Rest areas in Tasmania

Reading the numbers

Tasmania’s list is short: 81 rest areas in the national dataset, across 59 named localities. The Midland Highway has the most with 16, followed by the Bass Highway (14) and the Lyell Highway (12), with the Tasman Highway (5) and the Huon Highway (4) well behind. If your route runs along one of the first three, you will pass about half of the state’s mapped stops.

Facilities are thinly listed. Toilets appear at only 5 sites, picnic tables at 6 and barbecues at 3, each under a tenth of the total. That may say as much about what the source records as about what is on the ground, but for planning you should treat most of these as simple pull-offs and look for toilets in towns.

Only a handful of places stand out at the top of the list below. Parramatta Creek Rest Area at Sassafras and St Peters Pass at Oatlands list toilets, picnic tables and barbecues; Conara lists picnic tables and barbecues; Fossey River Rest Area at Guildford and Hellyer Gorge Rest Area at Parrawe list toilets and picnic tables. Further down, most entries list only a heavy vehicle area, and names such as Campbell Town Weighbridge, Hayes Weighbridge and Howth Weighbridge are a reminder that many of these bays serve trucks first. Paramatta Creek rest area also appears as its own entry, so check the map before assuming two names mean two places.

A heavy vehicle area is listed at 36 sites, 44 per cent, which means sharing the bay with trucks. Before you plan a night at any of them, know that the dataset records nothing about overnight stays. Rules vary by site, so check the signs, the state road agency or the council, and the camping-rules guide for Tasmania linked on this page.