Moving to Tasmania

By Paul Chilton and Gemma Chilton

Planning a move to Tasmania? This comprehensive guidebook is written by Gemma and Paul Chilton, who moved to Tasmania in October 2020. We have sourced information from our own experience, from other "mainland blow-ins" like us, from real Tasmanians and from official sources. The book is broken down into 61 individual tips, facts or lessons – because who doesn’t like a good list – and these are further grouped into broader chapters. Hopefully one or more of them will save you time, money or stress and smooth the process for your relocation to this beautiful little island of wilderness and of extremes.
The book can be read cover to cover, or flip to the sections relevant to you.
The Moving to Tasmania guidebook covers:
- Lifestyle and community
- Weather and climate
- Schools and education
- Hospitals and healthcare
- Property and housing
- Logistics of relocating to Tasmania
- Your car in Tasmania
- Gardening and growing your own food
- Getting a job

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Chilton
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215998120

Book preview

Title page: Moving to Tasmania: 61 things you need to know, by Paul and Gemma Chilton.

Copyright © 2023 Gemma and Paul Chilton

Published by Gemma and Paul Chilton via Smashwords

www.gemmachilton.com

www.paulchilton.com

Cover design

katpower.com.au

Text design and editing

ashwoodpublishing.com.au

All rights reserved. Except as permitted by Australian copyright law, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission of the authors.

Image credits:

Chapters 1, 3, 9: Singleline; Chapter 2: Yanina Nosova; Chapter 4: Valenty; Chapters 5, 8: Simple Line; Chapter 6: LivDeco; Chapter 7: OneLineStock.com. All via Shutterstock.com.

About the authors

This book is co-authored by Paul and Gemma Chilton. Originally from NSW, we purchased property in the Huon Valley in March 2020. In October 2021 we made the move south with our three-year-old son in tow, and pregnant with our daughter.

Gemma is a novelist and editor; Paul is an engineer. We packed up our NSW lives into a shipping container and travelled on the Spirit of Tasmania at the height of pandemic restrictions. Since arriving, we’ve navigated Tasmania’s health system and come up against the state’s notorious rental shortages (our first three months were in a caravan with a newborn). We’re starting our journey through Tasmania’s education system (having recently enrolled our son in kindergarten at the local public school). And we’ll soon be taking on a house build.

All of this, plus additional research and anecdotes from other Tassie immigrants, has informed the advice in this book. It is not exhaustive, and it is not a sales pitch for moving to Tasmania – nor will it account for the unique circumstances of your life and your plans.

What this book is, is a compilation of the most interesting or useful facts and insights we’ve gathered in the past two years since moving here.

If you are thinking about making the move to Tasmania, or know someone who is, this is a resource or tool to get you asking the right questions and hopefully save you time, money and stress.

www.gemmachilton.com

www.paulchilton.com

Introduction

Van Diemen’s Land, Tasmania, lutruwita, or just little ol’ Tassie – 68,401 km² of forest, farmland, city and suburbia floating 240 km off the bottom of mainland Australia … and that’s when it’s lucky enough to make it onto maps at all.

In fact, there’s an entire channel on the popular website, Reddit, dedicated to ‘Maps without Tasmania’; proof the state has been literally ‘off the map’ for generations. Tasmania has long been derided as backwater, too cold, the end of the Earth …

But that stigma is changing. Today, Tasmania is Australia’s fastest-growing tourist destination, and in recent years has frequently found itself topping the list as the nation’s strongest economy. Culturally, it has well and truly arrived on the map, thanks to the likes of the globally renowned MONA gallery and its annual Dark Mofo event in Hobart. Tasmania is also increasingly recognised for its food scene and of course its fresh produce. And now, in a warming world, even the weather has become a drawcard for many, attracting migrants concerned about climate change.

But of course, you already know some or all of that – because you’re here, reading this. Something flicked a switch in your mind and you have decided to join (or are thinking about joining) the growing number packing up their worldly belongings and making the big move south.

The name of the Facebook group ‘That’s It, I’m Moving To Tassie!’ (with 26,500 members at time of publishing, and many more joining every week) is in itself telling. Moving to Tasmania isn’t a regular relocation: often, it’s quite a bold move. The name of that group – complete with exclamation mark! – suggests exasperation, which resonated with many. It contains an unspoken final straw or trigger – the sense that there was a seed of an idea that germinated and grew, until suddenly you said, ‘that’s it!’ and were googling shipping container costs and booking tickets on the Spirit.

Tasmania has changed a lot over the decades, and it took a pandemic to remind us that while