Well Said

AA Gill, The Sunday Times, ‘The End of the World’ (8 April 2007):
“There are places that look like old England and there are places that look like nowhere else on Earth. Tasmania has a rainforest that has an elemental, speechless beauty. Rainforests around the rest of the world are smelly, soggy, dank and deeply disappointing. Tasmania’s cool, temperate forest is a great buttressed and hammer-beamed cathedral to the green gods…. The canopy is made of huge, slow-growing eucalyptus, blue, red, grey, yellow, white. Some of the tallest trees in the world are here…The variety of green stuff beggars the English woodland. This is some of the oldest living landscape in existence. I want to believe this is as close to the primeval forest as we can ever get. If that isn’t genetically true, it is spiritually and emotionally. If you travelled here for nothing else, you should see this forest: it’s the stillness that’s so gorgeous and unnerving. A huge, silent library of greenness. Things do live here, lots of things, but none of them say anything.”

Amy Spindler, Style Editor, New York Times magazine (2001):
‘Tasmania is bound physically by rough ocean waters and psychologically by its hardscrabble history … It’s an island the size of West Virginia, with less than half a million people, and you can hike for days without seeing a soul.  Some peaks, roads and rivers are still named for notorious bush rangers and the British bureaucrats who took this striking natural wonder and made it a sadistic prison.’

Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph (UK) ‘Napoleon was nearly here’ (28 September 2002):
‘Lying off Swansea’s southern horizon is Maria Island. An early settler called it ‘one of the sweetest spots in Van Diemen’s Land’, and so it remains. Eerie, beautiful, serene, it is drenched in light on the morning…’

Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, writer for Harpers & Queen magazine:
‘[Tasmania is] a place of fierce contrasts, of tormenting memories which it contains in its deeply gracious presence.’
‘[The island] is jam-packed with people who have deliberately chosen it as the site of the good life: somewhere to be kinder, more composed, more appreciative of important things.’

Clive Archer, writer for Men’s Health (February 2001):
‘Even if you believe that if God had wanted us to bushwalk he’d have altered our evolution at the hunter/gatherer phase, you should give Tasmania’s Freycinet National Park a go. The upside is that, if you do it with the Freycinet Experience company, you’ll enjoy luxury camping and hotel-standard food, stunning scenery and the camaraderie of travelling in a small group. The downside? There isn’t one.’

David Davies, the Guardian ‘Natural Selections’ (24 November 2001):
‘Aah, the taste of tomatoes in Tasmania. Tasmanian tomatoes taste like tomatoes used always to taste and should taste again … But that’s enough about tomatoes. They are mentioned only to emphasise that Tasmania is absolutely crammed full of good things: the food is fantastic, the wine wonderful, the scenery superb – and that’s probably enough alliteration for the time being, too.’
‘It is fair to say that no area in Australia has more scenic beauty, more pastoral pleasure packed into it than the place they call the Natural State.’

Drusilla Modjeska, Australian author writing in the Sunday Age and Sydney Morning Herald magazines (2001):
‘Here on the Freycinet Peninsula, every day something moved or astounded us; the crystalline structure of the granite, the flight of sea eagles riding the updraught.’

John Humphreys, United Kingdom radio presenter and columnist with The Sunday Times (January 1999):
‘If there is a more wonderful and magical place on earth, I have yet to see it… I breathed the cleanest air and swam in the purest waters with dolphins playing alongside. If paradise exists on earth, it is in the wilderness that is the southwest corner of Tasmania.’

Matthew Brace, the Guardian (24 November 2001):
‘Don’t believe the guidebooks that tell you Tasmania is more English than England.  Giant eucalyptus trees tower over creeks where platypus swim, 10ft tree ferns burst from the undergrowth, tiger snakes lurk in the grass and the woods are full of hopping wildlife. At dawn, Tasmania’s temperate rain forests are heady with the scent of lemon, peppermint and myrtle. Branches shower you with fragrant dew as you brush past. This is a long way from England. It’s a long way from anywhere.’

Michael Hogan, Guide for Time Out ‘Hot Destination’ (February 2002):
'The smallest state is the butt of jokes in mainland Oz, yet pundits predict Tasmania will be a top tourist destination by 2020. Why? Its wild, untamed beauty is a paradise for hikers and rafters.  There’s even a town called Paradise. “Tassie” also has colonial towns, great tucker and empty beaches like Wineglass Bay, one of the world’s best.  Go now and get there 18 years early.'

