WARMING UP, CHILLING OUT

My husband, Tom, and I needed a break from the 90-degree February heat in Sydney. Our friends there vacation in Cairns, a city 15 degrees higher in latitude and 10 degrees higher in temperature.

But I wondered whether Tasmania, a shield-shaped island state in the most southerly part of Australia, might be an agreeable spot. Our friends said it was lovely. None of them, however, had ever been there.

A look through brochures promised beaches backed by granite mountains, moderate temperatures, 120 miles of hiking trails, 17 national parks that cover 20% of the island, and “the cleanest air in the world.”

So we parted ways with our heat-hardened Sydney friends and found ourselves in Tasmania, driving north along the two-lane Tasman Highway, skirting the Tasman Sea and occasionally passing through small towns with a haphazard and weathered frontier look.

An arid summer had scorched the landscape. I scanned the bush hoping for a glimpse of the fearsome Tasmanian devil, a carnivorous black marsupial with devil-red ears, or at least a wallaby, a smaller cousin of the kangaroo, anything to break the monochromatic monotony of the landscape. Instead I saw endless miles of burnt grass, a lone tree here and there and an occasional squat building made of sun-dulled wood topped by a corrugated metal roof.

In the whimsically named town of Spiky Bridge, a mannequin wearing a blue cotton war-bride dress and a double strand of pearls posed in the doorway of a general store. A handbag was looped over her outstretched arm.

To me, an American from eastern Pennsylvania, it was another example of the endearing upside-down nature of this side of the world: heat waves in February, dummies modeling clothes from 60 years ago, southbound flights--in this case, 787 miles south--to cool off.

Tasmania was definitely the farthest south I had been. Antarctica is only 1,200 miles beyond, with little between it and the island. Tasmania’s distance from the equator--it’s on the 40th parallel, in open ocean--gives it a temperate, maritime climate.

The east coast, our destination, had summer temperatures in the 70s, with steep drop-offs at night. It also promised low rainfall and a reprieve from the sudden changes in weather that challenge hikers inland.

We were driving to Freycinet National Park (pronounced fray-see-nay), which sits on a finger-like peninsula 120 miles north of Hobart, Tasmania’s capital. Great Oyster Bay separates the west side of the peninsula from the island mainland. The east side opens to the Tasman Sea. Bays and coves ripple the peninsula, and each one seems to offer a different combination of granite outcropping, sea cliff and beach.

“Did you see that wooden lady all gussied up for the 1940s?” I asked Tom. “This is a strange place. I like it. Don’t you?”

He was silent.

We had reservations at Freycinet Lodge, a wilderness eco-retreat inside the park. Tom was girding for the experience.

My husband has a fear of the words “wilderness” and “cabin,” and both were in the brochure for the Freycinet Lodge. He doesn’t mind encounters with wild animals or strenuous climbs, but he won’t put up with the discomfort and bad food often associated with wilderness experiences. He had wanted to stay in civilized Hobart and take day trips, but I argued for the wilderness, and won--at least for four days.

The barren scene along the Tasman Highway did nothing to relieve his fears.

After buying a three-day pass from the ranger station at the entrance to the national park, we found our wilderness retreat about a mile in. Our first sight of the main lodge was disappointing. From the outside, it looked small and dark. What we didn’t know was that we were facing its back side.

Once inside, we looked through windows that rose 40 feet to a timbered ceiling and saw a huge expanse of green and blue, the waters of Coles Bay. The main lodge housed the dining room, bar and reception desk. The 60 guest cabins were hidden in the eucalyptus, oak and pine trees that bordered the beach.

Our two-room cabin--a large bedroom with a king-size bed, fern-colored quilt and a sitting area that faced a small deck, a serviceable bathroom and a second bedroom with a single bed and bunk beds--had white plastered walls, not the knotty pine staple of cabin construction, which is another of Tom’s prejudices. A big ceiling fan circulated the Tasmanian night air and made it cool enough to use the quilt. Wood walkways connected the cabins to minimize damage to the grounds.

We had dinner that first night in the Bay Restaurant at the lodge. Our meal of local crayfish was complemented by a bottle of Tasmanian Chardonnay and a view of the sun setting over the pink granite cliffs. Tom was beginning his adjustment to this wilderness experience.

