THE RHYTHMIC croaking of frogs punctuates the silence of the forest and a thick carpet of wild flowers announces the arrival of spring. A pair of Black Cockatoos breaks the hypnotic spell, screeching and squabbling like naughty schoolboys. A flash of bright yellow tail feathers, and they are gone.
We reach the opposite side of the isthmus and clear blue water laps a gently sloping beach. Three kilometres of fine white sand overlooked by jungled mountains - and we have it all to ourselves.
Tasmania was voted best temperate island in the world by readers of the leading tourism magazine, Conde Nast Traveller, and Freycinet Peninsula is one of the jewels of this Australian state.
But as we step on to the dazzling soft sand of Hazards Beach, we are reminded by thousands of innocuous oyster shells that this beautiful and unspoiled island, home to some of the world's last true wilderness, has a short, shameful history - one of genocide, barbarity and even cannibalism.
In its early days, Tasmania was hell on Earth. Convicts, transported to mainland Australia from England for crimes as trivial as stealing a loaf of bread, would be condemned to the brutal penitentiaries of this far-flung island across the tempestuous seas of the Bass Strait, if they committed a second offence.
Many of those old prisons are still standing, some unchanged from those dark days shortly after the dawn of the 19th century. The whipping yards are still there, along with the tiny, damp solitary confinement cells into which convicts were hurled, their backs criss-crossed with lacerations by the cat-o'nine-tails.
Some cells still have a faint smell, as if the thick huon pine doors with their heavy iron locks have absorbed the filth and misery of their hapless captives.