“That usually doesn’t happen.”

Over a normal winter at Tasmania’s iconic alpine lodge, 50 per cent of visitors are from other countries, 40 per cent are from interstate and 10 per cent from around the state.

So far this winter, though, with COVID-19 travel bans in place, all the guests are either Tasmanian or living in Tasmania.

They filled the place over the winter school holidays and continue to occupy a viable number of the 86 timber cabins in the gorgeous bushland gateway to a vast wilderness beyond.

And they are loving it, Nina says, including their “fancy meeting you here” moments with friends, acquaintances and neighbours at the check-in desk.

While returning to the lodge is an annual ritual for some, Nina says this winter she has met many more Tasmanians who are ­visiting for the first time — and falling in love with the place.

“We keep hearing ‘we were supposed to be in Fiji’ and ‘we were supposed to be in London’,” Nina says. “Clearly, lots of Tasmanians still have homework to do in exploring their own back yard.”

And what a back yard this is, with the lodge positioned on the edge of the World Heritage-listed Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park.

I am talking with Nina at the lodge’s Highland Restaurant, where I’ve just enjoyed a breakfast of eggs Benedict and coffee at a table before the open fire. The huge stone fireplace has been here for years, but most of the main lodge building has been stripped out and refitted in the past year.

Elanor Investors Group, which owns Cradle Mountain Lodge, has spent $10m on refurbishing the property and is not done yet. So far, the fine-dining Highland and casual Tavern restaurants, and central lounge and reception, have been refurbished.

While there are refresh plans for all cabins, to date the focus has been on the lavish upgrade of the five King Billy cabin suites.

“The ‘luxury escapes’ category was missing from Cradle Mountain Lodge, so now we are able to offer it, too,” says Nina, who worked at this end of the market in her previous job at the Federal Group’s Saffire Freycinet at Coles Bay on the East Coast.

With the King Billy suites now open for guests, the range of lodge ­accommodation levels more closely resembles the options on offer at the RACT-owned Freycinet Lodge, near Saffire, which also entered the luxury market with the addition of its designer Coastal Pavilions about two years ago.

So, what’s it like to stay at Cradle Mountain Lodge today?

This is not my first stay in a spa suite here, but it is my best one. This is largely because my new King Billy spa suite is gorgeous, but it is also because I do not at any point find myself trying to hustle a hissing possum out of my room with a straw broom when I’m naked after the spa.

The long-ago incident resurfaces as I settle in to the suite, admiring the double-sided stone fireplace that divides the sleeping and lounge areas, the sleek four-poster timber bed with its velvet-covered foot stool, and the glass-walled bathroom with its charcoal ceramic freestanding bath. It’s all fab.

I’m enjoying the suite so much that I’ve already half-decided not to have a spa when I discover that the spa deck, with its patchy stained ­timber, has missed the upgrade and that the cleaner has missed a Hahn bottle cap at the spa edge.

Small things.

I decide to hold off until my immersion experience at the lodge’s Waldheim ­Alpine Spa the next morning, instead calling room service at dark to order wood-fired pizza from the Tavern (the Waldheim — with spinach, blue cheese, red onion, walnut, balsamic and rocket — is a winner).

The curvy bath is very comfortable. After a soak, I’m done, lights out, just the red glow of coals from the wood heater from my enormous sumptuous nest.

I disappoint myself at the spa the next morning when I am unable to slow my mind sufficiently to really relax into my Decadent Sanctuary experience. I’ve booked this private realm of large outdoor hot tub, cool plunge pool, dry heat sauna and wet steam room for an hour. I let myself down again by wimping out of the cold pool after the hot tub, resorting instead to a less dramatic cooling shower. Perhaps a massage would have fixed me.

Lying a bit listlessly in a gown on a daybed and gazing out over the dense, divine forest, I eat all the chocolate-coated strawberries on the platter, but lI eave the sparkling Tasmanian wine so I’m not tipsy for the day’s main event.

I set off with walking guide Paul Riggs Barker at 11.30am. Driving a few kilometres from the lodge into the national park, we pull up at Ronny Creek and set off on the Overland Track. I enjoy imagining how it might feel to be heading deep into this mesmerising landscape on a multiday hike.

Over the next couple of hours, Paul leads me on one of his favourite short-walk circuits, taking in Lake Lilla and the better-known Dove Lake. It’s all easy walking, mostly level or gently ­inclined and much of it is on duckboard. I love it all – the buttongrass plains, the pandani heath with its pineapple tops, and the blue lakes, rocky ridges and jagged peaks, including those of the famous cradle.

It’s well signposted for self-guiding, so why go with Paul? As I discover, it’s not only because he knows so much about the landscape and ecology, and carries tea and treats in his pack.

“I try to be more like a conduit between nature and the person,” he says. “It’s not just talking about information, it’s gently guiding people to connect with what’s around them.”

Before long, the scenery and his sensitive company have me humming. It was mindfulness, not massage, I needed.

