There was no chance Tasmania would be left off the map this week.
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Canberra Airport announced on Tuesday tickets for flights to Hobart would go on sale for the first time in seven years, with the first to depart in December. That take-off date was brought forward to November 5 on Friday, with the ACT invited into the southern state's travel bubble.
If everything goes to plan, mainlanders from most jurisdictions will be able to satisfy their itch for an "overseas" trip when they are legally able to cross the Bass Strait from October 26.
Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein told reporters borders would open to the ACT, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory before the end of the month.
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With Tasmania clocking more than 50 days of no new coronavirus cases, its tourism economy is seen as a potential way to boost to its recovery, despite residents from its two biggest markets, Victoria and NSW, still being banned.
Tasmania was the first state to shut its borders and impose heavy penalties for quarantine breaches, and tourism operators have been hit hard. More than 1.3 million interstate and international visitors had touched down in Tasmania over the year leading to the March closure.
From their City Walk apartment this week, Genevieve Dooley and Phil Creaser were studying their newly purchased Lonely Planet Tasmania guide, having jumped online the day Link Airways announced four flights each week would soon be departing Canberra to Hobart.
While current precautions require a two-week quarantine for travellers, Mr Creaser said he was confident that come summer they'd be free to get straight on the road for a fortnight of sightseeing.
He said Tasmania ticked all their travel boxes, and while they'd been doing their bit by eating out in Canberra, it was time to spend some money down south.
"We just like to get away - as much as we love Canberra, we can get overseas now, albeit still in Australia," he said.
"It just feels like a bit of an escape."
While the art museums were on Ms Dooley's destination list, the future of Tasmania's world-renowned MONA Gallery remained uncertain.
A statement was released in March saying the gallery, one of Hobart's most popular tourism destinations, would be closed until at least October.
While a spokesperson for the gallery said it had no further updates this week, the company made a return of sorts last week with the announcement that MONA's Festival of Music and Art would go ahead in Launceston and Hobart across two weekends in January.
Tourism Tasmania welcomed news of the new flight path from the capital, with its visitor survey counting more than 27,000 Canberrans over the previous year to March.
That number had increased by an average of 8 per cent each year since 2011.
The Tasmanian government created an incentive scheme in September designed to get Tasmanians travelling around their state during the middle of the week, by offering rebates of between $100 and $150 a night for accommodation for a maximum of two nights, as well as $50 per person towards tourism experiences.
The $7.5 million program was fully subscribed to within an hour of opening.