular sights: Russell Falls. Feeling adventurous? Continue on the two-hour Three Falls Circuit to wonder at a trio of waterfalls plus giant swamp gums. This walk is consistently beautiful and mostly easy, but littlies may need a piggyback on the big stairs at start and end.

Take a stroll through Strahan’s Peoples Park to pretty Hogarth Falls – where you might spy a platypus! Get a taste of the western wilderness along this 45-minute return walk among rainforest trees like sassafras, leatherwood and myrtle.

In the north-east, it’s only a short walk among some of Tasmania’s tallest tree ferns to one of its tallest waterfalls. Look up! St Columba Falls is 90 metres high.

There’s another super-short walk to something really tall in the north-east. Evercreech Forest Reserve is home to the White Knights: white gums, some nearly 100 metres high. Older kids might want to tackle the longer Evercreech Falls walk too.

From wilderness and wildlife to fossils and interesting old buildings, there’s lots to see on Maria Island, but the Painted Cliffs are surely this national park’s highlight. It’s a cruisy two-hour return walk to the seaside geological wonder’s colourful layers of limestone, eroded into amazing shapes by wind and waves.

Enjoy more fresh sea air on the heart-pumping hike up Stanley’s famous landmark, The Nut. It takes an hour to walk up this 143-metre-high volcanic plug, around the plateau and down again – or skip the hard part by taking the chairlift to the top.

Launceston’s Cataract Gorge has something for everyone: a ramble in the garden, the easy Cataract Walk along the gorge’s northern cliffs, or the wilder, 90-minute Duck Reach walk to the south.

The north coast’s Narawntapu National Park is called Tasmania’s Serengeti because there’s so much wildlife to see. You’ll spot everything from kangaroos to black swans hanging out at the lagoon on the easy, scenic two-hour Springlawn Nature Walk.

Or take a walk along Bay of Fires’ sugar-white beaches. There’s 50 kilometres to choose from, for five minutes or five hours of chasing birds like sea eagles, looking closely at bright-orange lichen on boulders, and getting your feet wet in the turquoise water. Watch out for dolphins just off shore!

Information included in this blog is correct at the time of publishing. Please contact individual operators for further information.