Tasmania's Top 10 Most Loved Picnic Spots Revealed​
Tasmania has an incredible 902 picnic locations to choose from. That’s a Park, Picnic Ground, or Botanical Garden for every 600 Tassie residents. There are few better places in the world with access to amazing picnic spots.
We wanted to understand which places in Tasmania that Australian’s loved the most for a picnic, which meant searching past the obvious places and analysing over 42,500 reviews.
Our investigation has led to a ranking of Tasmania’s top 10 picnic spots, which are spread across the state, although predominantly found in the island’s northern regions.
You can see every location on Google Maps below, or keep scrolling to explore our summary of the top picnic spots in Tasmania. Do you think you could guess #1 without looking?
Page Contents
#1
Deloraine Train Park (Deloraine)
Overlooking the Meander river, Deloraine Train Park has taken top spot on our list by offering everything you’d need for a great picnic. Clean toilets, tables, BBQ facilities, and a distinctive playground that includes a large train. You’ll also find a mini-waterfall, a sculpture park, and native gardens to explore. Whilst your there, don’t forget to check out the historic town of Deloraine. It’s the perfect lunch stop before or after exploring Mole Creek.
Location: W Parade, Deloraine TAS 7304
Visit: Tasmania.com
#2
Hiscutt Park (Penguin)
Also known as the ‘duck park’ by locals, this picturesque park is the perfect place for family gatherings. Situated in the beautiful little town of Penguin, Hiscutt Park has all the facilities you need with toilets, BBQ areas, and undercover picnic table. With a peaceful atmosphere, there’s a small river (Penguin Creek), a windmill, and a basketball court to keep the family entertained. You’re also just across the main road from Penguin Beach and the very quaint Penguin railway station.
Location:Â 35 Crescent St, Penguin TAS 7316
Visit:Â Localista
#3
Leven Canyon (Nietta)
Whilst the top two picnic spots were all about the facilities, this one is all about the views. Leven Canyon has a basic picnic spot that acts as a base for a few incredible walks. Don’t miss out on the walk up to Cruickshanks and Leven lookouts, providing spectacular views over Leven Canyon Reserve (warning: lots of steps!). Rarely crowded, you’ll have access to toilets, picnic tables, and undercover BBQ areas for a picnic that’ll fuel your walk up to the lookouts.
Location: Leven Canyon Rd, Nietta TAS 7315
Visit: parks.tas.gov.au
#4
Burnie Park (Parklands)
Located on the Bass Highway just west of Burnie city centre, this is a stunning picnic spot overlooking the Bass Straight. Visiting Burnie Park, you’ll find easily accessible playgrounds (including a flying fox!), rolling green hills, a music shell, a waterfall, a rose garden, and much more to enjoy. The park itself is incredibly well maintained and provides a serene oasis just off the busy highway.
Location: 27 W Park Grove, Parklands TAS 7320
Visit: Burnie City Council
#5
Unavale Vineyard (Lady Barron)
Photo: Unavale
This is a truly unique hidden gem to find through our research. Located on the southern coast of beautiful Flinders Island, Unavale Vineyard is a special place for a picnic amongst the vines. Unlike the other places on this list, you’ll need to pay for the privilege of your picnic as the vineyard is on private land. They offer reasonably priced grazing platters that are a small price to pay for such a special experience.
(This is not sponsored, nor affiliated with Unavale! We are just sharing the outputs of our data-driven researcj)
Location:8 Badger Corner Rd, Lady Barron TAS 7255
Visit: Unavale
#6
Percy Steel Reserve (St Helens)
Whilst Percy Steel Reserve might be lacking in facilities, it certainly makes up for that with stunning views across Beauty Bay. If you’re an early riser, this reserve makes the perfect breakfast spot as the sun rises. There are lots of picnic tables to relax at, as well as being just a few minutes walk from cafes and supermarkets in the town of St Helens.
Location: 8 Georges Bay Esplanade, Saint Helens TAS 7216
Visit: East Coast Tasmania
#7
Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens (Hobart)
Photo: Blooming Tasmania
Perhaps the most well-known and most visited picnic spot in Tasmania, the Royal Botanic Gardens take 7th place based on our analysis. The main reason they don’t top the list is because we adjust our data based on LGA size to balance out places near larger populations. There are 14 hectares of plant life and scenic views to explore, including a Japanese Garden, Subantarctic Plant House, and Lotus Pond. Add on free parking and the Botanic Gardens are a must-visit for anyone in or around Hobart.
