This town in Tasmania has one of the largest collections of artworks by Dali

A Salvador Dali museum? Across the road from a car dealership in Launceston, Tasmania? It seems surreal - and then you discover it's also one of the largest collections of the Spanish artist in the world! Even the museum workers are shocked.

"You don't expect to see this on the way to Kmart," museum guide Sarah Hinde jokes.

Within the historic Launceston merchant store that now houses the Dada Muse gallery, Sarah tells me about some of the 200 pieces on the walls (just a fraction of the 1600 in the regularly rotated collection). It turns out it's less about his famous paintings and more about his drawings and prints, including satirical series reinterpreting Goya or Dante.

"This is my little art oasis when I come here, I love it so much," Sarah gushes.

But Launceston is hardly an artistic desert. In fact, Tasmania's second-largest city is gaining a reputation as a cultural haven, attracting new residents for its slower pace of life and easy access to gorgeous natural surroundings.

"Everyone has more time to explore their hobbies, look at different things and be creative," explains gallery owner Madeline Gordon. "I've always believed that creativity comes from being slightly bored," she laughs.

I've come to Madeline's eponymous gallery with Launceston By Foot, a local tour company that offers an art-focused walk to explore the city's cultural renaissance through its galleries and public works. A highlight is being able to talk to people shaping this artistic movement, like Dali-loving Sarah and gallery-owning Madeline. And when the street art can't talk for itself, walking guide Roz Pinnington offers some context.

"It's looking at the past, the present and the future," she says of two enormous murals of local wildlife on the side of a multi-level car park, including an extinct Tasmanian tiger camouflaged in grass. Elsewhere are paintings in laneways, on public toilet blocks, on electricity boxes. Most of them are relatively new, encouraged by the city council and the annual Junction Arts Festival.

"We're at the start of a change to bring a lot more light back into dark places," Roz tells me. "The undercurrent of art is strong in Launceston."

You don't need to walk far to realise that. There are the adaptable exhibition spaces that allow for bold shows at Sawtooth (the "Mona of Launceston", as it's wryly described to me) and the main Queen Victoria Art Gallery with a collection reflecting the state's stories. But for my Launceston By Foot art tour, we finish at Design Tasmania on the edge of City Park.

For almost 50 years, Design Tasmania has been supporting craft in the state, with a particular focus on wood. Within a heritage-listed hall with a Tasmanian oak ceiling is an elegant collection of pieces like tables, chairs and desks. But wandering into the modern extension, I see more innovative uses of the wood, for cutlery, jewellery, and clothing. After what I've seen on this tour, none of it surprises me.

The writer was a guest of Tourism Tasmania