Cape Hauy with kids: Tassie's Great Short Walk lives up to billing

But with some stern shepherding and the promise of barbecue samboys, the combination can make for a truly memorable experience.

A popular pastime among my family is exploring Discover Tasmania's 60 Great Short Walks detailed in booklets available from most tourism outlets and offering adventures from 10 minutes to a full day as far afield as King Island, Strahan, Bruny Island, Freycinet, Flinders Island and the wilds of darkest Legana.

This particular one, to the extremity of Cape Hauy on the Tasman Peninsula, always loomed as among the more challenging.

Not only did it involve a lengthy commitment over unapologetically dangerous terrain, but also required a night stay at a campsite.

Getting the kids to agree to the former was a doddle compared to getting the wife to agree to the latter.

All eventually consented to go along for the ride and were both enriched and exhausted for the experience.

Advice on the walk stated both "hazardous cliffs - please supervise children" and "four-hour return".

The first was as accurate as the second was wayward.

Even accounting for the children factor, this is at least a five-hour walk for a fit hiker.

But the cliff warning was spot-on, especially over the last 50 metres of the path, where the peninsula meets an abrupt end 100 metres above the crashing sea but just spitting distance away from the dolerite climbing meccas of the Totem Pole and Candlestick with the towering Lanterns beyond.

At this stage, where a distinct path is most necessary, it becomes dangerously ill-defined, heart in mouth needed if walkers wish to peer down to the Totem Pole but sensational and safe views also available to those disinclined to this incline.

This was a stark contrast to the excursion's beginnings where a gentle climb afforded perfect panoramas across Fortescue Bay before giving way to lengthy stretches of that bushwalker's best friend, duckboards.

Distant headlands of Thumbs Point, Deep Glen Bluff and the 300-metre high cliffs of Cape Pillar are joined by fine views of Mount Fortescue, the Monument and the Hippolyte Rocks as the Tasman National Park lays its best cards on a rocky, windswept table.

It is easy to see why a state government would be so keen to declare such an underplayed trump card (much of which can also be enjoyed from sea level, courtesy of competing companies offering eco-cruises out of Pirates Bay).

The walk starts and finishes at the Fortescue Bay campsite, 20 minutes off the Arthur Highway and tidily operated by Parks and Wildlife.

There is a fee to stay there but that guarantees toilets with showers, free barbecues and complimentary possums.

Wildlife was also our constant companion on the walk, with positive sightings of dolphins, a seal, sea eagle, wallaby and countless lizards, although the whale we watched catching its breath on the surface may actually have been a long rock.

But never let the facts get in the way of a good story.