Lake St Clair Walk Trail Hiking Australia

Length: 4.7km
Duration: 1.5hrs
Grade: 2
Style: Circuit
Start: Lake St Clair Visitors Centre
End: Lake St Clair Visitors Centre

Location: Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park
Closest Town: Derwent Bridge
Distance from CBD: 180km
State: TAS
Latitude: -42.116756
Longitude: 146.172951

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Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park...

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Lake St Clair Walk is a 4.7km, grade 2 circuit hike, located in Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania. The hike should take approximately 1.5hrs to complete.

Hike Summary

There are three short walks at Lake St Clair. The shortest is 2.4 km return and this can be extended by combining it with either one or two additional walks. At their longest, these walks combine to form a 4.7km figure-of-eight loop.

Highlights

Watersmeet
This is a short, easy walk, which will take you about 45 minutes return. The track follows an old road that was constructed to allow for limited logging after bushfires in the area in the 1960s. It is 1.7 km eachway, and culminates at Watersmeet, where the Hugel and Cuvier Rivers meet.

Larmairremener tabelti
This Aboriginal cultural heritage walk uses creative interpretation panels to introduce the Larmairremener, the indigenous people of this region. A band of the Big River Nation of people, the Larmairremener made seasonal trips to the east coast and traded along well-travelled routes with other bands.

The walk contains a wide variety of vegetation, including banksias, buttongrass, tea-tree thickets, Tasmanian waratahs, rainforest ferns, and towering eucalypt stags. The latter were ravaged by bushfires in the 1960s. The track follows moraines, which are ridges formed by retreating glaciers during the ice ages. Moraines influence the vegetation types in the area with open woodlands occurring on the well-drained moraines and tea-tree and buttongrass communities occurring in the wetter areas between the moraines. After reaching a viewpoint above the Hugel River, the track descends gently to the rainforest area and rejoins the Watersmeet Track where the Hugel and Cuvier rivers meet.

Platypus Bay
The track to Platypus Bay is a 30 minute return walk from Watersmeet Bridge. This track follows the Cuvier River to its mouth at the lake. The track then curves around the edge of the lake. Platypus are sometimes seen in this area. The best time is early morning or late afternoon.

About the region

Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is located in the Central Highlands area of Tasmania (Australia), 165 kilometres northwest of Hobart. The park contains many walking trails, and is where hikes along the well-known Overland Track usually begin. Major features are Cradle Mountain and Barn Bluff in the northern end, Mount Pelion East, Mount Pelion West, Mount Oakleigh and Mount Ossa in the middle and Lake St Clair in the southern end of the park. The park is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Getting there

Road C193 to Lake St Clair from the Lyell Highway (A10)

Tips

Park entry fees apply. (Self registration park entrance.)

Visitor centre, restaurant and accommodation.

Supervise children , tracks subject to severe weather conditions all year round, weather may change quickly, tracks are difficult to navigate when covered in snow and may be impassable.

No pets, firearms or bicycles.