A Guide to Casual Encounters in Tasmania

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The island of Tasmania is home to a population of around 520,000 people, most of whom live in the Greater Hobart area. As the capital of this Australian state, Hobart is a busy city for commuters and tourists, including plenty of cruise ship visitors. Catering for all, the island has a good nightlife with plenty of clubs, bars and restaurants, some with more of a reputation for hedonism than others.

In this guide, we find the best places to hook up in Tasmania from popular nightclubs and bars for singles, swinging communities as well as sites and apps to use for casual encounters.

Hooking Up in Tasmania

With such a small community, hooking up in Tasmania can be a bit of a minefield. A recent news report on the use of the popular casual encounters app, Tinder, revealed that most users were likely to find someone they knew on the app, if not a relation. With a population of less than a quarter of a million people in the Greater Hobart area and just 50,000 in the City of Hobart, the number of singles looking for a casual hook up is quite low when compared to other Australian cities.



hooking up hobart
Most of the hook up opportunities in Tasmania occur in the capital, Hobart. Image via Wikimedia.

The report for ABC News went on to claim that the app was used more for dating than for no-strings attached sex in Tasmania.

Of course, if you’re looking specifically for no strings sex, you’d probably have more luck using a dedicated service such as AdultFriendFinder or the popular Adult Matchmaker site.

Best Ways to Hook Up in Tasmania

So, what are the best ways to find other like-minded adults for casual sex in Hobart and the rest of the state?

We’ve found some alternatives to Tinder that might just broaden your search.

Classified Sites

Classified sites have always been a traditional home for lonely hearts and personals ads but since Craigslist was founded in the late 1990s, the medium has become a great place to find casual encounters. There are other alternatives to Craigslist, though the infamous site is still synonymous with the hook-up.

casual encounters hobart
Craigslist is a simple and free site to use but doesn’t give you much options in the way of searching and filtering. Image via Craigslist.

You should be careful when arranging a meeting through a classified site like Craigslist, not just for safety but because they are popular ways for prostitutes to advertise.

Craigslist

Craigslist is the first and the original site for the casual encounter. In Tasmania, there is just one main site which centres around Hobart, however, there is plenty of coverage across the rest of the island as well.

The personals listings are split into seven categories:

  • Men Seeking Women
  • Women Seeking Men
  • Casual Encounters
  • Strictly Platonic
  • Romance
  • Men Seeking Men
  • Women Seeking Women

In the casual encounters section, there are usually over 700 listings available to view and they are arranged in date-posted order. There isn’t a great way to browse them but you can use keywords, age range or filter those ads that have images included.

The site is free to use, both to browse and to post, so it is quite popular.

Locanto

Locanto is an alternative to Craigslist (CL) that works in much the same way. It’s free to use and is similar in style. However, there are a few extra categories that differ from CL, including:

  • Fetish Encounters
  • Couples Seeking Couples
  • Couples Seeking Men
  • Couples Seeking Women

As a result, the site attracts more swingers and fet-fans.

Backpage

Sadly, the popular classifieds site, Backpage, is not currently operating as the owners are facing Federal charges in the U.S. over money laundering and facilitating prostitution. The website went down on 6th April 2018.

Chaos Ads

Chaos Ads is a free to list classified site that covers the same sort of range as Craigslist. There are over 500 listings for Casual Encounters in the personals section though there are even less options to search than CL.

Unfortunately, it is a case of browsing the ads until you find what you are looking for or using a keyword search. Again, most of the coverage is in Hobart but you can find other towns covered too.

The benefit of this site over CL is that most listings have photographs but, on the downside, it does look like more escorts use the service than genuine singles.

Swinging Clubs

Swinging is quite popular in Tasmania and there are an estimated 1500 couples who regularly participate in swinging within the Greater Hobart area.

There are several ways to get in touch with interested parties across Tasmania with swinging clubs and sites in operation from Launceston to Hobart, Swansea to Queenstown.

Some of these sites require paid membership fees in order to get in touch with other members whilst others give you contact details with just an authenticated email address:

aussie swingers tasmania
Swinging is a popular option in Tasmania and you can find plenty of couples looking for guys using sites like Aussie Swingers Club.

Popular Hook Up Nightclubs and Bars

Tasmania has a good nightlife and there are some good clubs and bars where you can find hook ups the traditional way. Most of the action can be found in Hobarton a Friday or Saturday night with our top choices being:

All of these bars have live music or events that attract a good crowd of singles and where, if you get your opening lines right, you can easily pick up.

However, for more of a nightclub vibe then the top hotspots for hooking up are:

  • Observatory Bar, 1 Murray Street, Hobart, TAS 7000
  • Ivory Bar, 121 Collins St, Hobart TAS 7000
  • Apartment 808, 112 Murray St, Hobart TAS 7000
  • Lonnies Niteclub, 107 Brisbane St, Launceston TAS 7250
  • House Night Club, 18 King St, Devonport TAS 7310
nightclubs tasmania
Clubs like ‘House’ in Devonport are popular hook up spots but be on your ‘A’ game, there is plenty of competition. Image via House Night Club.

Or, if you fancy getting a little alternative then head to the Flamingo’s Dance Bar (201 Liverpool St, Hobart TAS 7000). It’s popular with the LGBTQ community but is a vibrant (often flamboyant) place to spend an evening. You can often find some single ladies enjoying the cabaret and easygoing atmosphere who will enjoy being hit on by a guy with such eclectic tastes in entertainment.

For somewhere a little less ‘clubby’ and for an opportunity to hook up with hipsters, try the Preachers Bar (5 Knopwood St, Hobart TAS 7000).

Hook-Up Sites and Apps

An alternative to the classified sites are dating community pages which either have more of a bent on casual encounters or where there is plenty of choice for meeting singles.

A word of caution on these sites, not everyone who is listed here is looking for a hook-up:

  • Fling Finder – online dating service, focus on casual hook ups and sex
  • Plenty of Fish – popular and large service, free, used for both serious dating ad hook ups
  • Love Awake – ‘freemium’ service for all kinds of dating
  • Sex Forums – adult social network with niche for casual encounters and hook ups
  • Meet Your Match – speed dating service operating in Tasmania.
  • Badoo – one of the world’s biggest casual dating and hook up sites
badoo tasmania
Badoo is the most widely used dating app in the world. Image via Wikipedia.

As well as websites, you could also look at the most popular dating apps for hook up opportunities. Like Tinder, these services are used both for serious dating as well as casual encounters.

Most work on the same premise as Tinder, using GeoData to find matches close to you, you swipe right and you like the look of the person, swipe left and they are gone. If you both match each other then you could be hooking up within the hour.

Some require paid membership whilst others offer a free service; however, the user experience is often enhanced by upgrading to a full subscription.

Featured image via Pixabay.