A rugged island getaway

King Island, known throughout Australia for its delicious, creamy cheeses (plus beef, crayfish and oysters) is building a similarly high reputation among walkers and divers.

Tasmania's northernmost island is green, grassy, low, windswept and just 58 kilometres long. Its a bracing outpost full of character, secluded beaches and serene lagoons. The two main townships are Grassy and the larger, kelp-harvesting town of Currie.

If you're interested in trivia, King Island's celebrated cheese will provide you with a gem. This cheese (and the island's beef, as well) have a special flavour that competitors have never been able to duplicate. The explanation is said to lie in the island's pasture grasses, which grow nowhere else in Australia. The grasses are believed to have sprung from seeds in straw-filled mattresses, washed ashore from stricken ships.

The theory may well be correct. More shipwrecks litter the seabed around here than any other part of Australia. Dive Tasmania, an association of dive operators, operates scuba dives off the island. Wetsuits are necessary but the dives are rewarding.

Cape Wickham Lighthouse at the island's north end, granite-built and 48 metres high, is Australia's tallest. King Island Dairy is worth visiting and the Currie Museum, originally the lighthouse keeper's cottage, has information about some of the island's shipwrecks. The worst was that of the immigrant ship Cataraqui, which hit rocks and foundered during a storm in 1845, sending 400 people to a watery grave.