Tassie’s Most Wholesome Evening Activities
There’s a particular kind of evening that feels increasingly precious: one that doesn’t involve doom-scrolling for hours, shouting over doof-doof, or a guaranteed next-day hangover. It’s the kind of evening that Tasmania happens to do especially well.
Swap the wine glass for a paintbrush, and trade in the dance floor for a running track - this is your guide to the more wholesome side of Tasmanian nightlife.
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USE YOUR HANDS
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with committing to the evening couch-rot ritual, there’s something infinitely more satisfying about having something tangible to show for what you actually did with the few golden hours between knock-off and bedtime.
Get those hands busy - and take the result home with you - at PubKnit Hobart, a fortnightly Monday (5:30pm) gathering of people and their wool at North Hobart’s Boodle Beasley. The premise is simple: BYO project, buy a drink, and join the knitting needle click-clack chorus. An open-to-all affair, you might find yourself chatting with someone your own vintage, or (even better, if you ask us) someone several decades your junior or senior. Who said that nightclubs are the only place to make new friends?!
In Battery Point, recently-opened Studio Selkie offers another reason to spend an evening getting tactile. A $25 ticket to its Collage Hangs sessions (every second Friday, 5:30-8:00pm) gets you access to all of the art supplies you need to cut and paste your own paper patchwork masterpiece in a fun environment where self-expression trumps perfection every time.
Paint The Town Red Launceston (image: Instagram)
GET A LITTLE MESSIER
For those who like their hands-on evenings with a side of (wholesome) mess, consider swapping your medium for something considerably more chaotic.
In Launceston, Paint The Town Red’s program of evening workshops offers wheel pottery, clay handbuilding, paint and sip classes, and three-week adult art courses, each catering to the full spectrum of Michelangelo or Van Gogh wannabe. Budding artists in the south of the state should check out Archaica Schola’s program, the highlights of which often include life drawing, watercolour illustration and ceramics.
Frida’s - a Tasmania-born enterprise that has since introduced its step-by-step painting workshops to a number of mainland destinations - retains its roots with studios in both Launceston and Hobart. Your session includes canvas, paints, brushes, aprons and glassware, so you need only bring along your favourite beverage, a plate of nibbles, and a generous helping of creativity.
Similarly, Glazed and Confused hosts its HQs at both ends of Tassie, with the Hobart and Launceston studios serving up a range of workshops that get you playing with mud, before sending you out with a finished piece - and a sense of smug satisfaction that no late-night kebab can match.
Port Arthur Historic Site (image: Tourism Tasmania & Jonathan Wherrett)
TAKE A WANDER
Whether you’re pounding the pavement with a pack of new mates, or following a lantern into some of Tassie’s most hidden places, there’s something especially satisfying about putting one foot in front of the other after dark.
In Launnie, Launceston By Foot’s Dark Side of Launceston tour uncovers the city’s less salubrious history, telling tales of convicts, bushrangers, hangings, and the tragedy of the Black War. Down south, Tasmania’s Most Haunted takes you behind the scenes of the oldest Australian military barracks still in use in its Paranormal Investigation tour. Built in 1847 to accommodate wayward soldiers across 12 cells, it’s a suitably eerie setting for an evening spent investigating the unexplained. And, at Port Arthur Historic Site, the Ghost Tour does exactly what it says on the tin, adding plenty of fire to the fuel of documented ghost stories at this former penal settlement that date back to the 1870s.
If the spiritual and spooky isn’t quite your thing, there’s always the considerably less goosebump-y option of getting along to a local run club session. Our Hobart and Launceston run club round-ups prove that running is not exclusively the sport of the early bird, so tie up the laces and burn off the last of the day’s energy. Great sleep score guaranteed.
Devils In The Dark (image: Tourism Tasmania & Rob Burnett)
MEET THE NIGHTLIFE
In many ways, animals and humans aren’t dissimilar - both tend to come out after dark. And in Tassie, there are plenty of ways to get acquainted with the most nocturnal of creatures.
Join Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary’s Night Tour for a guided, conservation-focused introduction to the native wildlife, including Tasmanian devils, wombats, echidnas, ringtail possums and tawny frogmouths. Over 2.5 hours, you’ll hear about how the sanctuary rescues, rehabilitates and releases injured wildlife, while meeting some of the very animals who benefit from this important work.
If you’re closer to the coast, the Devils In The Dark experience at East Coast Natureworld gets you inches from a group of Tasmanian devils as they destroy a whole carcass - all while your own flesh stays safely undercover in a protected hide. Not just the local football team mascot, the ferocity on these guys has to be seen to be believed.
And penguin-lovers (does anyone not love a penguin?) rejoice - Low Head Penguin Tours(five kilometres north of George Town on the north coast) and Bicheno Penguin Tours both run nightly guided tours that get you a front-row ticket to the adorable antics of the world’s smallest penguin species. Turns out Tassie’s cutest nightlife has a penchant for the graveyard shift.
QUIET TIME
Even the most extroverted amongst us craves a night of P&Q every once in a while - and, when that itch strikes, Tassie is a better place than any to lean right in.
Hobart Silent Book Club meets on the first Friday of each month at Fullers Bookshop’s Afterword Café. Bring whatever you’re currently reading (or the novel that’s sat unopened on your bedside table for months, just aching for a moment like this one), settle in for an hour of uninterrupted word consumption, and enjoy the peculiar pleasure of being alone … together. It’s a unique form of socialising: you get the community, but the conversation is optional.
For a similarly chat-free night, catch a flick at North Hobart’s iconic State Cinema - bonus points if you do it solo. As charming as a movie theatre comes, the State is the kind of place that makes screen time the main event, rather than something to squeeze in between dinner and drinks. Oh, and speaking of drinks, you don’t need a Gold Class ticket to take your wine in with you here. And, if we’re following the logic from grapes to glass, then wine is right at home in the wholesome evenings category.
