King Island Guides Attractions Events in Tasmania

Currie is on the west coast of King Island, north-east of mainland Tasmania. You are sure to feel its remoteness as you gaze at the Southern Ocean – next stop: Africa.
Almost 800 people live in Currie, the commercial centre of the Island. Industries include fishing, farming, and harvesting bull kelp for food and cosmetics.
King Island’s 200 kilometres (124 miles) of coastline contain rugged cliffs softened occasionally by white, sandy beaches. More than 60 ships have been wrecked off these unforgiving shores, and a trail now guides you to interpretive plaques all around the island describing the various calamities. Scuba diving on the wrecks themselves is by far the best way to see them.
If you walk on a deserted beach you may be lucky enough to find a large, coiled nautilus shell. King Island has popular surfing beaches and sheltered lagoons for swimming. You can visit a 7,000-year-old calcified forest, created when the sand covering a forest finally receded, leaving fascinating limestone features. You can see all kinds of wildlife on the island too – wallabies, echidnas, seals, penguins and wild turkeys.
You will receive royal treatment at King Island. Delectably tender beef, mouth-watering crayfish and gourmet dairy foods await you. Lush pastures and clean air contribute to the island’s worldwide recognition for superior quality produce.
Currie Harbour was discovered by Captain Archibald Currie in 1797. In 1845 Australia’s worst peacetime maritime disaster occurred when 400 emigrants aboard the Cataraqui perished off the island’s coast. Cape Wickham lighthouse was erected in 1861 to prevent more ships from meeting such a fate. The town grew when scheelite mining began in 1917.
Currie has an average maximum of 20.5 degrees Celsius (69 degrees Fahrenheit) in January and 13.5 degrees Celsius (56.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in June.
Currie, on King Island, is 80 kilometres (49.5 miles) north-east of mainland Tasmania, and is accessible by plane and cargo vessels.

King Island lies northwest of Tasmania in the path of the Roaring Forties, the ever-present westerlies that circle the world’s southern latitudes. It’s an island of long, empty beaches and clean, fresh air, of offshore reefs, rocky coasts, dairy farms, lighthouses and shipwrecks.
It is renowned for award-winning creamy cheeses, succulent beef produced on lush pastures, and fresh seafood.
King Islanders have a special relationship with the sea. The island’s kelpies gather bull kelp tossed ashore by storms, while cray fishermen and abalone divers harvest rich catches from beneath the surface. On King Island’s flat farmlands, beef and dairy cattle shelter behind thick ti-tree hedges - the lush grass is the secret to the succulent local beef, rich cream and wonderful hand-made cheeses. You can visit the King Island Dairies shop next to the cheese factory, taste the cheeses and select your favourites to take home. Wallabies and peacocks abound - be careful driving at dusk. Shearwater rookeries pepper tussocky coastal hillsides, and you may sight albatrosses and mighty sea eagles riding the updraughts.
Australia’s worst maritime disaster occurred here in 1845, when the Cataraqui grounded. Today, Cape Wickham lighthouse - the tallest lighthouse in the southern hemisphere - guides mariners safely into Bass Strait but you can still explore the island’s most important historic sites on the Shipwreck Trail.
Reid Rocks, 12 kilometres (7 miles) offshore, is home to a major breeding colony of Australian fur seals. King Island’s wildlife, both native and exotic, can sometimes surprise - yes, that was a pheasant you saw in the roadside hedge. And yes, it is a paddock of grazing turkeys. But the most pleasant surprise is the warm King Island welcome - in Currie’s motel and friendly pub, in Grassy’s local store and craft shop, in cottages and bed and breakfast and from everyone you pass on country roads.