Like anxious new parents, the five of us stare at the baby monitor, ears attuned for the slightest snuffle or cry. All that issues from it, however, is the irritating hiss of static. I tiptoe across the candlelit room and twitch the curtains. Outside, in the darkness, the transmitter is parked beneath a shrub: I can see its tiny green eye staring back at me. In front of it is a pademelon, a small wallaby, dragged off the highway a few hours before and now pegged out as bait.

A chair scrapes and we all hiss: “Ssshhhh.” My youngest daughter mouths: “Sorry.” This basic fishing shack, on a lonely stretch of coast in northwest Tasmania, feels like the set of Run Silent, Run Deep — we are in a submarine, scared to breathe or talk for fear of discovery and calamity. Geoff King, the man who has convinced us that all this is an excellent way to spend an evening, cocks an ear at the hissing monitor. “Hear that?” I shake my head.

“Plovers. If they get agitated, it’s sometimes a sign of a devil on the move.”

I listen again. Still static. I can’t hear any birds. I think it is wishful thinking. It is now more than an hour after sunset and Geoff is fretting. His notebooks show that when he has prepared the site — by dragging the wallaby carcass across the ground — the Tasmanian devils come out to play, or at least gorge, 45 to 60 minutes after twilight. They are late.

I look at my kids, who yawn and give tired smiles. They’d love to see a devil; they’d also like to go to bed. At the moment, the devil is winning, but not, I suspect, for much longer.

I look out of the window once more, and freeze. Just visible over the crest of a hillock is the distinctive white stripe of a Tassie devil.

“Geoff.” The word comes out castrato. “I think we’ve got one.”

WE WERE on a long weekend in northern Tasmania. Once a ridiculous idea, this was made possible by low-cost airlines such as Jetstar and Virgin Blue, which offer returns from Sydney and Melbourne for as little as £40. It’s easy to tack on to a trip Down Under.

People insisted we would be reminded of England or Wales. I hoped not. I didn’t want to fly 12,000 miles to find myself back home, and, thankfully, they were wrong. True, sections of the road we took to Cradle Mountain recalled familiar countryside, but always with an unsettling twist: not just the wallabies, but the strange ghost gum trees that occur all over the country.

White spectres in the midst of supersaturated greens, they are distinctly disconcerting, like something from an M Night Shyamalan film. Other sections of the landscape evoked a deeper disquiet. On the fringes of the Cradle Mountain National Park are whole swathes of desolate landscape, littered with tree stumps and what appears to be a fallen petrified forest. It looks post- nuclear, but is actually post-clearing, not for logging (of which there is also plenty of evidence) but for cattle-grazing.

Luckily, the park itself suffers no such blight. Apart from a small amount of logging some considerable time back, it is pretty much pristine. The Cradle Mountain Lodge is a touch of luxury in the wilderness, situated right next to the entrance. We had two nights there. It wasn’t enough. There is a whole series of wonderful walks with ever-changing vegetation and vistas.

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There are exhilarating horse-rides through forest and across heath, evening “spotlight” night tours to look at quoll (“native cat”, although they don’t look very feline), wombat, possum and wallabies, and a spa with marvellous views from the treatment rooms. We would have been occupied for days. Up there, you will finally appreciate why everyone bangs on about Tasmania having the cleanest air in the world — your lungs feel scoured after a good hike up the mountain.

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