Cradle Mountain: The Icon of Tasmanian Wilderness Tourism

Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, the World Heritage-listed wilderness park in the Central Highlands that encompasses the most accessible and the most spectacular of Tasmania's alpine landscapes, is the most visited national park in Tasmania and the natural attraction that more than any other defines the state's wilderness tourism brand. The mountain's distinctive profile, the jagged dolerite peaks that frame the reflections in Dove Lake below, has become the visual shorthand for Tasmanian wilderness in the tourism imagery that the world associates with the island state.

The Dove Lake circuit, the 6-kilometre walk around the lake beneath Cradle Mountain's eastern face, provides the most walked track in Tasmania and the most photogenic mountain walk in the country, its combination of the lake reflections, the buttongrass plains, the ancient pencil pine forests, and the mountain backdrop creating the visual experience that justifies the journey for visitors who have no interest in the more demanding alpine walks that the park also provides. The circuit's accessibility, manageable in two to three hours by walkers of modest fitness, makes it the walk that the widest demographic of park visitors completes.

The Cradle Mountain Lodge and the accommodation options that have developed in and around the park's gateway township provide the full range of visitor accommodation from the luxury wilderness lodge experience to the self-contained cabin and the campsite that backpacker visitors use. The range of accommodation options allows the park to serve the visitor spectrum from the premium traveller whose lodge stay and gourmet wilderness dining represents the high end of the Australian nature tourism market to the budget traveller whose tent at the campsite provides the most direct experience of the wilderness environment.

The climate at Cradle Mountain, which can experience snow in any month of the year and whose summer weather is notoriously unpredictable, provides the reminder that this is genuine alpine country whose conditions require appropriate preparation from visitors who might otherwise underestimate the exposure that the open plateau offers to the cold fronts that cross from the Southern Ocean without significant land barrier. The park's visitor safety information and the gear hire operations that allow unprepared visitors to properly equip themselves before venturing onto the plateau are the management measures that have reduced the search and rescue incidents that the mountain's challenging conditions periodically generate.

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