Cruising II: Hobart to Adelaide

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion....

(Robert Burns, To a Louse)

I've often seen the cruise ships coming up the river into Hobart and wondered what impression the visitors get of the place. Well now I've done it for myself, I must say that the approach to Hobart and the port itself make a fine entry to Tasmania, and sitting in the Crows Nest bar with its 180 degree view at night showed off the waterfront to its best advantage.

Battery Point from the ship.

Pity about Empress Towers.

View from the Crows Nest.

It was part of our duty to be in the bar, honest.

It was a day's sailing down to Tasmania from Eden and we woke to find the ship moored off Port Arthur on a perfect morning. As I was doing my morning constitutional around the promenade deck I heard several people come out and say "Wow, look at that" as they looked across the water to the penitentiary and the hills behind. I didn't go ashore ($28 just to step ashore from the tender!). But many did, and we then sailed again at midday around Tasman Island and Cape Pillar into Storm Bay (no storms, but lots of dolphins), and then around the Iron Pot into the Derwent.

Port Arthur.

Tenders taking the visitors ashore.

Cape Pillar, Tasman Island in the distance.

Spectacular coast, lots of wildlife.

I could pick out our house as we sailed up the river, but I wasn't to know that there was no one home (in fact Jeannie arrived home just in time to see the ship disappear behind the trees). Hobart is a good port because passengers can walk off the ship and straight into the town. I did that and met Jeannie and then Hugh and the family, so that I could at least show them the ship from a distance. Sadly I was way too late to organise for them to come aboard. But we had fish and chippies on the wharf and Angus admired it from a distance.

Angus, and Budda's big ship.

That's my ship.

Hugh & Jess, George in the stroller.

The traveler and family.

Note the Holland America tote bag.

After the chippies, we had icecream at Sticky Fingers.

George had some too.

An overnight stay in Hobart allowed me to do some mundane things like get my winter flu shot and go home and do the washing up. Jeannie was busy with the State election, which happened the next day, so I didn't see much of her. Niall earned the undying gratitude of the bar staff by driving them out to Bonorong wildlife park so they could get to see a kangaroo in their rather brief time ashore.

The Volendam in Hobart.

Much closer to the city than in most ports.

We sailed from Hobart at midnight, back up the east coast of Tasmania, between Cape Barren Island and the Tasmanian mainland and then across Bass Strait to Melbourne, another day and night at sea (and consequently lecturing time for us). In Melbourne we met up with an old flatmate of Niall's who took us to St Kilda where we had brunch, browsed the Sunday market and had a beer at the Esplanade Hotel (home of the Gershwin Room and Rockwiz, for those who know).

An evening sailing from Melbourne, just early enough to see our passage through the Heads (it takes two hours to cross the Bay), and much nicer than last year when we sailed out under a pall of smoke from the fires. Niall is always keen for a bit movement in the ship, since he's a good sailor, but we didn't get much. The passage to Adelaide was the roughest and that was certainly nothing to trouble me. It was also interesting from the wildlife angle, since we saw lots of birds and whales, 7 or 8 of the latter blowing at once. Probably humpbacks, but fin and even blue whales are not unknown in this area.

Farewell, Melbourne.

Station Pier.

Adelaide put on a clear blue day for us and I was collected by Paul Charlton and taken off to lunch with his mother Ruth, now in her 93rd year and still firing on all cylinders. Paul is a keen shipping buff, and was able to tell me all about the port, and the Queen Mary II which had been preceding us at several ports a week or so before.

Then it was off for a couple of days sailing across the Great Australian Bight, and I'll leave that till next time.

This has been a displacement activity, really. Jo, Jac and Marty are about to take off from LAX as I write..... correction, they have just taken off!

Cruising Again, on MS Volendam

"Nothing to blog about" is a well-worn excuse, but I really can't use it now. Sorry for the gap in postings.

I'm just back from 14 days on the Holland America Line ship MS Volendam, having cruised all the way from Sydney to Fremantle. Once again, the reason was to give lectures on wildlife and conservation to the passengers, and to promote our Bookend Trust, and I was sharing the lectures (and a cabin) with Niall Doran.

The Volendam
All the Holland America ships are "Dams"

Our cabin on Deck 3.
Just like last year. The ships are almost identical.

The cruise this year is a circum-navigation of Australia, starting and finishing in Sydney, so while we were sailing the same route as last year, this time we had several more port visits. We joined the ship at Darling Harbour, which meant that we had to sail under the Harbour Bridge on our way out, which made a spectacular start to the cruise. It seemed a tight fit under the bridge, and we were waved a away by several parties of climbers on the structure.

Approaching the coat hanger.
It made a great start to the cruise.

A tight squeeze.
And you can just pick out groups of climbers, waving madly.

Strangely, since the circum-navigation was clockwise, we turned left out of Sydney Heads and made for our first port at Newcastle. Nobody seemed to know why we started this way, but Newcastle turned out to be a pleasant stop. Like it's UK namesake, Newcastle has a reputation as an industrial town, but also like it's namesake, it was much nicer than I had been led to believe. The port and industrial areas are well upstream from the city, leaving the river mouth, it's beaches and parks quite untouched.

