I HAD BARELY DISEMBARKED from the ferry when I spotted my first wombat, shuffing across the dusty path just a couple of metres in front of me. About the size of a pitbull and with a gently waddling gait, this compact, furry lawnmower was clearly on the search for fresh grazing, but I like to think it had come out especially to greet me.
I’d just landed on Maria Island – a 115km2 lump of forested rock off the east coast of Tasmania – after a 30-minute sail across the Mercury Passage. Following in the footsteps of First Nations people who had been making regular canoe crossings to the island they know as Wukaluwikiwayna for thousands of years, I had just 24 hours to explore a thriving ecosystem that naturalists refer to as “Australia’s best example of Noah’s Ark”.
Myriad creatures call Maria Island home, but it was the wombats that I really wanted to see. And, as it turned out, that was going to be far from difficult.
On the short walk from the ferry port to my
