Willing Prisoners Of The Wild

A journey down the east coast of Tasmania focuses attention on its distinctive environment and animals, and those who prize them.

- Steve White ​​​​​​​

THE EXTREMES OF THE PLANET ARE ‘IN’ right now. People from prosperous but crowded places are flocking to prosperous but uncrowded places at the ends of the Earth: Iceland, Hokkaido, New Zealand – and Tasmania. The fervour is fired in part by epics of the big and small screen: from The Lord Of The Rings to Game Of Thrones. Social media has piled on further fuel. Ultimately, what appeals to everyman and location scouts alike is the tranquility, beauty, unhurried pace and invigorating air. Their left-over wildness, as Truchanas might have had it.

I discovered Truchanas on my most recent visit to Tasmania, between Christmas and New Year. On previous trips, I had hiked at both ends of the landmark Overland Track, bike-toured from Launceston to Mole’s Creek, and climbed Mt Roland and the Walls of Jerusalem. Now I wanted to see something of the east coast and so I joined an enthusiastic group of mostly ‘mainlanders’, tackling five days of hiking, biking and kayaking while learning a little of the animals, people and places that made it special.

In popular imagination, Tasmania’s modern population is all descended from convicts. But Truchanas came to the island after World War II, one of more than 170,000 refugees Australia brought over from a shattered Europe. He soon fell under the spell of the wilderness and his subsequent story reads like a history of Tasmanian environmentalism in microcosm.