Durham-on-Sea?
No, it's Newcastle, NSW

The walk out to "Nobbys".
Almost an island at the Hunter rivermouth, with lighthouse.

Fort Scratchley, Newcastle.
Built to keep out the Russians, apparently.

Newcastle rock.
It seemed to be trying to tell me something, but I couldn't quite make it out.

Nobbys, again.
As we sailed out.

Fort Scratchley.
And yes, that is a puff of smoke: they fired a three gun salute as we sailed past.

Bulk carriers outside Newcastle.
Huge amounts of coal are shipped from here.

Our second call was supposed to be at Batemans Bay, allowing access by road to Canberra, but apparently the port authorities there hadn't done all that they were supposed to to make the harbour suitable, and so the captain decided (at only a couple of days notice) to call at Eden instead. This was a disappointment to those who had wanted to see the national capital (been there, done that), but Eden was delightful. Here (and at Newcastle and Port Arthur) access to the shore was via the ship's tenders, but they came right into the little harbour among the fishing boast and Sammy the Seal.

The Volendam.
From the rear window of a tender.

Tender unloading at Eden.
Nice day!

Young fur seal in Eden Harbour.
It was hanging around a couple of fishers, waiting for any cast-offs.

Returning to the ship.
Very big from the waterline.

Welcome home!
The crew are very friendly.

After two overnight sailings (gently rocked to sleep) we now had an "at-sea" day on our way to Tasmania, which meant we actually had to work! Niall gave the first lecture to 300+ passengers in the Frans Hals cabaret room (he was into cabaret, old Frans). Our talks have been very well-received and the clientele is slightly different from our round-the-world cruisers last year. Still dominated by Americans (600+ out of the 1200-odd passengers), but more Australians, and perhaps more people inclined to come and talk about our subjects. We had dinner with a new group each night and a number of interesting conversations.

Maybe I will leave Tasmania for the next post.

The Wild West: 3

Oh dear! this has taken far too long, and everyone has probably lost interest now. But I need to finish up this account of our tramp up the West Coast with Tarkine Trails.

In some ways, it's not a bad thing that there has been a gap between the last post and this one, since our experiences at Sandy Cape were in a bit of a different category to the previous days. Remember that we had been walking through lonely places, meeting only one couple since being dropped off at Pieman Heads. So even though we had been walking down 4WD tracks you can probably imagine our feelings when a group of tiny blobs in the far distance resolved themselves into a pack of trail bikes and quad bikes. They hurtled past and we waved politely, if unenthusiastically, and tried to forget about them, but now our wild beach had fresh tyre tracks along it.

Not just our tracks in the sand

As we approached Sandy Cape (and it's a long, long approach) we could see signs of civilisation; first the lighthouse, then a small shack or two, and as we trudged along the final beach, we were overtaken by an old and decrepit HiLux. The driver stopped to chat, and so we met Troy and Rusty, two Sandy Cape "locals". Troy, from the north west coast, has been coming to Sandy Cape since he was an infant (and his father and grandfather before him), while Rusty, who is from Hobart, makes an annual trek to spend a few weeks there each summer. They were impressed with our walk, and noted that we were a bit short of water. They also spoke magic words: "D'ya like crayfish?" (Much nodding of heads). Anyway, they disappeared only to return shortly with two jerries of water, and a huge cooked crayfish!

Oh yum.

(No disrespect to Simon's cooking)

Clare knew just what to do

Sandy Cape camp

As it turned out, this was not our last experience of the kindness of strangers that day. A little later the quad and trail bike guys returned, and also stopped to hear our story. When we confessed to having walked from Pieman Heads they were staggered: "What d'ya want to do that for?" (Pause) ".....and how d'ya get your beer?" When we admitted that we had no beer they went into crisis mode: back to their camp, returning swiftly with a six pack, just in case we might have fainted away in the meantime.

They came back later (after we had eaten the crayfish for hors d'oeuvre, and then our dinner) to ask whether we liked abalone. More nodding of heads, but our friends doubted our ability to cook abalone properly so they whipped out a small gas stove from the back of their 4WD and proceeded to melt butter, add garlic and feed us fresh-cooked abalone in large quantities!

Rusty and Troy arrive to take us over the dunes

Troy and Rusty took some of our party out in their 4WDs that evening to check the cray pots and see the sights. In the morning they were back, and insisted that we all climb aboard so that they could take us on a tour of the dunes, and then drop us off where we were to picked up by our vehicles for the drive out (thus saving us an hour's walking). After some very professional driving we arrived at the summit of the dunes, looking inland to a lake formed where the mobile sand had blocked a stream. Troy's brother showed what could be done on a quad bike over mobile sand. Amazing skills.

On top of the dunes

They were high. It was windy.

Rusty in his Range Rover

(Shamelessly stole this pic from Gayle. It's so good)

Troy's brother on quad bike

The marks disappear very quickly in the wind

There he goes!

