“DANNY CREATED A LUNCHEON FIT FOR KINGS, THEN WE WERE IMMEDIATELY OFF TO TACKLE THE MOUNTAIN.” FROM sheer escarpments, boulder strewn and daunting, to the whitest sands lapped by turquoise waters, Maria Island, off Tasmania’s east coast, is a diverse paradise, a walker’s delight. Its history is as varied as its ecology: now home to thriving communities of Tasmanian devils, a unique species of wombat and wallabies, pademelons, kangaroos, geese and penguins, Maria has seen many communities come and go in its chequered past.
Maria was originally settled in the 1800s by camps of whalers and seal hunters; the first convict settlement was built by 1825 and occupied by 1830. In the 1880s it was leased for the establishment of a wine and silk industry, and in the 1920s Portland…