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It was only two hundred years ago that Tasmania was a British colony known as Van Diemens Land -- and so remote that its only use was as a penal settlement for the most hardened criminals. Times have definitely changed, yet that remote untamed island of history is never far away.

Today Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, is a bustling modern city and busy port. Mount Wellington rises straight out of the city to more than 1200 metres. It's possible-- in just a little over half an hour - to drive from a city centre restaurant to a wilderness where you could freeze to death. Even in summer snow can fall here. To the people of Hobart, this place is simply The Mountain - a finger of a vast and trackless wilderness pointing right at the heart of the city -- so it's not surprising that Tasmania's wild heritage plays a central role in the lives of the island's human inhabitants.