A Four-Day Trek Through Beautiful Tasmania

Discover Tasmania's wukalina walk, an epic trek that includes overnight camping is some of the state's most beautiful natural environments.

Wukalina Walk, TAS

Exquisite cabins on the Bay of Fires trail are as pleasing as the journey to reach them.

At the risk of heresy, the highlight of the four-day Wukalina Walk is arriving at krakani lumi (base) camp on the first afternoon to find cabins clad in blackened timbers and nestled discreetly in the coastal scrub. After some nifty work with a winch, a hatch in the wall pops open to reveal a cosy sleeping pod, its half-domed roof striped in the honeyed tones of local blackwood. Each is decked out with hotel-worthy mattresses, while wallaby pelts stand in for soft furnishings.

Designed to evoke the traditional shelters of the area’s Indigenous peoples, the pods are a thrilling introduction to a singular camping experience.

This is the first multi-day guided hike in Australia that’s entirely owned and operated by traditional custodians. The palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) people had this land to themselves for at least 40,000 years before Captain Tobias Furneaux sailed past in 1773 and named the area after the campfires he saw winking from the beaches. Sharing their ongoing connection to Tasmania’s spectacular north-east coast, two Indigenous guides take up to 10 walkers into their land and history. The exploration of ancient lore and living culture begins at Wukalina (Mount William) and ends with a night in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage at Larapuna (Eddystone Point).

At the krakani lumi domed communal hub, a haute bush tucker dinner – maybe scallops, wallaby or muttonbird – is paired with Tassie wines and enjoyed by the firepit.

Here, more yarns are told, knitting together thousands of years of history. The stillness works its magic against the evening sky.

Taking the boardwalk back to your cosy hideaway, the starlit blanket seems heavy with the meaning of millennia.

Other exceptional places to set up camp around Australia

Tulki Beach, WA

This sought-after address in Cape Range National Park has only 11 campsites and is close to the marine attractions of Ningaloo Reef. The Tulki campground is a 200-metre walk to the aptly named Turquoise Bay, renowned as one of Western Australia’s most beautiful beaches for its bleached sand and colourful coral reef just metres from shore.

Noah Beach, QLD

Let the rainforest canopy act as your awning at this campsite inside Queensland’s Daintree National Park, eight kilometres south of Cape Tribulation. The 15 sites are only 50 metres from coconutpalm- fringed Noah Beach so expect visits from lace monitor lizards, orange-footed scrubfowls and northern brown bandicoots – and the sound of the waves.

Broughton Island, NSW

Nature enthusiasts will thrill to Broughton Island’s campground of five sites set amid a colony of wedge-tailed shearwaters, known locally as muttonbirds. Accessible only by boat from Port Stephens, the rugged 148-hectare island is part of the Myall Lakes National Park. The island is also the habitat of little penguins and ghost crabs and its waters teem with marine life.

Image credits: Rob Burnett, Reuben Nutt.