Mike Nolan, the Robb Report ‘At the Edge of the World’ (November 2004):
‘Although remnants of Tasmania’s history, both human and natural abound, it seems as though the entire island emerged from the Tasman Sea only yesterday.  So much of the land is virgin territory, and the people have yet to decide what to do with it – or, they have chosen to leave it untouched.’

P.F. Kluge - National Geographic Traveler (October 2004):
‘Tasmania is the size of West Virginia, and there the resemblance ends. West Virginia is surrounded; it is middle America. Tasmania sits almost 1,537 miles north of the Antarctic. And yet, far off as it is, Tasmania seems as if bits from all the globe have been assembled in one place – and you can sample that world in a day’s drive.  Headed northwest from Hobart along the Derwent River, I’m in wine country that could be Tuscany, then in hops-growing beer land that could pass for Bavaria. And this is only the beginning.’

Teresa Machan, writer for UK Travel Weekly (June 2002):
‘Tasmania is often climatically likened to Britain, but contrary to popular belief there are more sunny days in Tasmania than in Sydney, and Hobart is Australia’s second driest city… Australia’s smallest and most southerly state packs a diverse range of natural characteristics into an area about the same size as Ireland. It has alpine heathlands, open eucalyptus forests and large areas of cool temperate rainforest and moorland.  One-third of its land is under national park protection with significant areas also having World Heritage status… But key to Tasmania’s wilderness is accessibility’.

Tony Perrottet, The Sunday Times:
‘I could taste the isolation in the air. The Tasmanian wind, having drifted thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean, is the purest on the planet. Alpine lakes glittered like dark pearls in the sun, their waters a translucent Rembrandt brown from vegetative tannin. Mountain ridges, razor-sharp in the brilliant light, continued into the horizon, row after row, ad infinitum.’

Victoria Mather, Tatler magazine (April 2002):
‘There is a God. He created Tasmania. It is a land of cream and honey – thick King Island dairy cream and honey from the leatherwood trees.  The crayfish are as big as cats, the mountain streams so pure that the women come to collect the water like modern-day Rebeccas at the well.  To those of us living on the frowzy, lousy side of the world, a wonky sign on Mount Wellington saying “Water may be tainted by wildlife” is endearing rather than threatening.  Who gives a stuff about wombat wee? Wildlife in Tasmania is unlikely to stab you for your mobile telephone; there’s bracken so benign you can eat it; and a walk through the Walls of Jerusalem National Park leads to a place called Paradise.’

Michael Palin, writer, actor and adventurer applauding the Freycinet Experience, All4Adventure (November 2004):
‘Thank you for a journey to rival Himalaya. For a great day and great company. Grateful thanks…I shall always be an ambassador for Freycinet!’

Mark Webber, Formula One racing driver (March 2006):
‘It’s planet amazing. I love Tassie for its sheer ruggedness, its sense of remoteness and the feeling you really can escape from everyday life,’ says Webber. ‘Its wilderness makes you feel very humble and insignificant.’

US Travelgirl magazine  (September/October 2005):
‘In exchange for two days of hard bushwalking, camping behind wild ocean dunes, roasting sun and cutting winds, I’m treated to crescent after crescent of untouched, outrageously beautiful beaches and pinch-me-pretty stretches of coastal heath.’

Jeryl Brunner, ‘Exploring Tasmania’ US Passport magazine (November 2005):
‘I fell in love with Tasmania from 10,000 feet. Looking out the window of the Qantas jet I saw lush green hillsides tumbling into azure blue waters, rugged coastlines, and mountaintops galore… Even when we landed in the capital city of Hobart, I was still flying. The air smelled crisp and fresh, and the landscape was vibrant, bright, and pristine.’

Lee Atkinson, ‘Touring Tassie’. OUTthere (September 2005):
‘One minute you are driving through open paddocks and farmlands, through quaint historic villages full of convict-built stone houses, following the course of a twisting, shallow river when suddenly you find yourself in dense, lush rainforest. A few hours down the road you are winding through pristine alpine wilderness with snow-dusted mountains looming above you on both sides of the road. By sunset, you’re on the beach watching the sun sink into the peal pink sea.
‘Tasmania is a small island, but incredibly diverse. Everywhere is only a few hours drive from anywhere else, and there is plenty to see and do in between and the scenery, and the weather, change constantly.’