The lodge has two restaurants. The Bay Restaurant, with its “dress casual” code (the women wore dresses or dressy pants and the men, jackets), reservation policy and formal service, is the more elegant side of Freycinet.

The other restaurant, Richardson’s Bistro, serves meals and snacks all day. We ate breakfast and lunch there and enjoyed the change of pace. Breakfast is an ample buffet, and lunch has a pub-style menu with counter service. Diners can eat inside or at picnic tables on the deck. The bistro does not accept reservations, and it was crowded in the evenings, as many of the campers in Freycinet Park ate there.

The next day we woke to a world obscured by a Tasmanian whiteout, an early-dawn combination of sea mist and light rain. We walked through the heavy air to Richardson’s Beach, next to the lodge. After ducking under a sprawling tree limb, we saw two wallabies on the beach looking at us. They seemed to be a mother-child pair, but we had only a brief glimpse of their pointy faces and tawny fur before they sprang off into the whiteout. We spied two more at the other end of the beach, but they too bounded away after sighting us.

Later that day we had our next wallaby sighting at the foot of the two-mile hiking trail to Wineglass Bay. This creature did not run when it saw us, so I took out my camera and fiddled with the telephoto lens, clumsy in my rush to capture it on film. But it stayed still, as if posing for me, and I came closer and closer and finally sat on a bench next to it. It leaned its head back and opened its mouth. Obviously some tourists had ignored the ranger’s warnings about feeding the wild animals. It can produce a lethal condition called “lumpy jaw,” I was told. As I refused to give the wallaby a handout, I tried explaining this.

We left our wallaby at the picnic bench, waiting for less law-abiding visitors, and resumed our hike to Wineglass Bay, considered the most beautiful part of the park. An inlet from the Tasman Sea forms the stem of the glass, and the waters of the bay, ringed by a sandy beach and granite boulders, form the bowl.

Only sailors and hikers can reach Wineglass Bay because there is no access by road. With no boat at hand, we walked up the steep hiking path that climbs to a ridge connecting Mt. Mayson and Mt. Amos, part of the Hazards Mountains.

Although the ridge is only 3,900 feet above sea level, the track rose steeply, and I huffed my way to the top while my husband scrambled up like a mountain goat. I stopped to rest occasionally by the huge granite boulders that mark the trail, and looked back at the sea.

The track on the bay side of the ridge descended abruptly through a pungent eucalyptus forest. Emerging from the dark cool of the forest to the glare of the beach, we found a few other hikers who had scattered themselves among the granite outcrops and boulders. One party was having tea.

Tom and I settled onto a boulder close to the surf and watched a sailboat enter the bay from the Tasman Sea. We stared at the beachscape of complex textures and colors--blue-green sea, chalk-white quartzite sand, the greens of the forest, and the pinks and grays of the granite outcrops.

The next afternoon we took a break from hiking to visit Bicheno, a former whaling and seal hunting port with a population of 700 at the head of the Freycinet Peninsula. It had the same haphazard look as other towns we had seen on the east coast of Tasmania, with aimless streets and nondescript buildings. But the long curve of Waub’s Bay and a saucer of white sand rimmed the town and gave it a jolt of light and color.

Our visit coincided with the annual Bicheno Festival, and things looked lively, so we made a $5 donation to the Bicheno Fire and Rescue Service, the beneficiary of the festival, and joined fairgoers strolling down a patch of grass between a double row of tents.

One tent had a display of three bonsai plants; another, garden statues; still another was stockpiling homemade cakes and cookies.

At the end of the row of tents stood a Tilt-A-Whirl, run by a guy who looked like a rock star. He defied Newton’s laws by jumping on the rotating circle to turn the tilting thrones, leaping off without staggering or losing his cool.

Next to the Tilt-A-Whirl was an even more thrilling option: helicopter rides offered by Tasmanian Search and Rescue. Tom and I signed up.

Our pilot, Alana Arnot, turned the controls seaward and upward. We rode along the coast and saw stone plateaus, the froth of the surf and coastal mountains.

