When you think about Tasmania and cars, your first thought is probably the Targa Tasmania. The Apple Isle is littered with great driving roads, so much so you can’t really avoid them unless you try.
So if you’re planning a road trip around Tasmania with Mazda, as we did, your first instinct is to drive something like an MX-5. After all, what could be better than carving up some of Australia’s greatest driving roads in one of the all-time great roadsters?
Well, as you’ve probably guessed by now, we didn’t ask for an MX-5.
Instead, we decided to take Mazda’s BT-50 ute and spend a few days exploring Tasmania by trying to avoid the famed Targa roads. Instead, we wanted to go searching for the roads less travelled in Tasmania, and in the process put the BT-50 to the toughest test.
Day 0 – Collect the car, catch the boat
The starting point for this epic multi-day road trip is Melbourne Airport, where I land and collect by ride. The BT-50 GT kitted out with an array of genuine Mazda-approved accessories, including the integrated bullbar, Lightforce spot lights and the roof platform.
It certainly looks the part, tough, rugged and capable of getting dirty – and that’s our plan.
But first, we need to get to Tasmania and the best way to get people and your car across Bass Strait is the Spirit of Tasmania ferry. So we (myself and photographer, Nathan) headed to Geelong and the ferry’s Victorian port.
The queue to board is full of similar-looking utes, off-roaders and utes towing caravans as there are plenty of adventurers headed for their own Tasmanian adventure.
The process of boarding the boat is relatively straightforward and after our BT-50 is safely parked on one of the many car decks, we settled into our cabins for the overnight journey across the water.
Day 1 – Head for the coast
The Spirit of Tasmania docks at Devonport on the north coast of the island, approximately an hour’s drive from Launceston – our first stop.
In Launceston we fuel up both the car and us humans, grab some extra maps at the visitor information centre and stock up on supplies before hitting the road.
We head east out of Launceston, heading for Old Coach Road and then down to McKays Road to find what is reportedly a stunning waterfall, Meetus Falls. As we do hit the road we’re immediately reminded about Tasmania’s long racing heritage and celebrated present. We end up driving past Symmons Plains Raceway, see advertising for the Baskerville Historics and Longford (but more on that later).
This first stretch of on-road driving gives us a chance to appreciate the improved manners of BT-50 (and modern utes in general) has made it a much easier vehicle for these kinds of long trips, rather than the less-refined and more agricultural utes of years passed.
It also gives us a moment to appreciate the wonderful landscape of Tasmania, where the horizon seems to stretch on forever in whatever direction you look.
As we wind our way across the countryside we drive though the tiny town of Cleveland and spot St Andrews Inn, a stop on the old horse-and-coach trail that used to be the most popular form of transport in Tasmania. It’s a beautiful building, built by convicts way back in 1885 and still standing strong on the side of the same road.
But we don’t have time to stop for too long, adventure is calling.
Before too much further, or maybe it just doesn’t feel like long because the scenery is constantly changing, we officially reach Old Coach Road. This is another one of Tasmania’s many convict-built pieces of infrastructure. As the name suggests, it was the old road for the coaches, but these days it feels more like a rally stage.
On the all-terrain tyres the big BT-50 feels right at home sliding across the gravel from corner to corner. Again, it’s a reminder that modern utes are much more enjoyable (and frankly just better) to drive these days.
The fun doesn’t last for too long though, because we reach McKays Road, and while it’s also a gravel trail, it’s a very different type of gravel trail. Bigger gravel and rocks, the occasional ptach of mud and grooves and ruts in the road really test out the suspension.
Once again, the BT-50 does a good job but it’s still a bumpy ride. It takes a while to wind our way down McKays Road, over an hour, so if the BT-50 wasn’t so tough it would have shaken our fillings loose.
Eventually, though, we do make our way to the camping spot and get a chance to stretch our legs and walk through the bush to witness the stunning Meetus Falls. It’s an incredibly secluded spot (there was no sign of any other human life the day we visited) and the gnarly road in means it’s a spot only those with a capable off-road ute or SUV will be able to visit.
By this point, it’s late in the afternoon so we need to head back to paved roads (which are wonderfully winding roads) to reach the east coast near the stunning Freycinet Bay.
From there we continue down the outrageously picturesque coastline until we arrive at our overnight accommodation.
Day 2 – Hobart and beyond
The second day of our road trip begins early, as we have a lot of ground to cover. The plan is to continue cruising down the stunning east coast before heading west towards Hobart, before pushing past it to find the Jeffery’s 4WD tracks, which are highly rated by off-road enthusiasts.
It’s actually a fairly straight forward trip, as we navigate through the farm land to the north of Hobart to take the most direct route to the track, which is about 20 minutes past New Norfolk.
Once you hit the dirt, Jeffery’s Track gets harder and harder the further you go. These really are some proper off-road obstacles, with the simple gravel road giving way to huge puddles, deep ruts, mud, rocks and more.
Unfortunately, the BT-50 proves more capable than this driver, and by that I mean as the Track got progressively more challenging the risks simply became too great on your own. If you plan on tackling Jeffery’s Track, our advice would be to bring a friend and make sure you’re a competent off-road driver, because it isn’t for the inexperienced.
But, once again, the BT-50 demonstrated its fantastic capability off-road. Our fully-optioned GT model made light work of every challenge we point it at. Water? No problem. Mud? Easy. Deep ruts? No fuss.
It was incredibly tempting to keep pushing on because the BT-50 felt so at home in this kind of terrain, but I didn’t want to have to make a call to Mazda from the middle of the Tasmanian bush to explain I’d got its nice ute stuck. The old Holden being slowly reclaimed by the bush was a visual deterrent.
So after a few hours getting the BT-50 all muddy and having a great time we headed back to Hobart to give ourselves and the ute a break for the night.
Day 3 – Back to the boat
After a great night in the under-rated Hobart, it was time for our road trip to end. We needed to head all the way north across Tasmania to get the Spirit of Tasmania back to the mainland.
The good news is, it’s only a three hour drive, which left time for one more detour… the Longford Pub.
If you’re a racing fan you need to make sure this is on your Tasmanian itinerary. Long before the days of Drive to Survive, Formula 1 superstars would compete on a 7.2km road circuit in the Tasman Series. The likes of Sir Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren and local aces including Stan Jones and Lex Davison risked life and limb on a wildly fast track.
The Longford Pub was once a corner on the circuit and these days is both a place to grab a meal and a drink as much as it is a museum to the town’s glory days in motorsport.
I cannot recommend a visit highly enough.
Having enjoyed a good look around the pub, our journey sadly comes to an end as we reach Devonport, take the overnight ferry again and reach Melbourne the following morning.
The point of this trip was to discover parts of Tasmania you rarely see and thanks to the off-road capability of the BT-50 that’s what we achieved. As I wrote when I first drove the BT-50, this might be one of the most under-rated utes on sale today.
It’s twinned with the Isuzu D-Max, consistently the third most-popular ute in the country behind the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux, so it has the qualities customers are looking for. But it seems some buyers still see Mazda as a brand synonymous with more polished SUVs, so the BT-50 sometimes trails behind in the sales race.
But our muti-day test, across some extremely difficult terrain, demonstrated that the BT-50 is just as capable of getting the hard work done as Ford, Toyota and Isuzu.
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