Mt Field National Park is Tasmania’s first national park, with stunning vistas, great walks, abundant wildlife and excellent visitor facilities. An easy drive from Hobart, Mount Field has been popular with nature lovers for well over a century.
Russell Falls is the star attraction and even featured on Australia’s first stamp. It’s a short, wheelchair accessible journey from the visitor centre, through enormous fern forests and some of the world’s tallest trees.
There’s even more to be discovered in Tasmania’s most diverse national park, including Lady Barron Falls, Horseshoe Falls and many more on the way to the summit of Mount Field itself.
The park offers an array of natural wonders and incredible plant diversity that increases with altitude. Encounter some of the park’s unique alpine species on the Pandani Grove walk around Lake Dobson, and if you’re lucky you’ll spot a platypus.
Cushion plants are interspersed with pineapple grass, sphagnum and string bogs on the wet plateau. Longer walks take in the tallest flowering trees, Tasmanian conifers, spectacular waterfalls, wilderness views and the small glacial lakes of the Tarn Shelf.
During autumn, the slopes of the mountains that back onto the Tarn Shelf fill with brilliant colour as the fagus (deciduous beech) turns from red to gold.
There’s a wide variety of wildlife in the park, including many of Tasmania’s native mammals and endangered species, such as the eastern quoll and the eastern barred bandicoot. Eleven of Tasmania’s twelve endemic birds can be seen here, too.
Mt Field National Park offers downhill skiing and snowboarding, with tows operating in winter and good cross-country skiing across the higher plateau. There are also many caves throughout the park, most only suited to experienced cavers. The Junee Cave, in the Junee State Reserve, south of the national park, is accessible to the general public.