And he came back up at immense speed

By the time we left Sandy Cape in our own 4WDs to the way to meet the bus at Arthur River we had come a long way from our first meeting with the trail bikes back down the coast, both literally and metaphorically. It was quite clear that these guys had just as strong a feeling for the place as we did, even though they might enjoy it in a different way, and we left cogitating about the challenges in involving all of the stakeholders in the management of this fabulous coastline.

Well done, Team

(Left Rear: Katie, Jean, Alastair, Clare, Hamish, Greg, Gayle, Erin, Heidi. Front: Simon, Darvis, Hiraly)

The Wild West: 2

We spent four nights and five days walking the coast, but rather than an "and then we went to this place" sort of post I thought I'd concentrate on the scenery and the aboriginal history this time.

Looking south from our second camp, at Interview River
Savage coast, even on a "calm" day

Full Day 1 took us along the rockiest part of the coast to the Interview River. (I'd love to know the origin of that name: did Abel Janzoon Tasman grill each of his crew members before deciding who was going to swim ashore with the Dutch flag?) The coast here is a succession of little rocky bays and headlands, all being dashed by the Southern Ocean, and remember, the potential fetch for the waves extends all the way to Argentina! The rocks are of various types, but except for the places where granite reaches the shore they are savagely rough. Being shipwrecked on this coast doesn't bear thinking about.

The start of the long beaches
(Hamish wondering whether he can go fishing)

"Trudging" is the appropriate word

On and on and on....
Can you see the walkers in the distance?

We were certainly not the only beach users!
Devil, wallaby and beetle tracks

Days 2 & 3 took us along vast sandy beaches; vast both in length and depth. With the spray coming in from the breakers it was often impossible to see the far end of the beach, and on this very exposed coast the wind and storm waves have created a huge strandline, backed by enormous dunes. The dunes are very mobile, so they are constantly engulfing the bush at one end and exposing old soil surfaces at the other as they creep across the landscape.

A series of rivers and streams flow to the sea, or at least the larger ones do. Some are completely blocked by the dunes to form lakes, while others just manage to break through the sand. We only had to get our boots off to cross a couple (the Interview and Lagoon Rivers) but neither reached above the knee.

Our passage along the beaches was slow; not only because of the soft sand in places, but also because I was hoping to survey the beaches for Hooded Plovers, a little shorebird that is under serious pressure on most Australian beaches since it nests just above the high water mark. Tasmanian beaches, and especially these remote ones, are an important refuge. So we were scanning the top of the beach as we walked, but fortunately soon discovered that the birds seemed to concentrate around the streams. In the end we saw over 30 birds, and that was probably an underestimate, since some were singles and probably had a mate sitting on eggs somewhere nearby. Other significant birds included a large flock of Red-necked Stints and a number of Ruddy Turnstones on the rocky reefs. Both of these birds breed in Siberia and fly to Australia for their summer holidays.

Camp 3, in the heart of the Tarkiner's country

But it seemed all the time that we were walking on a haunted coast. If a group of slim dark figures had appeared from the bush we would hardly have been surprised, since the evidence of aboriginal occupation is all around and plain to see. The Tarkiner people from this part of Tasmania were probably more sedentary than other tribes since the local food supply from land and sea was so abundant that they did not need to make seasonal migrations. Most obvious traces are the huge piles of shells ("middens") that make it easy to believe that they were here for more than forty thousand years: periwinkles, abalone and many other shellfish, with smaller amounts of bone. They used stone tools and scrapers, hand axes, flakes and the stones from which they were chipped litter the ground; picking them up gives you a feeling of connection for a moment, but all these relics must be left where they are found. It's sad that not everyone respects these traces; vehicle tracks right through middens are quite common.

A small midden
They were everywhere

One of the larger middens
All the white material is shells accumulated by aboriginal people

Midden closer up

Midden detail
Periwinkles, whelks, abalone

Stone scraper in situ
Don't take it home!

More stone tools
It was rather eerie to handle them

4WD tracks over a big midden
Unnecessary

We saw several hut depressions: hollows in the dunes that were once roofed over and lined to accommodate an extended family hearth group. The tragedy is that we know so little about these people. They were all gone before the mid-1800s and no one bothered to find out much about how they lived or what was important to their culture. As I was walking along I was struck by the thought that they would have looked on this wild landscape with complete familiarity, knowing where to go and what to do for all their needs, while we must carry all our tents, our clothing, our food, cooking stoves.......... and the satellite phone.

An eroded hut depression
Excavations have revealed quite a complex structure

Granite rocks at Lanes Tor
Hard not to think of Easter Island, or the Pukel Men

She has gazed out to sea for centuries

Camp fire on the beach at Lagoon River
But we still need so much stuff to survive here

As we neared Sandy Cape the influence of the more recent inhabitants of this coast became more and more obvious (though we had followed 4WD tracks almost all the way from the Pieman). But that's another story........

Nearly there!
Approaching Sandy Cape