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Another pic from Maria Island just off the coast of Tasmania. It is pronounced "ma-rye-ah", not "ma-ree-ah" island. Although the traditional owners call it wukaluwikiwayna , which sounds much more poetic to me!
Have a great week out there!
Thanks kindly for any likes/comments, they are always appreciated.
Waterscape 37/100 in 2025
Would you like some light bedtime reading to get your travel juices flowing ;) I recently came across some photos of the quietly spectacular Maria Island, just off the east coast of Tasmania — and I couldn’t help but share. It's paradise!
Maria isn’t paradise in the cocktail/deckchair/room service sense. It’s paradise for wildlife — and for those of us who don’t mind swapping mobile phone reception for the company of wombats. Known to the Palawa people as Wukaluwikiwayna, Maria Island is a national park, a wildlife sanctuary, and Tasmania’s very own Noah’s Ark.
The island is only accessible by ferry. There are no towns, no cars (aside from a few Parks and Wildlife vehicles), no cafes, and no permanent residents except the park rangers. The residents are overwhelmingly furred, feathered, or pouched. Transportation options are walking or bicycling, which is perfectly suited to the environment.
Despite its modest size — about 20km by 13km — Maria Island manages to squeeze in a staggering variety of landscapes. Think: pristine beaches, quiet bays, towering cliffs, ancient eucalypt forests, Painted Cliffs, with their swirling patterns etched by water, wind, and time. There’s the Fossil Cliffs, embedded with marine life over 300 million years old — the sort of detail the Earth casually leaves lying around. And throw in a some grassy rolling hillsides, boulder strewn fields and a few creeks and billabongs for good measure. Oh, and an isthmus! (I've always wanted to use that word. Isthmus. Did it again. Isthmus.)
Wildlife is abundant and unbothered by your presence. Roaming freely are wombats, kangaroos, wallabies, and Tasmanian devils (who are much more polite than Looney Tunes led us to believe). You might also encounter echidnas, possums, and a few snakes — who, like locals anywhere, just want to be left alone.
If birds are your thing, you’re in for a treat. Maria Island is an official Important Bird Area, home to endangered swift parrots, forty-spotted pardalotes (a tiny bird about as easy to find as a unicorn apparently), Over 1% of the world’s Pacific gull population, and eleven of Tasmania’s twelve endemic bird species including the rare and very unimpressed-looking Cape Barren goose.
For history buffs, the island once served as a convict settlement, now part of a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site. Evidence of whalers, sealers, and early explorers is still scattered across the island — including petrified whale bones, a ghostly reminder of long-abandoned industries. I'm glad it’s the wildlife that now runs the show!
Surrounding the island is a Marine Nature Reserve, where seals, dolphins, and the occasional whale pass by, not to mention the amazing Blue Groper. I had the opportunity to pat one of these gigantic friendly fish once when diving, but that's a story for another day. The marine reserve is a subtle reminder that paradise doesn’t end at the shoreline!
No shops. No cars. No phones. No stress. Just sea, stone, sky, wildlife and the sense that mother nature, left to her own devices, is quietly magnificent.
Thanks kindly for any likes/comments, they are always appreciated.
Waterscape 31/100 in 2025
