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Cradle Country & The West

Welcome to the island's wild west, a land of endless ocean beaches, ancient mossy rainforests, tannin-tinted rivers, glacier-sculpted mountains and wildflower-strewn high plains – a place where you'll often feel like you're the only soul on earth. This is Tasmania’s vast outdoor playground, replete with national parks, conservation reserves and World Heritage–protected wilderness, where your options for adventure are varied and plentiful.

Come here for the toughest multiday hikes (or gentle rainforest wanders); come to shoot rapids on untamed rivers (or cruise mirror-calm waters); and come to kayak into some of the last untouched temperate wilderness on earth (or fly over it all in a light plane). You can visit independently or with a guided group – however you choose to arrive, one thing is sure: you won't want to leave.

Cradle Mountain and the western areas of the state were home to the Big River, Northwest and Southwest Aboriginal nations.

Top attractions

These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Cradle Country & The West.

  • See

    Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park

    Part of the World Heritage–listed Tasmanian Wilderness, this 1614-sq-km national park incorporates the state's most famous mountain (the eponymous Cradle Mountain), two of its best-known lakes (Lake St Clair and Dove Lake) and seven of its 10 highest mountains. It is effectively a park in two parts: the northern section around Cradle Mountain, and the southern section wrapped around Lake St Clair. The famed six- or seven-day Overland Track stretches between the two sections.

  • See

    Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park

    This World Heritage–listed national park came to prominence when the wild Franklin River was very publicly saved from hydroelectric immersion in the 1980s. The park embraces the Franklin and Gordon Rivers – two of Tasmania's most famous and fabulous waterways – and offers exceptional rafting, bushwalking and climbing areas. Its highest point is the hulking white quartzite summit of Frenchmans Cap (1446m), which can be scaled on a challenging four- to five-day bushwalk.

  • See

    Southwest National Park

    One of the planet’s last great isolated wilderness areas, this 6000-plus-sq-km national park, Tasmania’s largest, is home to some of the island's last tracts of virgin temperate rainforest. Part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, it’s a place of untouched primeval grandeur and extraordinary biodiversity. The best ways to experience it are by kayak trips or flights to Melaleuca, or walks from around Lake Pedder and Cockle Creek.

  • See

    Devils@Cradle

    A refuge for around 55 Tasmanian devils, this excellent wildlife sanctuary also plays host to eastern and spotted-tail quolls. Although it's open all day for self-guided visits, try to sign up for a night tour, when the mainly nocturnal animals are best observed. Day tours (45 minutes) run at 10.30am, 1pm and 3pm, with night tours (1¼ hours) at 5.30pm year-round and 8.30pm October to April. Extra information about the animals is given in an interesting Attenborough DVD presentation.

  • See

    Ocean Beach

    Head 6km west of Strahan's town centre to find Ocean Beach, Tasmania's longest beach (40km), which is fiercely pounded by surf. It runs uninterrupted from Trial Harbour in the north to Macquarie Heads in the south and is an evocative place to watch the sun dip into the sea. The water is treacherous: don’t swim here.

  • See

    West Coast Heritage Centre

    Housed in the 1894 School of Mines & Metallurgy, this museum is the pride of the local community and the town's major tourism drawcard. There's plenty to see, including a huge mineral display, photographs and documents tracing the history of the west coast, an underground-mine simulation and steam locomotives and carriages from the early west-coast railways. The centre also incorporates the Gaiety Theatre, a blacksmith shop and wheelwright workshop and the town's historic Freemasons lodge and police station/courthouse.

  • See

    Iron Blow Lookout

    On top of Gormanston Hill on the Lyell Hwy, just before the final descent along hairpin bends west into Queenstown, is a sealed side road leading 900m to an utterly spectacular lookout over the geological wound of Iron Blow. This awesomely deep decommissioned open-cut mine, where Queenstown’s illustrious mining career began, is now filled with emerald water. You can get an eagle’s-eye view from the ‘springboard’ walkway projecting out into thin air above the mine pit.

  • See

    Gaiety Theatre

    When the Gaiety opened in February 1898, a troupe of 60 performers was brought to town from Melbourne and played to 1000 spectators every night for a week. Soon, this grand theatre building was hosting films, plays, vaudeville reviews and concerts. Now restored to its former glory, it screens two hour-long silent-film sessions per day, one of which features parts of the world's first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (first shown here in May 1907).

  • See

    Morrison’s Huon Pine Sawmill

    You hear a lot about Huon pine in Strahan…now see it, smell it and touch it at this working waterfront sawmill. Milling demonstrations take place daily at 3pm (coinciding with the return of the Gordon River boats), and there's a small gift shop selling Huon-pine chopping boards, jewellery, wood shavings and offcuts.