The art of disappearing: Taking luxury cruise through remote World Heritage wilderness of south-west Tasmania

We understand that Port Davey is remote, assuming you’ve even heard of it.

But to claim a tangible sense of just how isolated this chunk of coastline in south-west Tasmania is, know that this place is so far removed from civilisation that the seagulls don’t recognise chips as food.

“They’ve never seen humans, so they don’t know what a chip is,” says Pieter van der Woude, owner of boutique cruise company On Board, and skipper of Odalisque III, a luxury expedition-cruise catamaran conveying just 12 guest on a five-day journey through this World Heritage wilderness, inaccessible by road and visited only by a handful of yachties and mad-dog hikers each year.

For those overwhelmed by constant connectivity, few places offer a more complete escape.

This vast expanse of tannin-stained bays, glassy inlets, buttongrass plains and soaring, quartzite peaks is home to a permanent population of precisely zero humans.

Read the latest edition of ROAM here.

And yet it somehow has famous former inhabitants. Deny King, a legendary tin miner and conservationist, lived at Melaleuca Inlet between 1936-1991, transforming a forgotten mining camp into the gateway to the south-west, becoming a poster boy for self-sufficiency in the process.

Melbourne journalist Critchley Parker Jr fared less well, starving to death in 1941 while scouting out Port Davey as a potential homeland for Jewish refugees fleeing Europe (it’s been suggested he was doing it to impress a girl at the paper — should we be surprised?).

Getting here is half the thrill. ROAM flies in from Hobart via seaplane, skimming the glazed dolomite caps of Hartz Mountains then drops towards a sheltered cove where our floating luxury lodge waits on dark water.

Daily excursions by tender drop us off to hike to remote beaches, slink through temperate rainforest or explore inky creeks lined with Huon pine, sassafras, coral ferns and gnarled melaleuca. One memorable morning sees our tender crashing through the swell towards Breaksea Islands, where the Southern Ocean pulverises cliffs and sea caves, and sea eagles hang in the wind above, scanning for shearwater chicks to plunk from their nests for a mid-morning snack.

Our own meals are likewise an ode to Taswegian produce, plated up by Hobart-based private chef Lilly Trewartha. Local crayfish star in an exquisite reef’n’beef, while other highlights include slow-grilled lamb rump, Bruny Island oysters, abalone from Stanley, mushroom and thyme risotto drizzled with Tamar Valley truffle oil.

Like any chef worth their sea salt, Trewartha eschews environmentally toxic Tasmanian salmon, serving instead succulent cuts of wild shot venison, a sustainable alternative in a State overrun with the feral pest. Premium Tassie wines, whiskeys and gins are always at hand, and a self-serve coffee station is perfect for early risers to take a brew onto the deck at sunrise.

In such an empty and hostile landscape, traces of human life feel strangely magnetic. It’s tempting to picture Deny King and his mate Clyde Clayton — a cray fisherman who married King’s sister Win — living in crudely constructed shacks, thrown together from whatever was lying around. But visiting their homes, it’s clear they took as much pride as any homeowner in Toorak or Double Bay.

In 1962, when Clyde and Win packed up their home in windswept Bond Bay and floated it across Bathurst Harbour to a sheltered cove now known as Clayton’s Corner, the piano came too. Win maintained a gorgeous garden (the rhododendrons are still blooming) and in 1974, when Muhummad Ali took on George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle”, fishermen and bushwalkers crowded into the Clayton’s lounge to watch the fight on television, Clyde standing atop a nearby hill waving the aerial to fine-tune the signal.

But the true allure of this remote outpost is revealed when you visit Deny King’s home, set among terraced gardens and surrounded by ferns, with a rowboat tethered to a timber jetty on Melaleuca Creek. It looks like a storybook paradise. Just up the garden path is a bird hide where you can watch critically endangered orange-bellied parrots flutter around a feeding platform.

It’s tempting to look around at all this rampant beauty and untouched wilderness and wonder how you’d go living here without the lifeline of a luxury cruiser. You’d go terribly, of course. But that’s the genius of this journey — you get the full force of wilderness without having to live at its mercy.

onboardexpeditions.com.au