Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair, Tasmania
Australia's jagged green southern edge wows with peaks and water

By Patrick Totty

North Americans and Europeans who tour Australia don’t come seeking a landscape that will remind them of home. True, the Australian Alps have some steep peaks and snow in winter, and the red deserts of the Outback might remind some U.S. Southwesterners of Utah or Arizona, but the country in general has its own distinct and different look.

The great exception is the island state of Tasmania, 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of the State of Victoria across the Bass Strait. The 26,000-square mile island, shaped like an upside-down triangle, with its rugged mountains, roaring rivers, extensive forests and green, well-watered interior, calls to mind such Northern Hemisphere landscapes as Ireland and Oregon. Despite its distance from the rest of the world, and although it is a lightly settled place (the population is 475,000), the island has shown up repeatedly as a focal point for some of the most bitterly fought clashes anywhere on the globe between environmentalists and developers.

At stake are the very things that make Tasmania so different from continental Australia. Although it is less than 1% the size of the nation as a whole, Tasmania possesses half of the country’s hydroelectric potential, much of it from powerful, free-flowing rivers that surge through the island’s rugged western half. Its vast forests of beech and eucalyptus are also interspersed with rare conifers, such as the huon pine, that are among the most valuable and sought-after building materials on earth. In the 1980s, a government scheme to create jobs by damming the wild Franklin River in the island’s mountainous southwest led to a massive series of protests, including direct-action sit-ins at the places where crews were readying to begin construction.

The protestors, appealing to the court of international opinion, eventually won the day. Stunning photographs of the disputed terrain and the testimony of scientists and hikers convinced most that the wild gorges and forests along the Franklin’s course were one of the last great temperate forest wildernesses left on the planet. Australia’s federal government compensated the state government for its perceived losses, then created the Franklin-Gordon Rivers National Park. The new park was a major  piece in a series of contiguous north-south running national parks that comprise a major chunk of Tasmania’s western half.

The parks are described ensemble as the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. At 5,300 square miles, they cover a fifth of Tasmania and could contain 4.5 Yosemite National Parks within their boundaries.

Alpine scenery, Tasmanian-style

The oldest and most popular among the national parks here is Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair, a mountainous, lake-strewn 620 square mile (1,600 square km.) upland that first received protection in 1885 and achieved full-blown national park status in 1936. It’s a wet place – almost 80 inches (2,000 mm) of rain fall here yearly, producing waterfalls, tumbling rivers, dense beech forests, stands of rare King Billy Pine, alpine heathlands and a ubiquitously green landscape that seems most un-Australian.

At the northern end of the park, Cradle Mountain reaches 5,068 feet (1,545 meters), not so tall by most standards. But with its location on an island that stands smack in the path of the great westerly winds that girdle the globe at these southern latitudes, and Antarctica only 1,800 miles away across an open sea, Cradle Mountain attracts a lot of wind and weather. Its chiseled profile is often shrouded in clouds or covered with snow. The weather can be so volatile that hikers here know to wear several layers of clothing and bring copious changes of socks.

To reach Lake St. Clair at the southern end of the park, hikers often start from Cradle Mountain and trek the rugged 52-mile Overland Track, Australia’s oldest and most famous hiking trail. It is not a cakewalk. The hike usually takes six days, passing through rough high country that can throw elevation changes, extreme weather and dense bush at visitors. But there are many pleasant distractions along the way, including small lakes, virgin forests and almost numberless waterfalls. In fall, the beech and heather turn color, giving the park an almost New England-like look.

Glacier-carved Lake St. Clair plunges more than 600 feet (190 meters), which makes it the deepest lake in the Southern Hemisphere. At 11 miles long, visitors use a ferry to ply its length and take in the surrounding mountains. One of them, Mt. Olympus, has a chiseled face that makes it look like a castle battlement.

Visitors generally access the park from Devonport, a small city on Tasmania’s northwest coast, starting their visit at Cradle Mountain. There’s no direct auto link to Lake St. Clair, so getting to the southern end of the park requires a roundabout drive west and south through some of the neighboring national parks or east into the island’s agricultural interior before looping around to Lake St. Clair.

At Cradle Mountain, the Cradle Mountain Lodge looks like something you’d find in a Canadian or American national park. It’s geared toward people who want to enjoy the Tasmanian wilderness with amenities. Hikers completing the Overland Trail often reward themselves with a stay at the Lodge, splurging on hot water and gourmet food to wash away the rigors of the bush.