Lake Malbena offers complete wilderness to the visitors

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Immaculate Tasmanian lake is at the centre of an argument dividing not only the traditional foes — developers and conservationists — but also devoted fly fishermen.

Lake Malbena is around a two-hour drive from Launceston in Tasmania’s central highlands — a previously secret haven, only available to people all set to hike for hours through the Walls of Jerusalem National Park.

Greg French is famous character in the fishing community of Australia and has written several books on fly fishing.

He has been coming to the isolated lakes in the Tasmanian World Heritage Area for almost 40 years, and camps on Hall Island in Lake Malbena along the summers, in a cottage built 62 years ago by explorer Reg Hall.

He explained that even though fly fishing at Lake Malbena itself could be hard, the surrounding lakes were “very, very, very good”.

Now a friend who Mr French himself introduced to the spot is all willing to put up huts and a helipad for a luxury, fly-in-fly-out tourism retreat.

RiverFly1864, the company owned by Daniel Hackett and his wife Simone Hackett, has got a lease for Hall’s Island in its entirety, meaning it controls a piece of the World Heritage area.

Mr Hackett stated that he is quite interested to share the wilderness offered by the lakes and Hall Island with more people.

“The first time I saw [the hut] was about 1:30 in the morning — we’d walked in for 11 and a half hours,” Mr Hackett told AM.

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