Walking to the top of kunanyi/Mt Wellington, rather than driving, puts you in august company. Charles Darwin climbed the mountain that broods over Hobart in February 1836 during his famous voyage in The Beagle. A network of walking tracks allow countless combinations of routes revealing the “noble forest”, “gloomy shade” of “elegant parasols” of tree ferns, and the broad, flat summit of “huge angular masses of naked...

The ground plummets into the Southern Ocean centimetres from your booted toes. Land meets water more than a hundred metres below. Are you hyperventilating with fear? Or are anticipatory goosebumps lifting along your arms? The latter? Then prepare for bushwalking Tasmania thrills on the Tasman Peninsula, southeast of Hobart, the most spectacularly rugged stretch of Tasmania’s spectacular coast.    ...

To your left are battlement-like dolerite sea cliffs. To your right a south-curving bight ending in a rocky cape and rock-slab island, beyond which the next landfall is Antarctica. Rising from the sea between the dark blue depths and you is a rock needle (the Totem Pole). It could have been pushed through from below by a subterranean seamstress. Welcome to Cape...

Climb through tall blue gums and stringybarks and into more open forest dotted with mountain berries. Then step out onto Cape Raoul Lookout, 400m above sea level, for one of the most spectacular vistas you’ll see bushwalking Tasmania. Your reward for the effort thus far is a view west to Bruny Island and beyond, and down over the Tasman Peninsula’s southernmost...

The Overland Track is Australia’s most popular long-distance hike for good reason. The leading lady of bushwalking Tasmania, it snakes 65km through the dramatically beautiful and fragile Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Blazed by fur trapper Bert Nicholls in 1930, this multi-day classic is a rocky, rooty, boggy and boarded journey. It passes monolithic dolerite mountains, crosses button-grass moors, and...

After a day treading the Overland Track, you could pitch a tent and open a packet of freeze dried food. Or you could hang your gear in a drying room, soap off the sweat and mud – there’s always mud – under a hot shower, and drink Tasmanian pinot noir with a meal cooked for you. The opportunity to play Scrabble...

Religious terminology is appropriate when describing Walls of Jerusalem National Park (WOJ). This pocket of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is “heaven on Earth” for experienced, well equipped bushwalkers. And one of Tasmania bushwalking’s countless riches. Smaller than its near neighbour Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, where you can tread the famous Overland Track, WOJ is a jaw-dropping 3-day...