Wilderness

Home of the Overland Track
Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is 161,204 hectares (398,174 acres) of World Heritage wilderness.
Just 144 km from Launceston and around 80 km from Devonport, the park is a prized piece of Tasmania’s wilds, as pristine as it is dramatic and rugged. Cradle Mountain is at the northern end of the park, and marks the start of the renowned Overland Track – a multi-day walk considered one of the finest (and toughest) hiking trails in Australia. Lake St Clair is to the park’s south.

Ancient Alpine Environment
Some of the mountain ranges hereabouts are around 1,000 million years old. Tasmania’s highest mountain, the 1,617-metre (5,305 feet) Mount Ossa, is within the park. Lake St Clair is the deepest lake in Australia (190 metres/623 feet deep) and the source of the River Derwent, which flows through state capital, Hobart.

The north-western park is renowned for its diversity of landscape, which includes glacial lakes, craggy peaks, rainforests, buttongrass plains and alpine meadows. During spring and early summer there are spectacular displays of wildflowers, while deciduous native beech (Nathofagus gunnii) leaves turn from green to gold and russet in autumn.

In the lower regions of the park wildlife is as abundant and
diverse as the vegetation: wombats, echidnas, Bennetts wallabies, pademelons, and Tasmanian devils have their way with the surrounds. So do rosellas, Tasmanian thornbills, dusky robins, and wedge-tailed eagles. Fish species include the extraordinary Climbing Galaxias, a fish with large fins capable of climbing damp rocks. 

Historical, Cultural and Natural Wonder
Aborigines had a presence here before the last Ice Age 25,000 years ago. Limestone cave shelters, middens, and artefacts including stone tools, rock engravings and paintings have been found.
In the 1820s pioneers looking for sheep grazing land worked in the area, but found the land too steep for farming. The remains of their huts can still be seen.

Surveyor George Frankland named many of the mountains and lakes in the park. Lake St Clair was named after a Scottish family in 1835 (The lake’s Aboriginal name ‘Leeawuleena’ means ‘sleeping water’), but inspired by Greek mythology, Frankland also named Mounts Olympus, Ida, Pelion and Rufus.
During the 1890s a rail route from Hobart to the west coast, between Pelion Creek and Frog Flats, was cut. The rail line never eventuated but miners walking from Deloraine to Rosebery and drovers used it for many years. Today it forms part of the Overland Track.

Austrian Gustav Weindorfer climbed Cradle Mountain in 1910. Both Gustav and his Victorian wife, Kate, were pioneering conservationists of the region. In 1922 the Weindorfer’s cri de coeur was heard and 158,000 acres was proclaimed a ‘Scenic Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary’. In 1982 the park was placed on the World Heritage list, along with the Southwest and Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Parks.

For more information:
Overland Track
Parks and Wildlife