Paul spots every wombat before I do. “It’s always the furry rocks that move,” he jokes. They love it on the valley floor, feasting on the alpine coral fern. We ponder the connection between their solitary habits and their reliance for safety on burrows rather than numbers. Their coats are glossy, not a trace of the mange that’s blighted the wombat population in the North East.

Rising off the buttongrass moorland, the track is edged by ­vibrant melaleuca and other sclerophyll species.

Up at Lake Lilla, we stop to drink tea on a rock. A black currawong with cake crumbs in its yellow-eyed sights stands by. In the distance I hear bleating. Many visitors are fooled, Paul says, by this call of the Tasmanian froglet and report the apparent incursion of sheep to parks staff.

I store this kernel for next time — by now, as I walk behind Paul, I am plotting a return trip with my kids. They haven’t been here since they were tiny and now it feels urgent for me to immerse themselves in this sacred, ancient place.

We walk on to Dove Lake. Paul takes a photograph of me at what is said to be the ultimate spot with Cradle Mountain in the background. A metal pole with camera stand angles your viewfinder to exactly the same vantage point as everyone else’s. Apparently there’s a hashtag for sharing the shots.

I think about all the international tourists who’d usually be hopping out of buses at Dove Lake, perhaps taking a short walk as well as a selfie. I can’t say I’m entirely devastated there is just a smattering of people on the pebbly shore with us. This place would feel right without a soul.

I think about my interview last year with journalist Kate Legge just before the publication of her wonderful biography of Gustav Weindorfer and Kate Cowle, the couple we can thank for preserving this area’s wilderness and pioneering eco-tourism 100 years ago. The author of Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story said she felt uneasy about ever-growing numbers of tourists to the site, which reached 280,000 annually before this year’s COVID-19 interruption.

On the ground today, it is evident that numerous practical measures are in place to minimise the impact, and visitor management just became a lot easier with the opening of a big new visitor information and booking centre, a bit like an airport ­departure lounge, outside the park.

Paul and I catch a shuttle bus back up to Ronny Creek, and then he leads me 500m up to the beautiful replica of the original Waldheim Chalet built by Gustav and opened for tourists in 1912.

Over a deli-style picnic, Paul says he thinks Kate and Gustav would be OK about today’s tourism here. “We have to facilitate greater visitation as it’s a sought-after destination, but the main thing is that it is preserved and appreciated by people,” he says.

I wander through the small and idiosyncratic timber chalet imagining both the couple’s happy summer gatherings with naturalist friends and Gustav’s lonely winters here after Kate died prematurely.

A short rainforest walk beginning at the back door completes my day’s hiking.

Back at the lodge, I toast a great day at a lively wine and cheese-tasting in the cellar.

Over my pork belly dinner at the Highland restaurant, I continue to plan my return with family.

I arrived vaguely thinking a Cradle Mountain holiday meant either doing the Overland Track or getting lost in a thicket of tourists, but I leave knowing this is a perfect place to base an active family for a series of day and half-day walks, with the bonus of camaraderie with other nature lovers after dark.

With the right approach, in fact, this lodge and wilderness experience can deliver an echo of what Gustav and Kate created here long ago.

MAKE A NOTE

GETTING THERE: From Hobart, follow National Highway to Elizabeth Town, then take Bridle Track, Cradle Mountain Road and Dove Lake Road. Or go the lakes way, via Miena, for a wonderfully scenic journey where you see more lakes than people.

STAYING HERE: Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge 03 6492 2100 is ideal for family stays, especially if you are keen for a fully catered experience.

Nightly rates for two people from $229 in a Pencil Pine Cabin to $1375 per night in a King Billy Suite. Rates include breakfast in Highlands Restaurant. Visit www.cradlemountainlodge.com.au” for best price guarantee and specials.

WALKING: A range of guided walks, from 10 minutes long to day hikes, are easily accessible from the lodge and via shuttle bus into the 1.4 million ha Wilderness World Heritage Area.

SNOW: Our visit was crystalline clear and cool, but Cradle Mountain is often snow-clad and icy, so pack accordingly. Anti-slip surfaces on boardwalks enable walking in most weather conditions.

OTHER ACTIVITIES: The lodge offers a host of other guided outdoor activities including wildlife spotlighting, canoeing on Dove Lake (summer only) and fly fishing lessons. Prices are reasonable, often around the $40 mark for adults, with children under 12 often free. At the lodge, there’s the alpine spa for a range of beauty treatments and water therapy, wine and cheese tastings, and high teas.

ALSO IN THE AREA: Dip into everything from wilderness-themed art at Wild Art Cradle Mountain Wilderness Gallery to a Tassie devil experience at Devils@Cradle.

ESSENTIAL READING: Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story by Kate Stead; and The World Beneath, a darkly funny 2011 novel by Cate Kennedy about a boastful absentee father trying to bond with his teenage daughter by taking her on the Overland Track.

The author was a guest of Cradle Mountain Lodge