The Acropolis Summit Hike (27km)

Sharp dolerite peaks, glacial lakes and broad buttongrass plains give Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park a landscape that feels distinctly Tasmanian even within a state full of wild country. The park sits at the heart of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, with Cradle Mountain at its northern end and Lake St Clair far to the south. Between them lies a large sweep of alpine and subalpine country where weather, altitude and ancient geology shape everything from the skyline to the plant communities underfoot.

Much of the scenery people associate with this part of Tasmania comes from ice. Glaciation carved cirques, tarns and deep valleys across the high country, and at the southern end Lake St Clair remains Australia's deepest freshwater lake. Around those colder landforms, the vegetation shifts constantly with exposure and drainage: cool temperate rainforest in sheltered places, buttongrass moorland across wetter flats, and conifer stands and alpine plants in harsher ground. Myrtle beech, pencil pine, pandani and Tasmania's deciduous fagus all help give the park its strong Gondwanan character.

This country also holds a long Aboriginal history. Around Lake St Clair, the name leeawuleena, meaning sleeping water, survives from that continuing connection. Across the wider World Heritage Area, Aboriginal occupation extends back more than 35,000 years, and the open moorlands seen in parts of the park are not simply natural accidents of climate and soil but also reflect long histories of cultural burning. Caves, shelters and stone artefacts in and around the park show that this highland landscape has been known, used and travelled for a very long time.

European conservation history is deeply tied to the park as well. Gustav Weindorfer's 1910 call for a national park "for the people for all time" became part of Tasmania's conservation story, and the area that grew from that vision is now one of the state's most recognisable protected landscapes. What makes it memorable is not a single mountain or lake, but the way rainforest, moorland, tarns, ancient conifers and glaciated ridges all sit together in one continuous mountain region.