Tasmania, the smallest, wettest and most mountainous of the Australian states, is seperated from the mainland by the Bass Strait and lies 150 miles south of Victoria.
Roughly the size of Ireland, Tasmania is the closest point in Australia to the Antarctic circle.
Though many view Tasmania as having resonant echoes of England: cream teas, old-fashioned B&Bs and friendly, homespun people, "mainlander's" joke that Tasmania is twenty years behind the rest of Australia, and it's true that it's very old-fashioned.
The west coast is wet and savage, with wild rivers, impassable rainforests, buttongrass plains and glacially carved mountains and tarns that have been linked to create a vast World Heritage Area. This region provides some of the world's best wilderness walking and rafting and continues to be one of the cleanest places on earth, despite attempts at industrialization.
