I am standing at one of the loneliest places on earth—Ocean Beach, twenty miles long, strewn with whales’ bones and the wrecks of ships. This harshly beautiful scene is barely a four-mile drive, over high sand dunes, from the snug little port of Strahan, the only town on the wild western coast of Tasmania, Australia’s island-state. The westerly wind that whips my face has blown clear around the planet. The rain it bears is dumped—in some places, twelve feet of it a year—on the high, sawtooth mountains, gouged by glaciers, at my back, creating an ever wet wilderness where the oldest vegetation on earth, the forests of the ancient single supercontinent of Gondwanaland, still flourishes. It’s one of earth’s last surviving temperate rain forests (read nontropical jungle), now safe from civilization as a World Heritage Area. Much of Tasmania’s western wilderness is still unexplored, a living reminder of what our world looked like 200 million years ago (it rained a lot, and our one ocean was still freshwater). At last the geography of this amazing island is becoming clear to me. The westerlies bring the rain that fills the rivers and lakes, which generate the electric power that makes Tasmania’s air the cleanest in the world—you can wear a white shirt for a week in the capital, Hobart. By blocking wind and rain, the mountains give the rest of Tasmania its balmy climate, making possible the rolling meadows, lush vineyards, and fine swimming beaches of the east coast. Hobart is the second driest (after Adelaide) of Australia’s major cities. Abel Tasman, the island’s discoverer, was wise not to try landing on this forbidding coast, or he might well have left his bones here too. He thought Tasmania had no future, but he was wrong. He couldn’t have guessed that it would one day show us a glimpse of a world free of pollution, a delight to visit. I didn’t guess it either, before I made my own accidental discovery.

On November 24, 1642—when New Amsterdam, the tiny trading post on the Hudson River, was barely sixteen years old—Dutch sea captain Abel Jantszoon Tasman was bowling along on a westerly over a wild southern ocean that no sailor had ever seen before. At about four in the afternoon watch, he sighted a line of high, sharp-edged mountains ten miles ahead. “This land being the first we have seen,” he wrote in his log, “. . . we have conferred on it the name Anthony van Diemen’s Land, in honor of the honorable governor-general, our illustrious master who sent us to make this discovery.” Captain Tasman was wise to stay in with the boss. Governor Van Diemen was what Wall Street calls a hard-driving executive, responsible, from his headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta), for the affairs of the Dutch East India Company from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn, the world’s loneliest stretch of ocean, then a huge blank on the map. Jan Compagnie, as its employees called it (the way IBM people talk about Big Blue), had been founded in old Amsterdam forty years earlier as the world’s first joint-stock, limited-liability international corporation, and Their High Mightinesses, the seventeen directors back home (then, as now, titles were cheap), had tightly focused objectives. Company poet Joost van den Vondel laid it on the bottom line: “Wherever profit lead us, to every sea and shore / For love of gain the world’s wide harbors we explore.”

Captain Tasman was, frankly, on the lookout for business openings, with no hypocrisy about spreading civilization or uplifting the natives. Finding no harbor among the breakers, he steered south by west, ran along a rugged coast, turned north, and found anchorage at what is now sadly called Blackman Bay, on the Forestier Peninsula in eastern Tasmania. Not that Tasman actually saw any natives, although he felt unseen eyes on him, and signal fires gleamed at night. His landing place was “level land covered with greenery (not planted but growing naturally with God’s will), plenty of timber, and a sloping water course. . . . The only sounds we heard coming from humans were sounds resembling a trumpet or a little gong.” Tasman’s crewmen saw the tracks of an unknown animal, the thylacine, the marsupial Tasmanian tiger, and notches cut in a tree five feet apart, suggesting that the locals were giants. The natives did not, however, seem interested in trade or have anything portable to trade with. No deals like Manhattan for twenty-four guilders plus a bottle of gin were on offer. When I visited the site three and a half centuries later, I found a modest plaque and a sleepy chicken farm, whose guard dog woke up for a couple of perfunctory barks, which were soon replaced by Tasmanian friendliness. Captain Tasman thought he’d better play it safe, hoisted the Dutch flag, and annexed the unknown land for his company. He then sailed west, never wondering how big his discovery might be, and a week later found, named, and claimed New Zealand for Their High Mightinesses, before returning to Batavia in a huge circle north of New Guinea, missing Australia entirely. Tasman, Australian historian Russel Ward writes, “lacked the most important single attribute of a great explorer—curiosity.”

