We spent five glorious restorative reading days at a friend’s ‘shack’ at Bull Plains in the remote Cradle Mountain Valley in Tasmania – just twenty minutes by car down the road from Cradle Mountain itself. And a couple of hours drive from Launceston.

It’s referred to as a ‘shack’ as, in essence, it’s an old early 20^th Century settlers home – one of the last few remaining in the area. Beautifully patinated metal and timber cladding around a brick fireplace and chimney stack. Our friend G, a Tasmanian heritage architect, rescued the property and sympathetically restored it, using as much of the original elements as possible – handily scattered across the property.

So, from the outside, the ‘shack’ looks original and in keeping with its time, a simple metal and wood dwelling. However, inside, G has created a sympathetically comfortable living space, complete with all mod cons and creature comforts, not least the great big iron ‘Tassie Barrel’ slow combustion heater that’s made from 95% recycled materials. It’s super-effective and burns through logs with ease. On a -2 degree cold Cradle Mountain winter’s morning, with frost on the ground and a light sleet, we were as ‘Snug as a Bug in a Rug’. 

The property is set on 100-acres of high-altitude cool temperate rain forest, with babbling creeks (including super shy Platypus), surrounded by dense forests of Myrtle, Antarctic Beech, Celery Top Pine, Sassafras and Cider Gums. The understory is lush with ferns, vivid green mosses, mottled lichens and native peppers with magical pockets of spongy Sphagnum peatland. The property is alive with Bennetts Wallabies and fat waddling Tasmanian pademelons that appear as dusk falls, but otherwise, it’s a pretty silent place – the wind in the trees and scrubland grasses the only noise.

The scenery around this high-altitude wilderness is breath-taking – switch-back narrow roads that slice through dense Eucalypt forest edged with ferns; roaring wild rivers; soaring granite mountains and deep lush valleys; and, higher up, wild alpine moorlands, glacial lakes and snow-covered peaks. 

Cradle Mountain is one of the great wilderness areas of Australia where the weather can change in a blink of an eye, with snow possible at any time of the year (even in Summer), and where temperatures can plunge well below zero. Fortunately for us snow-seekers it snowed on night one of our stay, leaving us having to switch on the car’s heating till the ice melted off the windscreen. After that we enjoyed misty sub-zero mornings and largely cold crisp sunny days with the occasional wintery blasts of rain.