Driving and Eating In the Midlands of Tasmania

I recently had yet another beautiful friend visit. Queenslanders seem to love coming down in the winter. I imagine for some REAL winter (it's early spring as I write this and I can still see snow on the peaks out of my lounge room window). We love it because it breaks up what we find can be a long, dark and dreary time of the year. 

It's also really the only opportunity I get to go and eat out. We live a pretty frugal lifestyle and don't eat out very often at all, so it's a real treat when I do.

*I get the irony of having a food and dining blog and hardly eating out. But this is the path we chose and I wouldn't change it for the world.

My lovely guest had planned a trip to Campbell Town and I volunteered to come for a drive. It's maybe 1 and a half to 2 hours to Campbell Town from my place not far from New Norfolk and I have decided to include a map for my many readers who aren't all that familiar with Tasmania.

We decided to stop at Ross for a bite to eat. Ross is a beautiful historic town almost half way between Hobart and Launceston. We stopped in firstly at Convict Coffee and Bakery 31. It was warm and homely and lovely. And we would have one of Tasmania's local delicacies, Scallop Pie. As a general rule, most scallop pies are sea scallops in a curry sauce. I prefer it in a bechamel (white) sauce and low and behold, we managed to track one down. And it was excellent. Great pastry,  a generous amount of good sized scallops and a delicious and well seasoned béchamel.

We wandered up and down the main street of Ross after our pie to admire the early season daffodils starting to emerge, indicating the end of winter, but many of the stores were closed (off season, this is very normal). 

One place that was not closed and looked too adorable to skip, was Rossco's Deli. It was so charming inside and we were greeted by the friendliest woman. Her made-on-site sweets stopped me in my tracks and the kind and wonderful woman said she'd happily cut the vanilla slice in half (so I could take half home to Gudge) because it was HUGE. It was a 10 out of 10 vanilla slice too and one I'd drive all the way to Ross for in a heart beat.

10/10 vanilla slice.

The lovely Town of Ross.

Campbell Town was actually a lovely destination. I had only ever stopped there as a loo stop on trips to or from the North of the Island, but it had a variety of lovely shops that we spent the afternoon perusing before journeying back.

Convict paving on the main street of Campbell Town

A day or two after we spent the day in my local town of New Norfolk and stopped into the Agrarian Kitchen Kiosk for a light lunch. You may have read my previous posts or heard of the Agrarian Kitchen as having won Tasmanian and Australian Restaurant of the year in 2025 and 2024 respectively. The kiosk on a sunny day is one of the nicest places to have lunch. Snacks, light meals and sweets mostly under $20. I had the chard and cheese danish and a hot chocolate and both were just wonderful. The most buttery, crispy pastry with a warm savoury filling. It was perfect.

Perfect blue skies, green grass and rosemary, firepit on the lawns at Agrarian Kitchen
in the Grounds of Willow Court.

And the last of my Midlands (and Derwent Valley) eats was an old favourite and local cafe, The Possum Shed at Westerway. Consistently good food and drinks, always an outstanding view over Tyenna River and more often than not, a pup or two to gush over. My standard order: Possum Shed BLT and an Earl Grey (T2) Tea.

And that was a brief trip around the middle parts of our lovely island. I hope you enjoyed.

A Drive to the Huon Valley

The destination was Tahune Airwalk. The party was myself, and my guest and very good friend from Brisbane and his daughter. From my house Tahune Airwalk, not far from Geeveston is just shy of two and a half hours by car, and with a five year old on board, we opted for an overnight stay.

First stop was one of the prettiest towns in Tasmania, Cygnet. As it was time to eat we stopped into Cygnet Japanese Diner which had opened when we lived down this way (over FIVE years ago).

I ordered the Traditional Okonomiyaki as well as the Takoyaki (Octopus Balls) while my guest ordered a ramen and Miss 5 had a tuna hand roll and an inari.

A short wait and our food arrived, steaming hot and looking wonderful.

I absolutely adore how unpretentious this little cafe is, it totally feels like being back in Japan, with well made, authentic Japanese food and service with a smile.

We had booked a two bedroom, self contained unit at Kermandie Hotel, Port Huon and had dinner at the on site Pub.

photo courtesy of booking.com and Kermandie Hotel

The room was comfortable and very good value and the pub turned out to be quite a surprise.

We were very grateful the pub and restaurant were open, as winter in Tasmania is definitely the OFF season. We were one of only groups occupying the accomodation, but I love this time of year and I love having the state virtually to myself, even if it is cold, and foggy and wonderfully British.

With glasses of Tasmanian wine, we both opted for the fettuccini with scallops and it was absolute perfection. For a creamy pasta, it was delightfully balanced, not heavy at all, great seasoning with a generous amount of delicious scallops.

