STANLEY

Where The Nut rises high above the gently weathering remnants of a once bustling mechanised fishing port, lush cattle grazing pastures and a town that serviced both.

Stanley

2.5 hour drive northwest from Launceston

Stay in Stanley; you’d be a Nut not to.

Probably not an advertising slogan that’s actually ever been used, possibly because Stanley already has a Nut (The Nut), so further reference to nuts big or small would be superfluous.

So noticeable in fact is The Nut, that the first time we visited Tasmania, flying from Adelaide to Hobart, crossing the Tasmanian Coast for The Very First Time, we flew over a landform which was so obviously The Nut that I was forced to comment about it. Something erudite, along the lines of “… that must be The Nut?!!!” or similar. I don’t miss much.

In fact, several years earlier, I’d been considering a Sea Change departure from life in Sydney, and had looked quite closely at the price of real estate in Stanley, with particular focus on Alexander Terrace. My how things (prices) have changed since 2006?!!

Ironically, whenever we’ve stayed in Stanley, it’s been in one or another of the holiday rental houses on Alexander Terrace, which we’ve enjoyed for their proximity to the pub, a particular nearby café, the footpath to the top of The Nut, Godfrey’s Beach below it at the northern end, and the port and Wharf Road at the southern end of the parish.

This is a place to be enjoyed in all of its moods. Godfrey’s Beach on a sunny day in early Springtime is a brightly shining jewel; yet equalled for mine by the majesty of experience to be had standing near the chair-lift stop atop The Nut, facing into a brisk sou’westerly wind howling in from across Woolnorth and the west coast, fresh off The Southern Ocean, driving squawls of near-sleet rain sideways and horizontal.

And if you’re lucky, you can experience both in the same afternoon.

The drive to Stanley along the Bass Highway and across the north coast is one of the most pleasant road journeys I’ve ever made. The scenery changes from dramatic, rocky coastal hillsides, to farmland emerging through cuttings into forested rolling hilltops, pasture land stretching away across coastal plains, all with occasional towns and hamlets interspersed.

And the final leg of the journey from the highway and into Stanley is dominated by The Nut in a way which still take me by surprise.

There will always be places that you go through, on the way to somewhere else. For my money, Stanley isn’t one of them. Go and have a look, but plan to stay a while.