Qualla: Overland Track

Overland Track: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darren Grattidge, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most people meet this landscape from a road or a lookout. The Overland Track asks you to walk into it and not come out for the better part of a week. For 65 kilometres it runs north to south through the spine of Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, from the notched dolerite of Cradle Mountain to the cold deep water of Lake St Clair, and along the way it crosses nearly every kind of country this island has to offer: glacial peaks, temperate rainforest, wild rivers, and open alpine plains. More than nine thousand people walk it every year, numbers capped in the warmer months to keep the wilderness from being loved to death. Lonely Planet ranks it among the great treks of the world, and the people who finish it tend to agree.

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Image: Darren Grattidge | CC BY-SA 4.0

Overland Track: Six Days on Foot

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The walk is usually done over five or six days, almost always from north to south, a direction now fixed by policy rather than preference. The reason is the weather: Cradle Mountain catches nearly twice the rainfall of Lake St Clair, so starting in the north gets the wettest, mos...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Overland Track: Side Trips to the Summits

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mitchell Guyatt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The official distance undersells the experience, because the best of the Overland Track lies just off it. Walkers willing to drop their packs and climb can scale Cradle Mountain itself, or push up Mount Ossa, at 1,617 metres the highest point in Tasmania, for a summit view across...

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Image: Mitchell Guyatt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Overland Track: An Older Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ash_sydney, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long before the track was cut, this was a route between peoples. The Overland corridor spans the boundary between the Big River and Northern Tasmanian Aboriginal nations, and stone tools and old campsites between Pelion Plains and Lake St Clair show it was used for thousands of y...

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Image: ash_sydney | CC BY-SA 3.0

Overland Track: The Mountain's Terms

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lcham67, CC0. This is not a walk to underestimate. The weather is unstable in every season: above 35 degrees in summer, below freezing in winter, snow possible on the Cradle Plateau and around Mount Ossa at any time of year, and rain that can turn torrential without notice. In 2014 an internat...

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Image: Lcham67 | CC0