As it was my birthday, I thought I'd treat myself to dessert. This was the Pina Colada terrine and it was vey lovely indeed. A refreshing frozen pineapple and lime dessert topped with roasted coconut and warm candied pineapple.

We made it to the beautiful Tahune Airwalk, my first time. This area was decimated by bushfire in 2019 and closed for many year afterwards, It is open once again and the forest regeneration is spectacular. It was absolutely worth the drive. We did the airwalk as well as one of the riverside walks and we all enjoyed the whole experience. 

Eating Tokyo

Tokyo was the last stop on our amazing trip. We had around 5 days in this incredible city with a population of 37 million. It was beautiful, vibrant, MASSIVE, quirky. I can absolutely understand the reason Tokyo has become such a bucket list spot.

I think you could spend 3 months in Tokyo and not see all that you wanted to.  We certainly saw some amazing things, albeit briefly. And unfortunately Tokyo is when after being on the go, that exhaustion caught up and I inevitably got sick. That aside, I forged though and still have incredible memories.

Shinjuku Gyoen is the Central Park of Tokyo and was one of my must sees! It was very close to our hotel and I ended up going twice. 

It was an incredible garden and was a little piece of calm in the middle of the city.

I couldn't resist when I saw this adorable food truck.

It was not cheap at AUD 13 but my goodness it was delicious. A really tasty hot dog on a perfect bread roll with pickled veg which are produced in the garden itself. Very fresh, very delicious and the vendor was really lovely and friendly. 

On our other visit, I stopped in at Tsubura, a cafe in the gardens. They offered a small selection of bentos, sweets, hot and cold drinks and I had a gyodon and home made lemonade slushy while dad had a latte. 

Really sweet presentation, and a nice morning tea. Around AUD25 for the bento, drink and coffee.

A month before we departed I had the most stressful time acquiring tickets to the Ghibli Museum. Logging on at 10am on the dot as told to, I was put into a queue where I was 4099th in line. Tickets are only $10 per person, but are very limited and very coveted. The museum was tiny but very lovely, and absolutely worth the trouble. We wouldn't have journeyed out to Mitaka if we hadn't had tickets and wouldn't have discovered the beautiful Inokashira Park, which was utterly Ghibli in itself. (photography is not allowed inside the museum)

While at the park we stopped for a beer at Italian Restaurant Isentai and decided to share one of the woodfired pizzas. It was beautiful as well as incredibly tasty.

This was the house special and had a base of mascarpone and fresh cream and was topped with prosciutto, rocket, honey and edible flowers.

On one of our last days, I was feeling particularly poorly, but I said to dad I wanted to venture out but I didn't want to do any of the thinking or planning, I just wanted to be lead around. Bless him he did such a wonderful job. 

He knew I wanted to see some seaside and he knew I found the subway and metro incredibly stressful, so se booked us tickets on the open top bus (we had previously open top bussed and ADORED it) and chose the route that would take us portside to Odaiba. 

It was a beautiful out-of-the-way spot that we assume is where Tokyoites spend their weekends and holidays. It was a perfect day and the beach was speakling blue and clean as anything and no hussle and bustle.

We stopped in at a cafe, Sea Side Cafe Solaris that had a decidedly Hawaiian feeling to it for coffee, I also had a cream cheese pretzel which has that perfect sweet and salty combo going on.

We wandered around the area for an hour or two before hopping on the bus back to Ginza. We drove past the Tsukiji Market which resembled a heaving mass of bodies and took a raincheck before finding a bite to eat at the cutest restaurant we'd passed, Il Barocco.

We were lucky to get a seat as it was getting towards the end of lunch time on a Saturday. Inside felt like a traditional Italian Trattoria, not a tourist in sight and smells of deliciousness thick in the air.

I started with a blood orange mimosa and dad a beer with our garlic prawns and house made focaccia (to dip). They were INCREDIBLE.

Our other entree was slow cooked pork shoulder served with mushrooms which was also gorgeous.

Mains were spaghetti marinara and pizza el fungi.

The pizza was very nice, but the star was the spagetti. It had perfect flavour that was in no way overbearing. The seafood was fresh and cooked perfectly and these two actually complimented each other perfectly.

And this place we chose at least partially for the outside of the restaurant.

Cheap and cheerful Chinese! My sweet and sour pork was perfect and I could have eaten two or maybe even three serves. 

Check out dad's plate, actually it was the size of a platter! With fried rice that dad said was superb, fried chicken and gyoza.

This is the final of the Japan series. I feel so lucky to have been invited to join my father on this trip of a lifetime. My dad is the perfect travel partner. I admire his calm in stressful situations, his never-ending youthful adventurousness and his open and empathetic understanding of those around him.

Love you, Papa.