Curiosity was exactly what inspired my own more or less accidental discovery of Tasmania, some years after the captain left. Growing up in snooty Sydney, I knew there was a small island down there (actually it’s about the size of Ireland) that had once been called Van Diemen’s Land, which has a nasty ring in English (in Dutch it just says that the governor hailed from Diemen, near Amsterdam). A place of horror, the end of the line in the worldwide British penal system, which sent people off in chains for trivial breaches of harsh laws. As the old convict song warned: “You rambling boys of Liverpool, O have you to beware / When you go a-hunting with your dog, your gun, your snare. / Beware of the gamekeeper, keep your dog at your command / And think of all the hardships going to Van Diemen’s Land.”

It didn’t sound like much fun, or a part of Australia’s past that I wanted to wallow in. Then, a decade or so ago, I started to hear quite a different story from school and university friends and a scattering of intrepid North Americans. “Authentic,” “enchanting,” “values that have eroded on the mainland,” they enthused, or rather raved. Everyone praised Tasmanian friendliness, the quality most cited by the pollees who put Tasmania first among temperate island destinations in this magazine in November 1999 [“Readers’ Choice Awards”]. I’ve never thought of Australians as stand-offish (that’s the English, surely?). We err, if anything, on the side of aggressive mateyness. Was I missing something special, a friendliness they don’t make anymore? Yes, I was.

I happened to be at a loose end in Melbourne, a city of three million. I was told that the Tasmanian government ran a nightly ferry from Melbourne to its island, two hundred miles away. I taxied to the Station Pier and found the Spirit of Tasmania, a former Baltic cruise liner, nine decks, 31,000 tons. She has state-of-the-art stabilizers (the shallow Bass Strait can get rough), a swimming pool, shops, a gym, playrooms, a casino, two dining rooms, three bars (one with a piano), a branch of Tourism Tasmania ready to make bookings ashore, and comfortable cabins—all for a one-way fare of between Australian $227 and $270, with children fifteen and younger traveling for less than half price. A voyage, two meals, and a night’s rest for under a hundred and fifty American bucks! Already I was learning about Tasmania: It’s helpful, child-friendly, clean, and cheap. We sailed at dusk and two hours later cleared the entrance of Port Philip Bay, thirty miles wide, and headed out on a smooth sea—booze flowing, hearts at ease. Next morning we sighted winking lighthouses to starboard, breakfasted, and at 8:30 tied up in Devonport, a miniature river port like many on the English Channel, a world away from the megaharbors of the mainland, as Tasmanians call the larger island to their north, often adding “dry” and “desolate”—in the friendliest way possible, of course. The Spirit, in Melbourne just another ship, towered over the trim little town. A man rowed by with a large dog in the stern—not an official, guard, or sniffer dog of any kind, although Tasmanians don’t like you to bring food products ashore, just a friendly dog—and I disembarked and took a bus to Launceston to rent a car (also possible in Devonport). Launceston, on the Tamar River, was the third British settlement in Australia (1804) and a handsome Georgian city in its own right, but I decided to press on. The friendly young lady at the Hertz counter glanced at my Japanese driver’s license, which has not a word of English, and handed me keys. I was on my way south, past Breadalbane and Perth, with some more information under my belt. Tasmania is relaxed about licenses, practically everywhere is named after somewhere in the British Isles, and it’s a dream to drive in. Mainland Australia is like North America: endless distances and long days on the road, with the added complication of having to carry water and dodge large kangaroos. Tasmania has excellent roads, well surfaced and marked and practically empty. The view changes around every bend, with lakes, forests, glimpses of the sea. It does look a bit like England, Scotland, and Wales all mixed together—and they drive on the left, which adds to the illusion—but then you see eucalyptus trees, and Tasmania’s reality.

