The customs dog at Hobart Airport was working his socks off. Wearing a bright yellow snifferdog coat, he moved from case to bag to rucksack seeking not drugs but apples, and not just nasty foreign fruit, but apples from even the neighbouring states of Victoria and New South Wales for, to date, Australia has managed to protect its agriculture from all sorts of exotic pests and diseases, and Tasmania, the country's only island state, goes to great lengths to safeguard its already threatened apple industry.
Arriving in Sydney a few weeks previously, I'd found that all my wild Irish salmon, brought as gifts to family and friends, was a potential carrier of germs and would have to be confiscated. Flying across the narrow Bass Strait from Melbourne to Hobart - Tasmania's capital - I took no risks with the snifferdogs and entered this greenest of islands pest-clean and apple-free.
With the Australian weather on the cusp between autumn and winter, it was a great time to be in Tasmania. The air was warm, fresh and sweet, and along the Tasman Peninsula, which joins Hobart to Port Arthur, the small roads were coddled by tall hedges - some with fuchsia growing in them. Thickwooded hills ran down to the water's edge and the shoreline was dotted with small cabins. Golden rod and rambling roses flourished in the gardens and family rowing boats bobbed alongside makeshift jetties.
The day I arrived I drove south to pay a brief visit to the old penal settlement - Van Diemen's Land had its name changed to Tasmania in 1856 - and walked around Smith O'Brien's little yellow cottage, but my real destination was the mighty Cradle Mountain Nature Reserve in the north of the island. Tasmania is a Green Party stronghold (car stickers repeatedly warn "Hands off our Airport" and "Leave Uranium in the ground") and this, together with its isolation, has so far protected it from destructive development, leaving its wilderness areas among the most unspoiled in Australia.
Wilderness, of course, means bush-walking and at Launceston, Tasmania's northern commercial centre, we got kitted out with serious wet and cold weather gear for, like share prices, temperatures in Tassie can go down as well as up. We were a disparate group: a noisy thirty-something Englishman fleeing a painful divorce, a blonde woman with lipstick who turned out to be a formidable walker, a Canadian couple celebrating 25 years of marriage ("Darling," he reminded her one evening, "you forgot to put the sugar in my tea."), a nimble TV cameraman in a New Age cap, our leader, Chris, in purple long johns worn under grey shorts, long matted hair dangling from his woolly cap, and his partner, Sue, who knew the names of all the plants and trees on Cradle Mountain. And that's no mean feat for this wilderness is among the richest you can find in Australia. The rain forest is thick with ancient blue gums, King Billy pines, pencil pines as well as myrtle, tea trees, bottle brush trees, and lemon thyme. The ground is covered with the most brilliant green sphagnum moss and tannin has turned the rivers to liquid copper. One day our trek took us around Dove Lake and into the Ballroom Forest - a dense, lush underworld of green tranquillity. On another day we set out to climb Cradle Mountain but the weather closed in and we were forced to shelter in an emergency mountain hut, sharing it with a group of shivering Japanese in T-shirts and trainers who, indomitably, set off for the summit. Morosely, we stayed behind, drinking our hot tea and chewing our chocolate. Huddled into each other against the wind and cold, we could have been any group of walkers clinging to the slopes of Lug, asking ourselves the selfsame question: "Why in God's name are we doing this?" Then the mist cleared, the sun came out, and we knew why.
Cradle Mountain Nature Reserve gets about 100,000 visitors a year. Some come to climb Mount Ossa - at 1,617 metres Tasmania's highest mountain. Others come to see Lake St Clair, Australia's deepest natural freshwater lake. Whatever the reasons, the rangers are determined to preserve the area, which is why steps have been cut into the steep slopes and most treks are done along walkboards which also come in handy when negotiating the sludgy green swamps within the rainforest.
Walking, of course, drew our group together and by dinner time each evening, with Sue and Chris slaving over the hot stove (leaders cook, punters wash up), with good Ozzie wine on the table, and the log fire in the main cabin crackling, we always got round to talking about the important things in life, such as mountain peaks and marriages, accidents and accents. Outside, in the growing darkness, the wallabies and wombats hung about, knowing there'd be scraps of food going spare. By 10, however - we had an early start each morning - it was time to stumble out into the pitch-black night and head for our own cosy cabins. Waldheim - named after an Austrian who fell in love with the area and built a chalet there in 1912 - lies about five kilometres into the wilderness and consists of eight huts built close to Waldheim's original one, each with its own wood-burning stove, very necessary for the nights can get very cold.
By the end of the week, our group had mellowed. The wedding anniversary couple were holding hands and even sloping off to bed early, the lipsticked blonde had decided to embark on an endurance trek, I had come to accept that I must soon leave this challenging wilderness for the hot dry land of Alice Springs and the thirty-something divorce was hyped up, preparatory to moving on.
"Come on, do it," he shouted to Chris, who was staying behind to close up the huts. The rest of us busied ourselves piling our gear into the trek bus, getting ready for the drive back to street lights and pavements, newspapers and garbage collections. And then, as Sue drove the bus away, Chris did it: he turned, lowered the purple long johns and shorts and mooned a farewell.
Sue, at the wheel, shook her head in disbelief: "I can't believe he's just done that. I just can't believe it." But I could. In Tasmania you never know what you're going to meet when you're out without your gun.