Cross Bas Strait For A Gourmet Holiday
The Age
Tuesday February 22, 1994
Tasmania's charms are manifold. As CLAUDE FORELL discovered, it is blessed with many heritage bed-and-breakfast retreats that take a pride in serving good food.
GETTING THERE.
Franklin Manor, The Esplanade, Strahan. Telephone (004)717311.
Licensed. Accommodation: open daily; 14 double rooms, stable cottage for four. Cost: $120 double bed and breakfast; $135 spa rooms.
Restaurant: daily for dinner; $56 for two (fixed-price), plus drinks.
Cards: AE BC DC MC V.
Tynwald, Lyell Highway, New Norfolk. Telephone (002)612667.
Licensed. Accommodation: open daily; four rooms in main house; granary cottage for three. Cost: $105 double bed and breakfast. Restaurant: daily for dinner, Sunday for lunch; about $75 for two, plus drinks.
Cards: BC MC V.
Prospect House, Main Road, Richmond. Telephone (002)622207.
Licensed. Accommodation: open daily; 10 double rooms (two with extra bed); cottage for up to five. Cost: $116 double bed and breakfast, $96 room only. Restaurant: daily for lunch and dinner; about $75 for two, plus drinks. Cards AE BC DC MC V.
ON MY latest three trips overseas, all within the past 12 months, I did not leave Australia. They were to Tasmania, the Apple Isle that has become the apple of my traveller's eye. Combing beaches in the tropics has its charms, but when summer approaches I fall in love with a cool climate.
There was a time when I was inclined to be rude about Tasmania. I lampooned its hydro-electromania, symptomatic of a delusion that the insular state's future lay in heavy industrialisation, its myopic inability to see the trees for the wood, and its obsessive compulsion to curse every wild river with a dam.
Tasmanians have awoken to the reality that their greatest assets are the island's natural beauty, its evocative history, its uncluttered environment, its abundant wildlife, its wonderful foodstuffs, its burgeoning vineyards, its distinctive crafts and its beguiling hospitality.
Some visitors, the young or vigorous, head south for the rugged wilderness, to tramp through the bush, climb rocks or raft down river gorges. I prefer comfort, tranquility and good food. Tasmania offers everything but the most frenzied distractions of big-city life, and even those who miss that can always find refuge in the Wrest Point Casino.
My advice is to give the ordinary hotels and motels a miss, and look for the myriad of out-of-the-way heritage bed-and-breakfast places and gourmet retreats. Tasmania is studded with them the way a Christmas cake is with nuts and raisins. They range from convict-built sandstone cottages with quaint country gardens, to historic coaching inns and farmhouses, to magnificent Georgian or Victorian mansions set in glorious parks.
Every one is delightfully different. Some are self-contained and self- catering. Others welcome you like honored guests in a private house.
Others again specialise in the finest Tasmanian food and wine. Whether their facilities are simple or luxurious, prices tend to be lower than those of comparable places on the mainland.
To help you choose when you plan a tour, an admirable `Guide to Tasmanian Heritage Accommodation' has just been written and published by Mary Brownell, who, with a commendably independent spirit, a perceptive eye for detail, an almost lyrical gift of words and the inclusion of pretty pencil sketches, recommends some 90 of the 130 places she personally inspected. The buildings all date from the 1820s to 1920. The book is a pleasure to read.
Coincidentally, six of the grander ``gourmet getaways" have formed their own loose association. Its criteria include high owner-operated professional standards, out-of-town locations, and an emphasis on Tasmanian produce and wine. On my latest Tasmanian trek I stayed at three of these, while looking at several other charming colonial accommodation houses and cottages.
My heritage tour, with diversions, took me 650 kilometres from the north, to the west and to the south. If you start from Devonport, you can do no better than to stay over and dine at Hawley House, just a short drive past purple poppy fields to this delightful seafront guesthouse and restaurant, with its own vineyard. I did not have time to revisit it this trip.
Instead, I headed over green pastoral hills and bush-clad mountains to Strahan on the rugged, wind-swept west coast. The little township hugs the dark waters of Macquarie Harbor and broods its darker past as a brutal convict settlement. It recalls its heyday as a flourishing mining and timber trading port and now revels in its restoration as a tourist attraction and western gateway to the World Heritage wilderness. (All this is encapsuled in an imaginative $1 million, look-and-learn visitors' centre on the waterfront.) You can rough it if you must, but the easy way to experience the rivers and rainforest is to take a boat cruise or, better still, as I did, a breath-taking flight in a light seaplane that lands in a winding gorge of the Gordon River, out of reach any other way. To stay in Strahan, I recommend Franklin Manor.
This lofty timber mansion, half hidden by trees and rhododendrons, was built in 1896 for the town's warden and harbormaster. Simon and Ann Currant, founders of the Cradle Mountain resort, transformed it into a gourmet retreat three years ago, and resurrected much of the town as well, restoring the historic Hamers Hotel and building a village row of shops in heritage style.
Franklin Manor is managed by their partner, Bernadette Woods, whose vivacious personality and lilting accent betrays her Irish origins.
The guest rooms are nicely furnished in period style but offering all mod cons. A cosy sitting room for relaxing or taking tea, a small atrium conference room, and two intimate dining rooms round off the amenities.
There is a well-stocked bar and a walk-down wine cellar; the idea is to help yourself and record enter your purchases in an honor system.
