Saffire Freycinet

Saffire announced Tasmania's arrival as a luxury destination when it opened on the Freycinet Peninsula's doorstep, and its architecture still startles: a sinuous, timber-lined main pavilion whose roof lifts like a stingray or a wing, framing an uninterrupted panorama of the Hazards' pink granite peaks across Great Oyster Bay. Twenty suites fan out below, each turned towards that same view, with local timbers and stone grounding interiors that remain among Australia's most accomplished.

The lodge runs on a largely inclusive basis, and its experiences are the point of difference. Guests wade into a working oyster farm in the bay—waders supplied—to eat pacific oysters shucked at a trestle in the shallows, meet Tasmanian devils in the on-site conservation enclosure, or walk to Wineglass Bay's celebrated lookout in the national park next door. Little here feels generic; the programming is rooted in this specific coast.

Palate, the restaurant at the prow of the main building, works through Tasmanian produce—seafood, cool-climate wines, highland beef—with the bay as a backdrop, and the small spa uses the state's botanicals. Saffire is expensive and deliberately adult in tone, but as a distillation of Tasmania's food, wildlife and coastal drama, it has no equal on the island.