Highway 1 took me south to Hobart—less than two hundred miles, an easy four hours with photo opportunities. Tasmanians call this lush area the Midlands, the oldest settled part of the island. It is some of the world’s finest wool country, rolling pastureland dotted with sheep and occasional families of rabbits. Not the pestilential hordes of you-know-where, but cute, Peter Rabbit–type bunnies, part of the scenery. Sweetbrier frames stone-built cottages, solid churches await the faithful. I had to remind myself that most of these stones were hewn by lonely men in chains.

But back in the present, economics intruded. Tasmania has zinc, paper, and aluminum smelting. How, then, does this lush land sustain first-world standards of safety and convenience without industrial pollution? The plants are close to their sources of water-generated power to the west, out of sight. I don’t recall a single smokestack in my travels, so there’s no acid rain to attack the architecture. Just as well, I thought, as I drove into the stately city of Hobart.

Passing through Hobart’s suburbs doesn’t take long. There are only 185,000 people in an urban ribbon between high mountains and the broad estuary of the Derwent River. Soon you are in the old town around Sullivans Cove, the docks—and in the world of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. This perfectly preserved 1830s whaling port has handsome old stone warehouses, dignified public buildings in the plain, powerful Georgian style, without Victorian fripperies—a reminder that whalebone stays once kept the female form divine at oil-lit dinners.

The whales and seals of the Southern Ocean were once very big business, and for a while Hobart Town was the busiest whaling port in the world, and more. In the days of sail, Hobart was midway on the fastest route—via the Cape of Good Hope and the Roaring Forties—between Europe, North America, the South Seas, and the Far East. And labor was cheap: In the half century after 1803, with the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars and the oncoming Industrial Revolution, 74,000 men and women convicts were sent to Van Diemen’s Land from Britain and Ireland, and many did their time building Hobart. It must have been a lively town in those days: “We had an Irish lass onboard, Mary Johnson was her name / And she was sent from Liverpool for a-playing of the game. / She took the captain’s fancy, and he married her offhand / And she gave us all good usage, going to Van Diemen’s Land.”

Then, everything changed in the 1850s. The southern right whales, which once frolicked in the Derwent (a few still do), grew scarce. Sail gave way to steam. Transportation of convicts to Van Diemen’s Land ended in 1853. Three years later the island achieved self-government, and one of the new parliament’s first acts was to change its sinister name to Tasmania, honoring the island’s discoverer. But by then, Hobart was the splendid backwater that, at first glance, it still is.

When you look more closely, though, you see a clever makeover well under way. The fine sandstone warehouses along Salamanca Place now house boutiques, restaurants, nightspots, art galleries, and a serious antiquarian bookshop, the Astrolabe. (The Saturday crafts market on Salamanca is a don’t-miss.) Hobart is a working fishing port, and Constitution Dock has floating takeout seafood stalls and sit-down dining. All this can be washed down with impressive Tasmanian cool-climate wines, which even other Australians don’t know about, or Hobart-brewed Cascade Ale, for my money Australia’s finest (the Cascade brewery looks, appropriately, like a cathedral). Around the corner from Salamanca Place is Battery Point, with more friendly pubs amid the stone-built cottages of long-departed whaling captains. Not far away is the bijou Theatre Royal (1837), not only the oldest in Australia but the favorite of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Behind historic Hobart is a compact, sophisticated, modern city with shopping malls, high-rise buildings, a Gay Information Service, sixty-two consulting psychologists, and mercifully few traffic jams—but tranquil Old Hobart is, in its own right, enough therapy for urban stress.

From Hobart, I had a choice. Tasmania’s east coast is a wonderland of sheltered, safe beaches, virgin national parks, seals, and fairy, or miniature, penguins. The other way lies the Tasman Peninsula, and near its southern tip, the ruins of Port Arthur, the most visited historic site in Australia. In 1830 Governor George Arthur, a no-nonsense soldier, realized that the end of the line in the British penal system itself needed an end of the line, for hard cases and repeat offenders (next stop the South Pole). The Tasman Peninsula was, he said, “a natural penitentiary,” joined to the main island by Eaglehawk Neck, a sandy strip barely a hundred yards wide, where Arthur deployed sentries with lanterns and savage dogs. A few did escape, and one bushranger (outlaw living in the bush), Martin Cash, managed it twice. Altogether, 12,700 men did hard time at Governor Arthur’s supposedly escape-proof prison in the forty-seven years it was open for business.

