Farm Stays in Tamar Valley, TAS

The Tamar runs north from Launceston for 60 kilometres to Bass Strait, and its valley is northern Tasmania's garden: vineyards on the slopes, orchards, berry and lavender farms, and grazing country rolling back from both banks, stitched together by the West and East Tamar highways and the old river ports of Exeter, Beaconsfield, Gravelly Beach and George Town. This is one of Australia's finest cool-climate wine districts — the sparkling and pinot noir made here rival Champagne's — and the cellar doors along the Tamar Valley Wine Route are refreshingly unhurried.

Farm stays in the Tamar Valley are typically small and personal: a vineyard block with sheep keeping the grass down, a berry farm, a grazing property with river glimpses, most within 20 to 40 minutes of Launceston and its airport. Days sort themselves — cellar doors and Beaconsfield's gold-mining heritage on one bank, platypus at Beauty Point's Platypus House and seahorses next door on the other, and Launceston's Cataract Gorge and weekend Harvest Market twenty minutes upstream.

The valley's maritime climate keeps it milder than Tasmania's highlands: crisp, bright winters with fog lifting off the river, green springs loud with lambs, and long dry autumns that ripen the vintage — March to May is the valley at its best, with harvest in the vineyards and colour in the poplars. Summer brings berry picking and lavender in bloom at nearby Bridestowe.