Tinsel in Tasmania begins

Pete and I have a tendency to avoid Christmas at home and 2025 was no exception. We signed up for Fun Over Fifty’s Tinsel in Tasmania tour after seeing it showcased on Getaway or something. It means somebody else does the thinking, the arranging, and the washing up.

We left steamy, sticky Queensland 3 days before Christmas and landed in Hobart to discover we’d accidentally flown into Antarctica’s waiting room. I didn’t think my three pairs of shorts would get much of an airing and I was glad I’d packed two pairs of jeans and my leather jacket. Short, sharp showers and an icy wind that cut like a knife were the orders of the day.

Baggage claim took nearly an hour. We stood around eyeballing strangers to work out who might be on our tour. Name tags became objects of intense fascination. By the time our bags finally crawled onto the carousel we had a fair idea of who would be on the luxury coach.

There were seventeen guests in total, plus Simon our driver and Julieanne our tour host. “Over Fifty” turned out to be “Over Seventy” but that was okay. Once we’d located the coach we headed for the Grand Chancellor Hotel, our base in Hobart. The room was a winner with views over Constitution Dock, where the Sydney to Hobart yachts stagger in after being flogged by Bass Strait. And indeed that turned out to be the case for the 2025 race.

Hobart is one of Australia’s oldest European settlements, founded in 1804 when Lieutenant-Governor David Collins moved the colony from Risdon Cove to the more sheltered Sullivan’s Cove on the Derwent River, making it the second oldest city in Australia after Sydney. From its beginnings as a penal colony and trading port, Hobart grew slowly into the capital of Tasmania, with its Georgian streets still echoing its early years. For a deeper dive into Hobart’s past, check out this overview on Wikipedia

We went for a wander into town to get our bearings. Hobart feels a bit like Adelaide’s quieter cousin. Lots of traffic, not a huge amount of space, and very much a big country town pretending to be a city. Geography explains a lot of that. The place is jammed between Mt Wellington and the Derwent River, so everything funnels through a narrow strip whether it wants to or not. There are no high-rises and the Georgian architecture is lovely.

Dinner was at The Drunken Admiral, which is exactly as nautical and cluttered as the name suggests. Bric-a-brac everywhere, tables wedged in like a game of restaurant Tetris, and noise levels that made lip reading an essential skill. Quite a few people in our group had hearing aids. I went with fish and chips, Pete chose barramundi with salad and chips, and dessert redeemed all sins. He had cheese, I had raspberry sorbet with banana ice cream, which was glorious.

We went off to bed, knowing we had an early morning start for a trip to Bruny Island. I set the alarm for 5am. Ah, but you see, the room had an alarm clock that somebody had set for 1am – and it went off.

We turned on the lights and tried to work out how to turn the bloody thing off. Well, that worked. We turned off the lights and settled down.

But we’d only managed to activate the snooze button. It went off again at 1:15. Much swearing ensued before we finally surrendered and rang reception. A poor night staffer arrived and physically unplugged it.

Sigh. Then we had to try to go back to sleep.

If you’d like to follow the whole trip, go here.