Two hundred thousand visitors a year can’t all be wrong. Curiosity called, and I drove down from Hobart in an easy two hours. The ruins of Port Arthur are tranquil, beautiful, and—this came as a surprise—fun. Australia’s first railway ran from Port Arthur to an outstation, with crude carriages pulled by convicts. But with all that free manpower, Arthur and his successors not only built a solid, forward-looking jail but transported a whole English village for themselves, with trim cottages, oaks and elms, a stone-built Church of England, and a mansion for the governor. All are in ruins, but magical ruins. Port Arthur has become a theme park, except that it’s all authentic, the real thing.

Today’s Tasmanians are proud of what they have accomplished and unashamed of their grim beginnings. “I guess half the population around here are descended from convicts,” I was told by Maria Stacey, a helpful official at the Tourist Information Centre, “including me.”

On my way back to Hobart, I pondered what we might call the Australian paradox. How did a nation descended from felons and farmers, guards and adventurers, turn into a society fiercely attached to its freedoms but respectful of its laws and quick to obey them when they seem necessary for the common good? (See “A Nation Disarms Itself,” page 63.) The answer was obvious as I rolled up trim Highway A9, back to Hobart. Britain’s rejects built themselves a nation and asked no awkward questions until the answers were no longer painful—and even a convict had better food and more opportunities than the pals he had left behind.

And why are Tasmanians so especially friendly? First, because they are used to vacationers from the mainland, and these days anyone, irrespective of accent and appearance, could be Australian, so all visitors are welcomed as compatriots. And secondly, Tasmanians are all small-town Australians—old-fashioned, perhaps, but still close to the comradeship of the frontier.

Back in Hobart, I was eager to explore the other side of the island, which is ridiculously easy to do: I drove it in four hours from Hobart, with stops to take in an astonishing variety of landscape.

Lyell Highway, the A10, climbs up the lush valley of the Derwent, a succession of orchards, poplar trees, old stone-built inns, and churches hewn by the ever available convicts. St. Matthew’s at New Norfolk (1823), the oldest church in Tasmania, was quiet when I tiptoed in to admire the stained glass windows, and I was saddened by a plaque dedicated to the mayor’s two sons, killed in action at Gallipoli, Turkey, on the same day in 1915.

I left the valley and was suddenly crossing a high moorland covered with button grass, a harsh plant unique to Tasmania, seamed by rivers, and dotted with three thousand lakes teeming with wild brown trout. The hamlets of Tarraleah and Bronte Park are famous among the brotherhood of fly fishermen, having hosted a world championship. Then the stand-alone pub at Derwent Bridge, between two lakes, signaled another change of view. The road plunged into an arm of the rain forest wilderness and, minutes later, led to a memorable encounter.

The wilderness is home to much wildlife (just possibly including a Tasmanian tiger or two, although the last known one died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936), and caution is advised on the road. Rounding a bend I sighted a chocolate-brown wallaby, a minikangaroo about three feet tall, standing on his (her?) tail on the tarmac. I slowed to a halt. Marsupial and motorist gazed curiously at each other. Then the former hopped off to its ancient habitat, and the latter drove thoughtfully to his modern one. The road through Victoria Pass, the height of the mountain range, had a few miles slick with frost in the crisp fall weather, before descending into Queenstown, an interesting old mining center, and from there to Strahan, the only town on the rugged coast that Tasman saw in 1642.

Strahan is the embarkation point for cruises down Macquarie Harbour, stopping at the convict settlement on Sarah Island, abandoned in 1833, and heading into the majestic gorge of the Gordon River, which takes you into the heart of the rain forest while seated comfortably on a deck chair, refreshment in hand. Trees and plants have primitive ancestors, just as we do, and the green walls on either bank are living fossils, Gondwanaland’s last stand against what is our still-evolving world. If you look closely at the celery-top pines gliding by, you will see that they have no leaves but rather the feathery fronds from which leaves descended, aeons ago. The flowering swamp gums, fifty feet high, are not trees but the world’s tallest plants. The river under you is stained dark brown by button grass, topped with foam from the rapids higher upstream, and looks exactly like Guinness stout but is pure to drink.

