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.