Hadspen is a town on the South Esk River in the north of Tasmania, Australia, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south west of Launceston. Hadspen has few commercial establishments and is primarily a residential suburb of nearby Launceston. Most of the town’s buildings are residential, and relatively recent. The town’s population of just over 2000 has grown rapidly from only a few hundred in the 1960s, and there are development plans that call for its doubling.

Hadspen was a small town for most of its early life; its population in 1966 was 311. It grew quickly from the 1970s to the 1990s after subdivisions were developed in South Esk Drive and Roebourne Avenue. Over this period the population doubled. In the 2001 census, 29% of the town’s population was under 14—one of the highest proportions in Tasmania—and future forecast growth means that the town is expected to require a primary school. The population grew from 1,334 in 1991, to 1,848 in 2001, 1,926 in 2006, and 2,063 in the last census results in 2011. Within the town’s current footprint its population is expected to reach 2,155 by 2016. The Meander Valley Council, in a March 2011 development plan, forecast Hadspen’s population doubling over the subsequent two decades.

Hadspen was an important stop on the coach route from Launceston to Deloraine from at least the 1840s. The coach service declined from when rail transport started in Tasmania in the late 1860s. The State Government began operating a school bus from town, to Hagley, in the 1930s. Meander Valley Highway, formerly known as Bass Highway, passes through the edge of the town bypassing the old main street. Bass Highway, which connects Launceston, Burnie and Devonport, branches off from this east of the town at Travellers Rest and passes south of Hadspen.