Then, as you leave saltwater behind, you see Huon pines, surely the strangest of all living trees. The Huon pine has no sap (sap had not evolved then either). Instead, it has oil, which makes it practically worm- and rot-proof, and thus ideal boat-building timber—the reason convicts were sent to bleak Sarah Island to cut it. Slow-growing—some specimens are three thousand years old—Huon pine is a close-grained yellow wood, showing fine detail in carvings. I coveted some splendid bas-reliefs by Hobart artist Greg Duncan in the pub at Derwent Bridge. Felling Huon pines is now forbidden, but convict-cut trunks and branches that have lain in ooze since the 1830s are still being found, perfectly preserved, and turned into useful gifts like the cheese boards at the Morrisons’ sawmill next to the visitors center on the Strahan waterfront.

The Huon pine is not endangered—there are seedlings by the thousands scattered throughout the wilderness, which will mature four or five hundred years hence. At Heritage Landing, well up the Gordon, tour boats moor at a boarded walk into the rain forest, two-thousand-year-old Huon pines close enough to touch. A seaplane from Strahan’s wharf lands higher up the Gordon, near its junction with the Franklin (see “A Love that Never Died,” page 112), and also accesses a boarded walk on the wild side of the rain forest. Our world, the only one we have, was a damp, wholesome place two million years ago, as I could see. I’m not sure we’ve improved it much since then.

Places & Prices: It's a variegated, virgin landscape makes Tasmania the favored playground of nature—loving australians. Why should they have all the fun?

Safe and easy, Tasmania has every level of energy. White-water rafting the Franklin River takes seven to ten days, camping out, and extraction by seaplane. Conversely, someone in a wheelchair or encumbered with small children could easily repeat my trip, and the shoals of kids I saw were having a great time. Tasmania’s wilderness has no dangerous animals, apart from some shy snakes.

Compact, mostly fertile, lapped by fish-rich seas, with land cheap and communication easy, the island is affordable even for mainland Australians. And with the Australian dollar hovering around 50 cents, it’s spectacular for overseas visitors, even in high season (late December through Easter, when booking ahead is advised), and even when you factor in Australia’s new ten percent goods and services tax, which is sometimes included in quoted prices and sometimes not. Additionally, tips are not expected—although ten percent won’t cause offense. Since Hobart has no direct international service, all flights connect through Sydney or Melbourne.

HOBART

Tourism is the capital city’s heavy industry, with rooms starting at $9 a night at the spartan Transit Centre Backpackers on Collins Street, above the intercity bus terminal (61-3-6231-2400), and rising to luxurious levels. The appropriately named Hotel Grand Chancellor, formerly a Sheraton, is a 234-room international-style landmark that towers over the city and has, among its facilities, the booking office of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. At $133, this is as cheap as luxury gets (61-3-6235-4535; www.hgchobart.com.au; doubles, $133–$149; w). My own choice was nostalgic: The Welcome Stranger, a perfectly preserved 1950s pub, has ten rooms upstairs and a bar downstairs with the crash of pokies (poker machines) and the glugging of brawny men downing schooners (close to a pint) of Cascade Ale. The room rate includes a hearty pub breakfast—ale extra (61-3-6223-6655, fax -6224-1093; doubles, $32–$38).

The Stranger might be a touch too authentic for some tastes, but Hobart has many historic buildings artfully restored. I liked the look of the Old Woolstore at 1 Macquarie Street (61-3-6235-5355; oldwoolstore.com.au; doubles, $75) and the Oakford on the Pier, a jump from the harborside, which has rooms with sea breezes (61-3-6235-5355; www.oakford.com; doubles, $98–$111).

