‘JO, WHY ARE you going to the west coast of Tasmania?’ a puzzled friend asked me in 1974. ‘That’s the end of the world.’

Ah, but what a world! A world of tangled mountains and temperate rainforests; of sand-dunes and wild, windswept beaches; of Tasmanian devils and possibly even thylacines. A region with a history of doomed Aborigines, escaped convicts and miners, so many miners that two properties, Granville Estates and the Top Farm, had been established on the coast to fatten cattle to feed them.