No margin for error

It's been eleven days since we've seen a single mark of humanity. No trails, no people, no litter, nothing. The only reminder of the world beyond is the dozens of satellites visible in the midnight sky.

We've been hit by heavy storms which shredded the thin tarps that are our only shelter. Our food is running out: we're barely eating a single meal a day.

We're in the middle of one of the last truly wild places left on the planet.

The only way out is forward.

A geological anomaly unlike anywhere else, Tasmania is one of the wildest places on Earth.

It's home to one of the last remaining expanses of temperate wilderness in the world, a place where you have to rely on your expedition  skills and sheer grit to traverse: there's no trails, definitely no phone signal, and no-one else around.

In February 2024, myself and two mates set out to cross the island from the North coast to the South coast, pack-rafting the rivers and lakes and hiking over the mountains and valleys. The route, over 500km long, took us through places were few humans have been in hundreds of years. Less than 10% of the trip was on any established road, trail, or path.

Scars of the past

The Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area covers 15,800km2 of the island, nearly 25% of its total landmass.

Much of this ancient landscape is pristine, yet even in this remote corner of the world, Tasmania bears the scars of 200 years of colonisation. The British wrought genocide upon the Palawa, the Aboriginal people who have lived on this island for over 35,000 years.

The natural landscape has suffered as well. Countless Huon pines, endemic to Tasmania and among the oldest living trees on Earth which had been growing for over 2,000 years, were cut down in a matter of years.

Valleys and unique ecosystems, such as the rose-pink quartzite inland beach at Lake Pedder, were flooded under a massive dam-building spree after World War II.

The route, as planned

Unlike most of Australia, Tasmania is largely mountainous and experiences rainfall throughout the year. Rivers define the island, many of which have been impounded by dams.

Recently, I'd come across packrafts: inflatable rafts which are compact enough to be rolled down and attached to a rucksack, but robust enough to tackle whitewater.

None of us had packrafted before this trip, but we decided that by following the rivers and lakes, we'd be able to chart a course across the island, away from trails and roads, that no-one had ever attempted before.

Probably for good reason.

Three men vs. the Bush

Tasmania's waterways were the key to our mission.

Leaving from the Bass Strait at Turner's Beach, we'd follow the River Forth upstream and over four dams: Paloona, Devil's Gate, Cethana, and Lemonthyme.

Once we hit the Lemonthyme power station, we'd climb a large ridge and scramble down the other side into Lake Parangana, where we'd be able to resupply from a food drop we left, and raft up the River Mersey into the highlands.

Because of the multiple hydro-electric dams, however, the Forth and Mersey rivers were both relatively shallow, which meant we end up dragging our rafts over rocky riverbeds for hours each day.

Up and over

After paddling to the upper reaches of the Mersey river we had to cross the Du Cane range in the central highlands, which tops out at 1,520 metres, before we could join the downstream rivers towards the South Coast.

This range lies in the Lake St. Clair - Cradle Mountain National Park, a popular destination for bushwalkers, and we'd be able to pick up another food supply drop from the tiny village of Derwent Bridge.

This would be the last time we'd see any people or traces of civilisation for the next two weeks.

Beyond the vale

After paddling across Lake St. Clair and Lake King William, we would then set across the marshland out to find the source of the Gordon River, Tasmania's mightiest river.

The river's catchment lies in the vast Vale of Rasselas, protected by the World Heritage area, with no access in or out. Finding the river involves stumbling across knee-high buttongrass swamps and penetrating dense shrub, all for a river that by all accounts is too log-jammed to be worth paddling.

Either way, we'd be in for a tough journey across untamed wilderness before tackling the fierce rapids of the Gordon Gorge and emerging on to Lake Gordon, Tasmania's largest lake.

Rivers, lakes, and ocean

We'd then strike out almost due west across Lake Gordon and paddle through a set of narrow bays before we could land near the hydro-company town of Strathgordon and collect our last food drop. 

From there, we'd paddle across the expanse of Lake Pedder to its south-easterly impoundment at Scott's Peak, which also releases the Huon River. Once on the Huon, all we'd need to do is raft downstream until it reached the sea. With enough time, we could follow the coast around to the South West Cape, Australia's most southerly point.

That was the plan. But as always, nature has other ideas.