“Enthralling, deeply touching and superbly researched. Kate Legge renders the staggeringly magnificent landscape as alive as the people who brought it to the world.” — Quentin Bryce

Behind the World Heritage listing of Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain — a place now visited by 250,000 people a year — is a remarkable love story.

He was an Austrian immigrant; she came from Tasmania. He grew up beside the Carinthian Alps; she climbed mountains when few women dared. Their honeymoon glimpse of Cradle Mountain lit an urge that filled their waking hours.

Others might have kept this splendour to themselves, but Gustav Weindorfer and Kate Cowle sensed the significance of a place they sought to share with the world. When they stood on the peak in the heat of January 1910, they imagined a national park for all. 

Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story traces the achievements of these unconventional adventurers and their fight to preserve the wilderness where they pioneered eco-tourism.  

Meet the author of this wondrous story, Kate Legge in conversation with Gordon Peake.

Tickets: $15 (includes a complimentary glass of house wine or juice)

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Kate Legge writes for The Weekend Australian Magazine. She has covered politics and social affairs in Australia and America. She has published two novels: The Unexpected Elements of Love (long listed for the Miles Franklin Award) and The Marriage Club.

Gordon Peake’s memoir Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles & Secrets from Timor-Leste was winner of the ACT Book of the Year 2014. His current writing project is a book about colonial ghosts in the island of New Guinea. He is a visitor at the at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University.