Location:Â Lower Domain Rd, Hobart TAS 7000
#8
Evercreech Picnic Area (Mathinna)
Located in North Eastern Tasmania, Evercreech Forest Reserve is an underrated scenic rainforest that everyone should explore. Whilst its main claim to fame is being the home of ‘The White Knights’ (90+ metre white gum trees), it’s also home to a beautiful picnic area that doubles as the start to plenty of stunning walks. For your picnic, you’ll also find Gas BBQ’s as well as fireplaces with hot plates. If you want peace and quiet, there are few better places for a picnic.
Location: Mathinna TAS 7214
Visit: Discover Tasmania
#9
Longford Park (Longford)
Whilst we’ve had some adventurous picnic spots appear on this list, Longford Park is one for the families. Located a 20 minute drive south of Launceston, this is a relaxed community park near the Macquarie River. With some unique electronic interactive playground games, Longford Park has a playground that’ll keep the kids entertained for hours. The park is conveniently located close to the local shops and cafes, so you don’t need to use the BBQ area if you don’t want.
Location:16 Lyttleton St, Longford TAS 7301
Visit: Tasmania.com
#10
Rose Bay Park (Gravelly Beach)
Not to be confused with Rose Bay Foreshore Park in Hobart, this beautiful picnic spot is situated on the banks of the River Tamar. A kids’ play area, basketball court, and skate park, alongside the bay views make it a well-liked spot for family outings and a relaxed day out. There are limited barbecue spots though, so you can’t be guaranteed to jump on the electric BBQ as soon as you arrive. This is also a great spot for a bit of fishing off the jetty, if that’s your style.
Location: 243 Gravelly Beach Rd, Gravelly Beach TAS 7276
Visit: australias.guide
How We Identified Tasmania’s Favourite Picnic Spots
After creating our list of Australia’s 25 favourite picnic spots, we realised that we were onto something really interesting and useful to people. There was one problem though, Australia is simply too big to fit all the amazing picnic spots on one list.
Tasmania was cruelly denied any spots in our original top 25 list, so it felt like a no-brainer to focus on unearthing Tassies hidden picnic spot gems.
However, we didn’t want to create just ‘another list’ of picnic spots, sharing the same exact spots that everyone’s heard about before. Often, these spots aren’t actually great for a picnic! For example, Russell Falls in Mt. Field National Park is incredibly popular as a destination, but ranked #39 in our analysis simply because people don’t often rate it as an awesome picnic spot.
No, we wanted to know which places Australian’s LOVED to picnic in Tasmania. That was a little more complex to find out.
First, we needed to know all of the places in Tasmania you might want to picnic. So, we pulled all google listings for any Park, Botanical Garden, Nature Preserve, City Park, Memorial Park, or Picnic Ground in the whole country. 902 individual places.
It just simply isn’t possible to visit each of these places ourselves, so we relied on Google reviews to guide our analysis. Starting by filtering our list of locations to places with more than 10 all-time reviews. It’s hard to get any useful information about a place with <10 reviews, and even harder to call it Tassie’s favourite picnic spot.
This left us analysing 290 places. However, we only wanted to know if they were good for a picnic.
We analysed every review for every location on our list that contained the word “picnic”. A total of 1,020 unique reviews by visitors to beautiful Tasmanian picnic spots. Now we had our data, we needed to find a combined ranking that considered:
- The location’s overall popularity (total number of reviews).
- The location’s popularity for picnics (total number of reviews with the word ‘picnic’ included).
- How popular the location was for picnics compared to its overall popularity (metric 2 / metric 1).
- How much picknickers loved the location (average rating of reviews with the word ‘picnic’ included).
- An adjustment for the population / popularity of an individual place (LGA size)
With each venue ranked from top to bottom on each of these 5 metrics, we simply combined all of these rankings with a proprietary weighting algorithm to find Tasmania’s favourite picnic spots.
About The Researcher
For the last 4 years, David (Food Box Mate) has been reviewing meal delivery services in Australia to help people solve the challenges of getting nutritiously balanced meals delivered without breaking the bank. Think reviews of services like HelloFresh or My Muscle Chef.Â
David’s also produced other consumer research, including Food Box Mate’s yearly meal kit survey, and an analysis of whether prepared meals are healthy.
For any media enquiries, please email david@foodboxmate.com
