🇦🇺 Hobart, Australia — Cruise Port Guide
Australia's second oldest city, under a mountain that sometimes snows in summer, with sandstone convict warehouses on the waterfront and a museum built underground by a professional gambler.
Updated September 2026
Quick facts
Getting ashore
When to visit Hobart
The season is December to March. Hobart is the coolest Australian capital and Mount Wellington can get snow even in summer.
Good to know
Port Arthur is 90 minutes each way and makes a very full day. Mount Wellington's summit is often 10°C colder than the waterfront with fierce wind — take a jacket even on a warm day.
Things to do in Hobart
MONA
Take the camouflage-painted ferry up the Derwent. The museum is underground, unlabelled by design, and unlike anything else in the country.
Mount Wellington summit
A road runs to the top, where a boardwalk crosses the boulder field to a view over the city, the estuary and half of southern Tasmania. Take a coat — it is genuinely cold up there.
Salamanca Place & Battery Point
Georgian sandstone warehouses full of galleries and bars, then the steep Kelly Steps up to a village of colonial cottages.
Port Arthur
Ninety minutes each way to the penal settlement ruins on a peninsula. Sobering, beautiful, and a long day — take the ship's tour.
Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary
A rescue sanctuary with Tasmanian devils, wombats and quolls, 30 minutes north. Small, honest and not a zoo.
Bruny Island day trip
Ferry across for oysters, cheese, a lighthouse and a narrow isthmus with a beach on either side. The best food-and-scenery combination near the city.
What to eat
- Tasmanian oysters
- Scallop pie
- Abalone
- Leatherwood honey
- Tasmanian pinot noir
Weather by month
Best time to visit: Dec–Mar (southern summer); it is the coolest Australian capital
| Month | High | Low | Rain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 72° | 54° | 1.9" |
| Feb | 72° | 54° | 1.6" |
| Mar | 69° | 52° | 1.8" |
| Apr | 64° | 48° | 2" |
| May | 58° | 44° | 1.8" |
| Jun | 54° | 41° | 2.2" |
| Jul | 53° | 40° | 2.1" |
| Aug | 55° | 41° | 2.1" |
| Sep | 59° | 44° | 2.1" |
| Oct | 63° | 47° | 2.5" |
| Nov | 66° | 50° | 2.3" |
| Dec | 69° | 52° | 2.3" |
A little history
Hobart was founded in 1804 and is the second oldest capital in Australia after Sydney. The sandstone warehouses at Salamanca were built by convict labour in the 1830s.
MONA opened in 2011, funded by David Walsh from professional gambling. It is carved into a sandstone cliff, entered from the top down, and is deliberately provocative.
Port Arthur, an hour and a half south, was the harshest penal settlement in the system. It is now a World Heritage site and is also the scene of the 1996 massacre that changed Australia's gun laws — the site handles both histories carefully.
Hobart is the gateway for Australian Antarctic operations; the icebreaker Nuyina is often alongside, and the Antarctic sailing season runs from here.
Mount Wellington rises 1,271 metres directly behind the city and gets snow even in summer.