Bruny food tourist trail

Three beautiful days- could have been more. Can’t wait for the next visit.
Lance Brooks, loving Bruny Island, February 2026.

We wanted to leave early but first we went with Jack to Kingston Beach to walk Tugboat and then we drove Jack to work in the city.

Lance wanted to buy a Jetboil and I was hungry so we stopped at a bagel shop for coffee and bagels and Lance did his shopping. We finally headed down to Kettering to catch the boat to Bruny Island. We were not prepared for the hour-long queue to wait for the boat but we used our time by Lance doing some work calls and me doing Wordle and Connections. The boat trip itself was short and sweet and we arrived on the island at about midday.

We first headed to the most northerly tip of the island, Dennes Point, where we took a lovely heritage walk and enjoyed the views and a quick swim (assumed I know).

On our way south we stopped for lunch at The Oyster Shack, which was absolutely packed with Chinese tourists there for New Year. The oysters, sparkling wine and warm bread lunch was delicious 😋

Onto our next cullinary stop at the Bruny Island Cheese Company where our neice Aliena and her partner Nick had worked. It was worth mentioning as we were given a discount on our cheese and wine platter.

By the time we finished there it was after 4pm and we had an hour’s drive to our proposed campsite. First we had to stop at the Truganini lookout with all the other tourists.

When we arrived the campground was almost full and we had to manoeuvre the van into a tight but achievable spot.

The campsite was in a beautiful area situated on a beach at the southern end of the island. We walked, we swam and then prepared dinner.

We had overeaten cheese and oysters during the day so we ate reheated tuna pasta and Lance prepared a pizza on our pizza stone that came with our Weber. We had already been using the stone to make toast which had been working well. We watched the winter Olympics on Starlink.

The next day, we had a leisurely morning at camp before setting off to explore the rest of the island. The first stop was the lighthouse. We were lucky enough to be able to join the tour that took us to the top of the lighthouse where we enjoyed spectacular views and learnt the history of Australia’s second oldest lighthouse. At the top of the lighthouse we could see Cockle Creek which is the furthest point that you can drive to in Tasmania. We had previously visited Cockle Creek when we hiked the 9-day South Coast Track 10 years ago.

Once done with the lighthouse we headed north stopping at the Lunawanna cafe for lunch. This was a mistake because our next stop was the Bruny Island Premium Wine Company which had a lovely restaurant. Damn! Nevermind, the visit did not go to waste as we savoured and subsequently bought their wonderful wines.

A visit to Adventure Bay entailed stopping at the historic Two Trees, that Captain Cook had stopped at, visiting the Bligh Museum and seeing where the boat tours go from. We didn’t do a tour as both of us have done it twice before, but we highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t done it.

On the way back we stopped at the bread fridge to buy the special Bruny Island bread, but it was too late in the day.

We had visited just about everything on the island except Cloudy Bay which we had to miss as Lance had an online course to attend and the rain was coming in. It rained heavily that night but we remained dry, with me being charged with the task of baking the lamb roast.

We awoke and packed up reasonably early as we wanted to leave by 9am. We were packed up on time but of course we had to have our obligatory swim. It was worth it.

This day was special as it was 42 years since Lance and I met. We had thought about staying in a nice hotel and having dinner in a restaurant to celebrate but in the end we decided that we would rather stay in our van.

February 18 was also special for two other couples as Sue and Greg and Mandy and John were both married on this day (different years). It was also Ash Wednesday so we needed to get to Hobart for 12 noon mass. We just made it after a diversion at the now stocked bread fridge and the post office to buy cards.

After that we drove up to the Bay of Fires. It was an easy drive on the main highway for most of the way. The last hour went through beautiful countryside to arrive at St Helens where we did some grocery shopping.

Just 10 minutes away on the waterfront are multiple free campsites. The first 3 were chockers so we headed further north and found an ever so slightly less crowded campground which had one spot left. We had to reverse in around a scary ditch and over a big bump which flawed us both. Luckily a lovely young man offered to reverse and park the van for us. He even got it onto wheel chocks for us so the van was perfectly level.