: It would be vain for me to attempt to describe my feelings, wrote French Admiral Bruni DEntrecasteaux after gazing on a bay in Tasmanias Southwest Wilderness for the first time in 1792.
When I beheld this lonely harbour lying at the worlds end, separated as it were from the rest of the universe twas nature in her wildest mood.
Little has changed in 200 years. Southwest National Park, Tasmanias largest park, is wild, moody and magnificent. Apart from the lighthouse keeper on Maatsuyker Island, off its southern tip, nobody lives there permanently.
Until the mid-20th century, tracts of this region were marked on maps as unknown or unexplored. In the 1830s, some maps referred to it, uneasily, by the name Transylvania. Today, more visitors in search of true unspoiled wilderness are discovering this remarkable wilderness, which is accessible by foot, plane or boat. South-west Tasmania is a land of stunning diversity sculpted by ice ages from the Pleistocene and beyond. Its coastline is wild and remote, and rainforests with 2,000-year-old conifers hug its ravines and hillsides. It is one of the worlds last temperate wilderness areas and as such has been preserved as a World Heritage Area.
Tasmanias most spectacular bushwalk, Western Arthurs Traverse, winds for 20 kilometres past 30 lakes surrounded by button-grass plains blown by the winds of the Roaring forties and overshadowed by 25 craggy peaks. Its not an easy walk but its magnificent and unforgettable.; The land that time forgot
: The Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park ranks among the most rugged and inaccessible tracts of wilderness left untouched on earth. It is also among the most beautiful. The best way to see it is by raft, along one of the world's few remaining wild rivers, the Franklin.
In Australia, the name of this river is synonymous with the country's largest conservation battle - the struggle to save the Franklin from a proposed hydro-electric power scheme which would have flooded and destroyed it. Fortunately, the right side won and on 1 July 1983 a historic Australian High Court ruling guaranteed the continued existence of one of the world's last pristine temperate wilderness regions. The river was preserved for mankind as part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area.
The Franklin was not fully explored until 1971 (by four Tasmanians on homemade rafts). The trip alternates between furious whitewater rapids and tranquil eddies, past Huon pines and under ancient rainforest canopies. Raft operators don't require you to be experienced; they say most fit and active people can handle the trip, provided you have plenty of courage and stamina.
As well as providing pristine habitats for plants and animals found nowhere else, the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park contains numerous Aboriginal sites of great spiritual significance to today's Aboriginal community. Australia's indigenous people inhabited the region for at least 36,000 years, including during the last ice age.
