Maria Island

We hadn’t planned to visit Maria Island but after my car broke down in a tiny coastal town with no real drawcard other than being the jetting-off point for the ferry to Maria Island, we decided this must be the best way to kill time while we wait for car repairs. We bought a cheap tent, lugged a huge inflating double mattress and packed a tiny cooler bag of food and a litre of water and boarded the ferry; naively unaware of what to expect. The island was once a convict settlement and the remnants of the old convict buildings still remain, but other than that there really isn’t any other infrastructure at all; there’s a few cabins in the old penitentiary, a huge campground and tens of kilometres of dry grass and bushland. What the island is home to is a huge population of wombats, pademelons, cape barren geese, potoroos and even a hundred Tasmanian devils; released here due to it being unattached to the mainland and as such without risk of infection from the contagious face tumours that almost wiped out all the tassie devils.

Since we didn’t pack enough fresh water or food we were only able to stay for two days, but I’m so glad we ended up here because it’s truly one of the most beautiful and untouched places I’ve been; there’s so many incredible walks to remote beaches and animals absolutely everywhere, especially cheeky wombats (some of them have a penchant for charging unsuspecting tourists, as Andy found out). The sunsets are something else and the views across to mainland Tassie are incredible. We didn’t get to see any devils but some friends we made did, and it’s apparently fairly common to be able to see them in the wild on the island. It’s also just one of those amazing rare places that still feels really wild and mostly untouched; there’s no roads or cars, no shops of any kind, no fresh water. Anyway, here’s some snaps I made on my rolleicord while we were there to hopefully encapsulate how magical a place it is.