Remote Tasmania

Wildlife “down under” is weird and wonderful enough on Australia’s mainland — it reaches another level in Tasmania, the heart-shaped island south of Melbourne and across the Bass Strait. “Taz” is a refuge for some species extirpated from the mainland as well as many that occur nowhere else on Earth. A big reason for that is how much of Tasmania remains in a wilderness state. Though human habitation here dates back at least 35,000 years, so much of the island remains wild, especially in its most remote corners. On this exciting new tour, experience Tasmania’s little-visited hinterland and search for its bizarre animal life, including iconic Tasmanian Devils.

We focus on three core areas: the southeast, including the Tasman Peninsula; the Central Plateau lake system; and the temperate rainforests of tarkanya. Australia’s highest sea cliffs are at Cape Pillar on the Tasman Peninsula, where we take a boat trip out onto the ocean to observe albatrosses, gannets, and fur seals. The wet eucalypt forests on the peninsula are home to mammals like bandicoots, wallabies, pendemelons, and quolls as well as several endemic birds. Crossing inland to the southern part of the interior uplands situates us among some of the world’s tallest eucalypt forests and, at higher elevations, sweeping moors dotted with alpine lakes and Gondwanan rock formations. The cool, temperate rainforests of tarkanya have been home to the Northwest Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years. This wilderness area supports robust populations of mammals, including the devils, which we have a chance of seeing with a specialist guide. Along the north coast, admire large congregations of penguins and shearwaters before we visit a reliable site for seeing a Duck-billed Platypus. The tour concludes on a high point (literally) with a return to the Central Plateau, this time its northern reaches at Cradle Mountain.

Two of Tasmania’s top wildlife guides are along for the journey, which takes you through moss-covered forests, scintillating waterfalls, and some of the most intact ecosystems on the planet.