It may be impossible to get a mediocre meal in Tasmania—again, for a fortuitous mix of reasons. The pollution-free ingredients are all local and fresh—Tasmania is the only Australian state whose raw oysters are allowed into Japan and the United States. But most visitors are big-city types from the mainland, where Australia is undergoing a culinary revolution, and Tasmania has had to keep abreast of the trend. Yum! The Old Town area around the docks is honeycombed with nightspots and eateries. I savored Say Cheese at 7 Salamanca Square, which sticks to local wines and platters of gourmet Tasmanian cheeses at lunchtime (61-3-6224-2888; entrées, $6–$12). On Victoria Dock itself, the justly famous Mure’s Fish Centre serves fish and chips and buffet seafood on the Lower Deck, gourmet dining on the Upper. Up or down, the local ocean blue-eye is delicious (61-3-6231-2121; entrées, $9–$20). Machine Laundry Cafe, at 12 Salamanca Square, solves one traveler’s problem: Breakfast is served all day in a sunny courtyard, with a state-of-the-art laundry and cleaners next door.

PORT ARTHUR

The once-dreaded Tasman Peninsula is now a playground for vacationing Australians and for Tasmanians brushing up on family history. The Port Arthur Motor Inn, actually inside the spacious grounds of the old prison complex (built when land was for the taking), is a good base for exploration. Its 35 comfortable rooms surround a courtyard, but the memorable feature is the bar and dining room overlooking the ruins—spectacular by day, floodlit by night (61-3-6250-2101; www.portarthur-inn .com.au; doubles, $59; w). Nonguests, too, can dine sumptuously on local seafood, lamb, and beef served with delicious—and previously unknown to me—local cool-climate wines, about $15 per bottle (entrées, $9–$12). For the parsimonious, the Port Arthur Youth Hostel often offers a bus ride to and from Hobart, two nights’ lodging, and entrance to the prison site, all for $27 (61-3-6250-2311).

STRAHAN

On my way to Strahan and the World Heritage Area, I put up at the Derwent Bridge Wilderness Hotel—hard to miss, standing sentry on the Lyell Highway. Its pub has a memorably spacious bar—almost cavernous—with high ceilings, a log fire, carvings from local wood, and simple, hearty meals (61-3-6289-1144, fax -1173; doubles, $45–$55; w).

Derwent Bridge is the southern end of the 50-mile Overland Track, Tasmania’s most famous bush walk (what less-athletic people would call a trek or hike). It takes four or five days, and bush walkers carry tents, food, and rain gear to traverse a high, spectacular, glacier-chiseled wilderness. The ranger station is at Cynthia Bay (61-3-6289-1115).

Gordon River cruise boats stop in Strahan (61-3-6471-7187; round-trip, $28), and seaplanes that land far up the Gordon usually moor nearby (Wilderness Air, 61-3-6471-7280; $63 for 80 minutes).

On a hill above Strahan’s waterfront, the Strahan Inn offers a panorama of Macquarie Harbour (61-3-6471-7191; doubles, $48–$61; w). The Strahan visitors center can advise on the town’s many accommodations, as well as on the weather (61-3-6471-7622; strahan@tasvisinfo.com.au). I drove back through the dark wilderness, but my marsupial acquaintance had retired to kangaroo dreamland. Back in Hobart, I stopped for one last nostalgic night at the Welcome Stranger. An apt name for a Tasmanian pub, I thought, closing my weary, well-contented old eyes.

Reading

Robert Hughes’s best-selling account of Australia’s convict origins, The Fatal Shore, has much about Sarah Island and Port Arthur (Vintage Books, $17).

Astrolabe Booksellers, at 81 Salamanca Place, Hobart, has surely the world’s best specialized collection of Tasmanian books and documents, much on Australia, and many secondhand classics that have somehow wound up on the island (phone and fax, 61-3-6223-8644). The only stand-alone treatment is Lonely Planet’s Tasmania; Lynn McGaurr’s text is strong, like the island itself, on everything out-of-doors ($17). Hobart’s Tasmanian Map Centre laminates maps, charts, and posters while you wait. A poster by Peter Dombrovskis of a rugged bend in the Gordon River adorns my study (96 Elizabeth; 61-3-6231-9043). A bimonthly magazine, Tasmanian Travelways, packed with current prices and places, is free at tourist information centers.

The Australian government’s site, fed.gov.au, has visa information (everyone needs one, but the paperless Electronic Travel Authority operates between Australia and the United States). The Tasmania-specific site is www.tourism.tas.gov.au; nature reserves and wildlife are at www.parks.tas.gov.au; for trout fishing, www.fishnet.com.au; for adventure, www.tasmanianadventures.com.au.