Alana, the only female pilot in Australian Search and Rescue, talked with us through our headsets, pointing out sights and telling of her dream of flying a helicopter around the world. I rode in the front seat, and I liked the feeling of hovering in a bubble over the watery depths.

The aerial view of the coastline prompted us to do more explorations on foot. We walked along Bicheno’s beach, stopping to watch a small fishing boat unload crabs as big as hubcaps. One mile south of the town, we found the Bicheno blowhole tucked into crevices in the granite plateau.

We hopped over the fissures for a closer look. The surf pounded the plateau and occasionally forced a swash of salt water through the rock. The water would then leap from the blowhole, which was about 15 feet from the shoreline. Sometimes there was only a splash; at other times a jet shot up high, looking like a midair waterfall.

A kelp forest grew in the bay beyond the blowhole, its leathery brown loops standing among the breaking waves. Offshore, taller patches of kelp, like rocky islands, broke the sea surface.

On our last night at Freycinet, we walked along the deck that rings the seaward side of the lodge. Juggling my wineglass and a camera, I walked with Tom down a stairway to a lower deck that led out to a pier. Eucalyptus and pines sculpted by sea winds lined one side, and the aquamarine water and pink cliffs of Promise Bay edged the other.

We were joined by a group of lodge workers carrying glasses, cameras and a bucket with champagne. A waiter we knew from the dining room introduced us to his friends and said, “You’ve found our favorite place.”

They were having a farewell party because the end of February and beginning of fall meant a return to school. I volunteered to take their photos, and they lined up four cameras on the bench next to my wineglass.

I snapped the shutters until it was dark, the time of day when Tasmanian devils, wombats and wallabies emerge from the forest and bush looking for food. But instead of taking one of the lodge’s night hikes to search for the nocturnal creatures, at Tom’s suggestion we followed the local custom of nocturnal dining at the Bay Restaurant. “Good tourists follow the local customs, you know,” he said, echoing one of my own travel mantras.

I took up the challenge, digging into a dinner of Tasmanian lamb accompanied by Pinot Noir from a local vineyard. As the darkness gathered up the view, Tom filled our glasses and raised his for a toast. “To the wilderness experience,” he said. I lifted my glass to his.

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Guidebook: Touring Tasmania

* Getting there: From Los Angeles, Qantas has connecting flights to Hobart. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,285.

From Hobart, drive north on the A3, the Tasman Highway. Twenty miles north of Swansea, C302 intersects the A3. Turn east--signposted Coles Bay and Freycinet Park--onto C302. The road ends at the park entrance. Freycinet is approximately 140 miles (21/2 hours) northeast of Hobart.

* Where to stay: Freycinet Lodge, Freycinet National Park, Coles Bay, TAS 7215 Australia; telephone 011-61-3-6257-0101, fax 011-61-3-6257-0278. Accommodations range from a single-room cabin in the bush for $94 per night to a deluxe “spa cabin” near Richardson’s Beach for $125. All cabins have private bath, a deck and a seating area (but no telephones or television). Our cabin at $117 a night had a second bedroom. Rates are for doubles; add $17 for an extra person.

A three-day pass good for any national park in Tasmania costs about $17. The Tasmania Tourism Web site lists nine wilderness lodges within national parks.

* Where to eat: Richardson’s Bistro at Freycinet Lodge serves meals from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Breakfast is $8 for a continental buffet (fruit, meat, cheese and cereal), $12 for a cooked meal (eggs, waffles, omelets and breakfast meats). Lunch selections include soup, fish and chips, salads, sandwiches, pasta and quiche. Price range: $3.50 to $8. Dinner entrees include pasta, grilled fish, chicken and beef from $8 to $12. Guests can eat in the bistro or at picnic tables on the deck. Both have good views of Oyster Bay.

The Bay Restaurant at Freycinet Lodge is only open for dinner. Reservations required. Dress code: “smart casual.” Dinner selections include ocean trout, salmon, crayfish, chicken, lamb and beef. Large selection of local wines. A three-course dinner with wine averages $40.

* For more information: Australian Tourist Commission, 2049 Century Park E., Suite 1920, Los Angeles, CA 90067; tel. (800) 369-6863, fax (661) 775-4448, Internet https://www.australia.com.

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Also: https://www.discovertasmania.com, the state’s Web site.