If you are planning a Hobart Tasmania walking tour, the video by Aussie Jetsetter below captures exactly why Australia’s southernmost capital rewards every step. From the Georgian sandstone warehouses of Salamanca Place to the working boats moored at Constitution Dock, and on to the world-renowned Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart packs more walkable character into a compact footprint than almost any other Australian city. This 4K 60fps tour lets you scout every cobblestone before you arrive.
About This Walking Tour
Hobart sits at the edge of the world in the best possible sense. Nestled between the Derwent River estuary and the brooding dolerite summit of Mount Wellington — known by its Palawa kani name, kunanyi — the city feels like a carefully curated secret that Australia has been keeping from the rest of the world. Aussie Jetsetter’s 4K 60fps walking tour threads through the heart of this compact, walkable city, beginning at the historic waterfront where tall ships once unloaded cargo and today’s fishing trawlers still come home at dawn. The tour moves through Salamanca Place, where the great sandstone warehouses built between the 1830s and 1860s now shelter galleries, bookshops, and weekend market stalls, then tracks along the Hobart Rivulet path and through Battery Point, the city’s best-preserved colonial residential quarter. For visitors planning their own walk, this video is an invaluable guide to pacing, distances, and the unexpected laneway discoveries that make Hobart so rewarding on foot. The route is almost entirely flat along the waterfront, with the option to venture uphill into Battery Point’s steep Georgian streets for harbour views that rival any in the southern hemisphere. Allow a full day to follow this tour at a relaxed pace, breaking for fresh oysters at the waterfront and spending unhurried time in any of Salamanca’s dozen independent galleries.
Highlights of Hobart
Salamanca Place is Hobart’s most iconic streetscape — a long row of honey-coloured sandstone warehouses that once stored whale oil, grain, and fruit, now completely repurposed as cultural and commercial spaces without losing a stone of their original character. Every Saturday the Salamanca Market spills across the forecourt: over 300 stallholders selling Tasmanian produce, crafts, and street food to a crowd of locals and travellers who have been making the Saturday pilgrimage for decades. Constitution Dock, a short walk east, is where the Sydney to Hobart yacht race fleet arrives each year to scenes of extraordinary waterfront celebration. The Hobart waterfront precinct extends north to Sullivan’s Cove and the Brooke Street Pier, departure point for the MONA Ferry — a sleek, art-covered vessel that carries visitors upriver to the Museum of Old and New Art. MONA itself, opened in 2011 by eccentric collector David Walsh, is one of the world’s genuinely unmissable art institutions: an underground labyrinth of provocative, often confronting art set into a sandstone cliff above the Derwent, accessible only by boat or a long walk. Back in the city, the Cascade Brewery, founded in 1824 in a spectacular mountain valley setting, is Australia’s oldest operating brewery and a short bus ride from the CBD.
A Brief History of Hobart
Hobart was established in 1804 as a British penal settlement, making it Australia’s second oldest European city after Sydney. The original colony occupied the same waterfront land that Salamanca Place now anchors, and the convict-built infrastructure — sandstone warehouses, bridges, and government buildings — gives Hobart a tangible historic character that newer Australian cities simply cannot replicate. The surrounding region of Tasmania had been home to Aboriginal Palawa peoples for at least 35,000 years before European arrival, and their dispossession through the Black War of the 1820s remains a defining and painful chapter in the state’s history. Through the nineteenth century, Hobart prospered as a port city at the hub of southern ocean trade, whaling, and the fruit and wool industries. MONA’s opening in 2011 transformed Tasmania’s global cultural profile almost overnight, turning a city that most international travellers skipped into a genuine destination. The annual MONA FOMA festival and the Dark Mofo winter festival have cemented Hobart’s reputation as Australia’s most culturally adventurous small city.
Practical Tips
Hobart Airport is approximately 20 minutes from the CBD by taxi or rideshare; no direct rail link exists. The MONA Ferry departs from Brooke Street Pier and is the recommended way to reach the museum — the journey itself is part of the experience. Mount Wellington can be reached by shuttle bus from the city or by a challenging 12-kilometre trail; the summit road is occasionally closed in winter due to snow and ice. The best season to visit is December through March (austral summer), when the Salamanca Arts Festival runs in January and MONA FOMA fills the waterfront in late January and February. Fresh Tasmanian salmon and oysters are available at Mures Fish Centre on the waterfront; the Lark Distillery on Davey Street pours award-winning Tasmanian single malt whisky. Most of Hobart’s central attractions are within comfortable walking distance of each other.
Watch & Explore More
For more immersive walking tours of Australia and the Pacific, visit the @walkingtoursvideoscom channel on YouTube. You might also enjoy our guides to the Sydney walking tour from Circular Quay to Bondi Beach and the Melbourne walking tour through laneways and St Kilda — two more Australian cities that reward exploration on foot.