Food is an important part of the deal; Franklin Manor has two professional chefs and the emphasis is on Tasmanian produce and wines.
Ms Woods often plans special events, such as eminent guest chefs (Joanne Weir from San Francisco, Phillipe Mouchel from Melbourne's Paul Bocuse Restaurant, and Di Holuigue from The French Kitchen have been there; Maggie Beer and Margaret Fulton are booked for 1994). Then there are jazz and murder-mystery weekends.
NEXT day I headed east, past the lunar landscape of Queenstown, through the heritage area of mountains, lakes, rivers and bush, and realised two facts of local life. In Tasmania, distances are measured by driving time, not kilometres; and rainforests survive because it often rains.
It took four hours, with a couple of scenic and recuperative stops, to reach Hamilton, a lovely little township for a hearty rustic lunch at the Glen Clyde House (c. 1840) craft gallery and tea house. Don't miss it. Hamilton is also studded with enchanting little convict-built, romantically furbished cottages, and I resolved to return here.
Then on to my destination, Tynwald, overlooking the Derwent River at New Norfolk, half-an-hour north-west of Hobart. An eccentric-looking house, this: originally built in austere Georgian style for a wealthy miller in 1830, then crowned with a square tower and gabled roof, and ornamented with a wrap-around, cast-iron lacework balcony and verandah by a later Victorian owner.
Local kids used to reckon the place was haunted, which is understandable when whisps of white mist swirl below the hilltops on the other side of the river, and when the resident peacocks screech among the ruins of the old mill in front. These distractions aside, Tynwald is a gracious mansion of enchanting warmth, personality and delectable food.
Two professional chefs, Garry Roohan and English-born, Swiss trained Pat Kelsall, who met when she was pastry chef at Parliament House in Canberra, are the present owners and hosts. They have been here seven years, adding their culinary skills to the now-realised potential for accommodation of exceptional charm.
Tynwald offers personalised hospitality, and its cosy drawing room and flower-filled bedrooms are in keeping with its heritage (no television or bedside telephones, en suite downstairs but two bathrooms to share among four bedrooms upstairs). There is also a charming self-contained cottage in a retored granary.
Ms Kelsall is an avid collector of Victoriana, and a portrait of the elderly dowager queen (one of whose nightdresses she possesses) presides over a diversity of the antique, nostalgic and quaint. The restaurant, dignified by an open fire, silverware, candles and crochet tablecloths, is open to casual visitors but, unaccountably, the only other dinner guests during my overnight stay were an American couple staying in-house before flying off to Hayman Island.
I dined, a la carte, on a slightly spicy red lentil soup, beef `head to tail' (slices of pink, tender ox-tongue, rare eye fillet and potted ox-tail), with crisp parsnip chips and tempting vegetables, followed by delicate orange yoghurt cream on a fruit coulis. The menu strikes a balance between the traditional and modern. Ocean trout, Atlantic salmon, smoked quail, marinated kangaroo, milk-fed veal, boned rabbit casserole and guinea fowl are often listed.
The wine list offers a formidable range of Tasmania's fine cool- climate chardonnays, pinots and carbernets.
The culinary couple bake their own bread, make preserves, and grind their own coffee, and their five-course gourmet breakfast (the local berries and muffins straight from the oven are a special treat) is enough to fortify those who can get through it for a day and a half.
From here it was just a short drive across to Richmond, about the same (half-hour) distance from Hobart to the north-east. This early colonial town, with its much-photographed 1823 stone bridge, English churches, early convict-era jail, museums, antique and craft shops, and quaint teashops is a must for visitors even if they linger just a short while.
PROSPECT HOUSE, on the rural outskirts of the old township, had established a reputation as a restaurant before it added colonial accommodation for over-nighters. Built by convict laborers in 1830, the classic Georgian mansion rises among English trees behind a small timber bridge over ponds abounding with wild, black swans and other water fowl.
By a strange twist of fortune, Prospect House is run by Shauna and Michael Buscombe, the great-great-grandson of the original owner. The former Melbourne couple were not even aware of their family's Tasmanian connection until the late 1970s, and were able to acquire the property when it came on the market in 1990.
They took it over as a going concern. A previous owner had already converted the orginal barn, hayloft and servants quarters into colonial-style units with modern facilities. All open out into a secluded garden courtyard where it's a pleasure to sit on warm days.
Prospect House is also reputed to be haunted by a ghost (the wife of the first owner, worried about safeguarding the family jewels hidden from her profligate sons). Michael Buscombe has neither seen the ghost nor found the jewels.
But the two dining rooms are gems of their period, and two young professional chefs provide an a-la-carte menu that marries traditional French-influenced cuisine with the best Tasmanian ingredients.
Dishes tend to be more elaborate than at Franklin Manor or Tynwald, but they are prepared and presented with remarkable finesse. You will find such creations as rosettes of Atlantic salmon, roasted red pepper and smoked salmon on a sweet paprika-and-vermouth cream sauce, finished with champagne sabayon and keta, or Tasmanian venison encrusted with herbs and served rare on braised garlic and fennel with a redcurrant sauce. There's a fair smattering of local wines among the more commercial choices.
Breakfast is delivered to your room, and features a bacon and cheese souffle. Michael Buscombe reckons he has cooked 12,000 of them, and guests only complained about the lack of choice. (He will do something else for those who can't eat egg dishes).
If you fly and drive, it's nearer to the airport from here than from Hobart.
© 1994 The Age
