And the award for Australia's most incredible winter getaway goes to ...

Hobart does winter more intensely and bravely than any other Australian city. In the cold press of the season, darkness falls over the Tasmanian capital by 5pm and fires crackle into life in restaurants, bars and pubs. It's a season when you're just as likely to find locals braving the chilly waters at suburban beaches as warming themselves from within with a whisky from one of Tasmania's 70-plus distilleries inside a selection of cosy city wine bars. And while Dark Mofo, the festival that made Hobart's cold cool, might be in hiatus this year, that's only left the season open to other events such as the ever-growing Beaker Street Festival (August 6-13).

Once shunned, winter is now the cold wrapping on a season of distinctly Tasmanian experiences. Don your Tassie tuxedo - the black down jacket of local choice in Hobart - and head for the last southern stop before Antarctica, where cold is the hottest new thing.

Hobart's newest winter obsession is cold water. Local swimming groups gather on beaches at sunrise, and there are guided dips into icy mountain streams on visitor experiences such as Walk on Kunanyi's Fire and Ice Walk.

Hot meets cold in the best of ways in the state's growing collection of Scandinavian-style waterside saunas, fusing sweat-pouring sauna sessions with plunges into cold water. At the vanguard of this southern sauna movement is the Floating Sauna Lake Derby, which opened in 2020 on a pontoon atop a lake among the mountain-bike trails of Derby in the state's north-east. Sauna-goers are encouraged to bake in the heat for 10 minutes, dive from the pontoon into the lake and return to the sauna. Rinse and repeat for an hour.

Similar saunas are now dotted across the outskirts of Hobart - the likes of Elsewhere Sauna, a mobile sauna trailer south of Hobart; Kuuma, a pontoon boat taking short sauna cruises out of Margate; and Sauna Boat Tasmania, moored in the Kettering marina.

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A fortnight ago, large parts of mainland Australia were granted a glimpse of what is usually a uniquely Tasmanian phenomenon - the aurora australis. The island state is considered one of the best places in the southern hemisphere to sight these southern lights, which make regular appearances across the darkness of winter. The solar cycle is at its peak in 2024, making the prospect of these shows of night lights even more brilliant this winter.

The aurora is a fluky natural event, making it difficult to predict appearances, but your best chances of a sighting are to head to Tasmania's south and find places that look south without obstruction and are devoid of artificial light. Favourite sites among local aurora chasers include Howden, Tinderbox, Goat Bluff, Bruny Island and the summit of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington. Displays are generally faint - sometimes barely visible to the naked eye - but there's always a sense of natural magic to an aurora appearance.

Not everything that glows in the Tasmanian night is celestial. Wander along the bank of the Hobart Rivulet - the waterway that was the city's original raison d'être - on a Glow Show tour with scientist Dr Lisa Gershwin and you'll quickly discover that earthly things can be just as dazzling.

"That, my friends, is a pink glowing possum," she says, shining a UV torch into the branches of a gum tree, where a brushtail possum appears almost like an installation in neon. On this gentle walk by UV light, at its best amid the long darkness and sparse foliage of winter, the world is transformed into pink possums and bandicoots, blue water rats, green snails, luminous lichens and the blood-red wings of owls. It's like nature in HDR, and all just steps from the centre of a capital city.

The Hobart Rivulet's small population of platypuses has acquired near-celebrity status and while they can be elusive in most other Australian waterways, they're readily seen in the shallow rivulet, especially in winter. In the cold season, the monotremes feed more to keep warm, meaning they're often active in the day.

"In winter you'll see them out feeding for hours," says Hobart platypus watcher Pete Walsh. "A platypus might stop and farm a pond for a half hour or more."

For the best viewing, walk the rivulet trail from the C3 church, little more than one kilometre from the city centre, and Cascade Brewery, pausing at the pools that dot the stream. On the morning I walked here, a platypus appeared within 200 metres of the church. Murky disturbances in the pools are typically signs of platypus activity.

Hobart's water temperature might be forbidding in winter (though that doesn't stop 2000-or-so people sprinting into it naked for the annual Nude Solstice Swim on June 21), but its waterfront is a contrast in warmth.

Top restaurants and bars lining the docks include the South American-inspired Frank, the fresh cafe fare of Rosie in my Midnight Dreams inside the Brooke Street Pier and Frogmore Creek Wine Bar (inside MACq01 hotel), combining local produce with Frogmore Creek's winter-busting reds from the Coal River Valley. Walk a few steps along the timber corridor from the wine bar and you'll find the additional warmth of Evolve Spirits Bar, with a list of more than 100 Tasmanian whiskies, all set among a museum-quality collection of fossils - think triceratops horn, mammoth tusk and cave bear skeleton.

Hobart has more scientists per capita than any other Australian city, making it the logical location for the week-long Beaker Street Festival that aims to put the fun in science through hands-on experiences, art and food. The festival is entering its eighth year and the 2024 highlights include "Hobartica", a re-creation of Antarctica in Hobart, complete with tent saunas and Antarctic-temperature plunge pools on the city waterfront; a bar filled with roving scientists at Australia's oldest continually licensed pub; and a Future Foods program that will see some of Hobart's top restaurants and cafes creating festival menus that imagine local food and dining in 2050. The above activities are available as a part of Beaker Street Festival, which runs from August 6 to 13.

The writer was a guest of Beaker Street Festival.

Pictures: Adam Gibson; Osborne Images; Ash Thompson