On a journey to the end of the Earth, Matthew Parris encounters a true Australian wilderness – and is tested to his limits
Somewhere far, far down south where the Roaring Forties chase their own tails around the bottom of our planet, somewhere where the skies are complicated and the Southern Ocean blows cloud behind sun behind rain behind snow behind sun in a restless weather carousel, somewhere where what isn’t quite Australia tangles into what isn’t yet Antarctica — somewhere so like, and unlike, our own green, windy and oceanic island that there are moments when you think you’re in a parallel universe — is Tasmania.
I thought I’d find this island tame, provincial, simple. It was none of those things. Tasmania is sweet,