Overland Track

The Overland Track, Tasmania's best-known trail, winds, for six to eight days depending on whether you allow time for some side trips, through outstanding glacially scoured scenery and varied vegetation. Think peaks, broken ridges, scree, high moorland, perfect lakes, waterfalls, plunging gorges; and near tundra to surprisingly beautiful low scrub to rich, thick forest.

The Overland Track richly deserves its increasing fame. This is one of the most enjoyable - happiness inducing - walks Walkopedia has encountered, despite two days of rain out of six.

The Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, through which the trail passes, is part a network which constitutes the Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area, one of the southern hemisphere's great wilderness areas.

Here you will find genuinely breathtaking (overused expression, but it is thus) scenery: great buttes, scarps, and spires of dolerite rock dominating a world of high moorlands, forest and deep river valleys.

Much of the trail is above the tree line, winding, often on trademark boardwalks, through fragile, almost poignantly beautiful bogs and low shrubland. The forests, when you get there, are themselves delightful and seldom dull. You will meet wallabies and may encounter an enchanting echidna or traces of the Tasmanian devil.

Camping or basic but excellent huts (can be crowded in Summer) are the only options here, so you will need to carry your food, sleeping and cooking kit (fuel stove) - and a tent, so they say, even if you are staying in the huts. Or you can make a guided expedition using the excellent but expensive Cradle Mountain Huts (www.cradlehuts.com.au), which provide food, sleeping bags and a hot shower.

It will be mad not to make some side trips. The views on a good day from Mount Ossa, Tasmania's highest at 1,617m are to die for - and some have. Cradle Mountain itself shouldn?t be missed and Mount Oakleigh is a tough slither up and down tree roots, but very rewarding. You can safely leave your packs to make the side trips.

The final 17km walk out beside Lake St Clair: diminishing returns will apply. Take the thrice-daily ferry from the lakehead pier, which needs to be booked ahead ( 0061 3 6289  1137; a rip-off but somehow worth it).

Due to its position at the west of an island in the path of the Roaring Forties, the weather here is extremely variable; while it can be lovely, and not just in summer, you must come prepared for, and be philosophical about, some pretty horrible stuff. The summer months (December to February) give the best weather but are busy (it gets over 9,000 walkers a year), and the numbers are necessarily kept down by a booking system (Oct-May, 2012), so you will have to book ahead and pay fees; and a north-south journey is imposed.  Come prepared: this is tough country. Early Autumn is lovely and Spring good for wild flowers (but likely to be wetter and windy) and both get fewer visitors. Try to start midweek if there in Summer. Permits and parks pass cost A$230 (2012). Expedition organizers will arrange this.

Do keep to the paths, to avoid damaging the delicate environment.

As the OLT is not a circuit, getting there and away needs planning. Using a hire car is problematic, and bus is likely to be the best answer if you are travelling independently. Tassielink (0061 1300 300520; tassielink.com.au) will take you to the OLT start at Cradle Mountain and then back from the end at Lake St Clair to Launceston (via Hobart) for A$129/£84, or on to Hobart at the end from A$99/£64. They will transport your surplus baggage, too.

If you are walking the OLT on a walking package, you will be usually be picked up at and returned to Launceston, although you can make other tailored arrangements.

Cradle Mountain Huts (0061 3 6391 9339; cradlehuts.com.au) will guide you, sleeping and cooked for in their comfortable, hot showered huts, from A$2600/£1690 per person (2012). Also see Great Walks of Australia for more information, and some great walking ideas.

Tasmanian Expeditions (0061 1300 666856/tasmanianexpeditions.com.au) will guide you on a camping trek from A$2095/£1362 per person (2012). This will be at the hard core end, carrying your tent and everything else.

Walking in Australia (Lonely Planet) has good details, as has Cradle Mountain ? Lake St Clair and Walls of Jerusalem National Parks by J Chapman and J Siseman.

See www.overlandtrack.com.au

Wikipedia has a good Overland Track page, as has www.besthike.com.

See our Tasmania page for extensive general and practical information.

THIS PAGE IS AT AN EARLY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT. PLEASE HELP US BY MAKING SUGGESTIONS AND SENDING PHOTOS! THANK YOU!