Tasmania: A glimpse of four Australias

The sedate journey across the Cataract Gorge offers six minutes of contrast. Photo / Tourism Tasmania

In a matter of minutes the town gives way to the Outback. Then, just as quickly, it morphs into a park that could easily be an English country estate, which in turn, melds into the suburbs.

By rights, these landscapes shouldn't sit together within strolling distance, but in Tasmania's Cataract Gorge they unfold like a slideshow, showing places hundreds or even thousands of kilometres apart.

You'll find this strange yet wonderful walk just a few minutes' drive or a comfortable 15-minute riverbank walk from the centre of Launceston in the northeast of Australia's island state.

Here, the North Esk and South Esk rivers join to form the region-dominating Tamar River which slices through the city on its way to the northern coast and the Bass Strait.

When you reach the gorge you can choose between two paths flanking the South Esk. We took the northern path above the river, the 40-minute Cataract Walk - the more challenging hike, the 25-minute Zig-Zag Track, stretches even higher above the southern bank - and within minutes were flanked on both sides by gum-speckled rock faces.

Reason tells you that you are only metres away from civilisation, but it doesn't feel that way and that's the magic of the gorge. Apart from the friendly Tasmanians who smile with a "howareya?" at every turn, and the jarring sight of a single house squatting conspicuously in the bush above the river, you could be in the middle of a distinctly Australian nowhere.

Trek on further and the Outback starts to transform into something much less wild. Aussie bush yields to English evergreens and rhododendrons, and the landscape smooths out to lawns with a band rotunda, fern glades and wandering peacocks. The river complies too, spilling into a basin, adding to the illusion you've time-travelled from present-day Tasmania to Victorian Blighty.

The one exception is the 457m Basin Chairlift built in 1972 which crosses the First Basin.

The 308m central section is believed to be the world's longest single chairlift span - and, when you're sitting in the little twin seats high above the gorge, you believe it.

That's because there's little high-tech about this chairlift - no perspex canopies separating you from the basin below or the rhododendrons your toes graze just after you leave the station at the northern side of the gorge. Just you and the simple metal frame connected to the wire overhead.

At first it's disconcerting, but over six minutes you settle into the sedate journey and appreciate the gorge's landscape medley - the dolerite cliffs exposed long ago when Tasmania was ruptured by earthquakes, the historic Alexandra Suspension Bridge where the basin funnels back into the river and the manicured lawns complete with man-made open-air swimming pool. From here, you're just a stone's throw from the Launceston suburbs.

You could spend a day here - there's also a restaurant, cafe and barbecue area - but an hour to two is long enough to appreciate both the nature and the nurture.

There's more to see in this river city which feels like a cross between Wanganui and Dunedin, but with oval Aussie Rules footie fields instead of rectangular ones.

Launceston has retained many of its Victorian buildings and it has that priceless commodity tourism marketers dream of - locals who look you in the face and smile, although if you're a Kiwi be prepared for the odd sheep-shagger joke.

We are, it seems, the only people who rate even lower in the Great Ocker pecking order than Tasmanians, who can't resist putting a good-natured boot in.

In the city and up the Tamar Valley you'll find museums, wilderness and wildlife experiences, river cruises and even a maze, but the Cataract Gorge should still rate as a must-see.

CHECKLIST

Getting There
Fly there with Air New Zealand Book now

Find out more at Australia.com