3 Days in Tasmania for Spiritual Wellness: Mineral Springs, Forest Baths & Oceanfront Spas

Mist hangs low over the Derwent River as you ease into the day, the water a sheet of pewter outside old sandstone buildings. The morning begins in New Norfolk with coffee and quiet, then shifts quickly into a body-first reset at Derwent Valley Natural Health Clinic – warm oil, low voices, the soft thud of footsteps in a converted heritage space. By late morning you’re driving upriver, windows cracked to the smell of damp earth and wet fern as Mount Field rises ahead. The middle of the day is all forest: Russell Falls roaring before you see it, spray catching the light; the muffled thrum of your own footsteps on moss-soft trails in Mount Field National Park. Lunch at Cambridge House feels almost storybook – polished timber, the faint sweetness of something baking, and the sense that time moves differently in Geeveston. Afternoon is for one big exhale: the Floating Sauna at Lake Derby, where the hiss of steam meets the slap of cold water against timber. You close the loop back in the Derwent Valley with dinner at The Woodbridge, candlelight flickering on old stone, and end the night in a Kuuma Nature Sauna session, the dark water of North West Bay pressing quietly against the hull. Tomorrow, the focus shifts from rivers and lakes to the urban hush of Hobart’s float pods and wine bars.

The day opens on the Hobart waterfront, where the air smells of seaweed and espresso and the Brooke Street Pier glows like a glasshouse. Breakfast at Restaurant Maria is all about texture – crisp sourdough, silky eggs, the smooth heft of a ceramic cup in your hand – while ferries nudge the pier outside. From there, you slip into the hush of Hobart Float Wellness Spa, where the city falls away behind thick doors and the only sound is your own breath inside a saltwater pod. Late morning drifts into North Hobart, the neighbourhood that locals actually hang out in, for a mid-morning refuel at Ogee with its low-lit intimacy and serious coffee. Lunch at Landscape brings you back to the waterfront, where walls hung with Glover-inspired art echo the Derwent’s muted palette outside and plates taste like someone edited Tasmania down to its best bites. Afternoon is deliberately gentle: a coastal drive up to Devonport’s Savu Saunas at Bluff Beach, waves thudding on shore as heat and sea air mingle, then back to Hobart for an early dinner at Dier Makr – all precise flavours and soft lighting. You end the night at Ogee’s wine-bar alter ego, Trophy Room, where conversations run late over local pinot and the hum of low music. Tomorrow, you trade city stone and harbour light for wind-scrubbed coastline and long, contemplative lunches by the sea.

The final day smells like salt from the moment you wake. South of Hobart, the road threads past small bays and bush until you reach Kettering, where Sauna Boat Tasmania rocks gently in Oyster Cove Marina. Morning heat and cold dips here feel theatrical – gulls shrieking overhead, rigging clinking, the water dark and inviting. Late morning you push further to Tinderbox, where Hidden Cove Day Spa sits above the channel, the quiet broken only by birds and the low wash of swell against rock. Lunch is a pilgrimage east to OIRTHIR near Marion Bay, where the dining room glows with soft light and the menu reads like a love letter to Tasmanian produce. The afternoon is yours to stretch out in one of Tasmania’s more remote-feeling retreats – Rocky Hills Retreat or Cloudy Bay Beach House – where the textures shift to she-oak underfoot, wind-whipped grass, and coarse sand. Evening brings you back towards Hobart via Pumphouse Point or Saffire Freycinet, if you’ve chosen to splurge, where dinner feels folded into the landscape: lake on one side, granite mountains on the other. You close the night quietly at your hotel of choice – maybe the Islington with its view of kunanyi or The Corinda Collection’s garden stillness – letting the sounds of the island at night sink in. This is the day that ties the trip together: water in all its moods, from marina to open bay to surf-swept coast.