Bruny Island

Where? A small island off the south east coast of Tasmania that’s where. Look for Hobart on a map and you’ll see Bruny, a 15 minute ferry ride from Kettering, which is just down the coast a bit and separated from the main bit of Tasmania by  D’Entrecasteaux Channel. That’s where we’ve been today, the first day of summer, and just three weeks before Christmas. And it was lovely. A really really nice place.

Its named after a French sea captain who discovered the Channel that separates Bruny from the rest of Tasmania - Bruni D’Entrecasteaux.

We took the posties of course, paying just 5 AUD return aboard the good ship Mirambeena, a local roro job with open decks and not much else. 

Fortunately for us, the weather was good as had it been tipping it down or rough, it might have been a bit of an ordeal out there, exposed to the wind. 

Having been through many sea ports, both national and international, the Kettering to Bruny Island experience is exceptionally relaxed by any comparison; even the lady in the check in shed was basking in the sunshine when we rocked up, and she didn’t seem to mind being disturbed by the only passengers wanting to buy tickets. 

There’s not even a town on the other side, just another shed, bigger this time, with an attached shop, and a road leading from the landing stage at Roberts Point to the rest of the island.

It actually looks like two islands, but its not as the two bits are joined in the middle by a very thin isthmus, one side of which is Isthmus Bay, the other Adventure Bay. 

The Adventure Bay side is where the Fairy penguins nest. They burrow into the sand and low vegetation and bring up their chicks. At this time of year, the parents spend most of the day at sea, returning at last light to jump out of the sea and waddle up the beach to their burrows. It was too early for any of this of course, but we checked out the burrows and viewing platforms as we were passing.

I’ve seen this penguin circus before in Victoria and it is very amusing. At dusk as the waves roll in, you sit and wait for the birds to appear. They take forever, and just as you’re thinking its the one evening in the year that they’ve gone elsewhere, one appears, then another, then more and more until the whole shoreline is penguined. Its a bit like watching corn pop; nothing, then one or two, then an invasion.

There is also a memorial up there to an Aboriginal woman called Truganini who had a terrible time at the hands of white invaders, seeing her entire family killed in various stages and then being raped by sailors.

We headed due south when we landed, through Alonnah to Lunawanna, stopping at a local takeout cafe /shop place that was open on a Sunday, and bought lunch. The bloke was on his own but managed to cook us some tasty grub before we headed down to Cape Bruny lighthouse, right down at the bottom. 

It was mostly gravel from just south of Lunawanna, packed but also loose in places, and that's when I discovered that my rear tyre was more worn than I thought, slipping and fishtailing as we descended from ridges to lower ground. I must get a new one before many more gravel miles as sliding down the road on my arse is not one of my favourite things. It hurts.

The lighthouse was the fourth built in Australia, the third in Tasmania, and showed its first light in 1838, a light powered by a pint of sperm whale oil per hour. It was built with convict labour, who also assisted the earliest light keeper.

Even now its pretty remote but back then it was even more so. John Cook, one of the men who worked there in the early part on the twentieth century reckoned he never saw money because he never used it, when when he left, he had no idea of how much things had gone up, and was unable to drive, such was the isolation of the place.

There were a couple of mountain dragon lizards sunbathing on the path on the way up to the light. They were so well camouflaged that they only revealed themselves because they moved, darting across the concrete for the safety of the bushes at its edge. The mountain  dragons are the only species of the dragon lizard found in Tasmania and are related to the frill neck and thorny lizard.

Instead of riding back through Lunawarra, we diverted off up another dirt road, Coolangatta Road, which went up and over Mt Mangana Reserve. The warning sign at the start should have been enough ‘ Rough road. Unsuitable for buses or vehicles towing’. Well we were neither, so we should be fine and have no problem. The problem bit was OK; we didn’t have any of those, but was it rough?  Cor was it; tree roots, bike eating craters, rocks, all bonded into hard packed gravel and made worse by steep climbs and steeper descents with corners, all of which conspired to make an exceptionally bumpy ride. You don’t notice these things in a 4 wheel drive, a bit more perhaps in a road car, but on two wheels, you feel every little stone and of course you slip and slide, which makes hanging on a must but falling off more likely, which makes things even worse.

But once again, we all stayed upright, and most of the vehicles coming the other way gave us space - except for one twat in a red van who floored it and sprayed us all with rough sand and thick dust. Git.

However, this road took us on to Adventure Bay, the landing place of Captain Cook in 1777, aboard HMS Resolution.  However, when Cook left England in 1772, he had set off with Captain Tobias Furneaux on HMS Adventure but the two ships had become separated. Furneaux followed the chart of Abel Tasman who had seen Bruny in 1642 but had been unable to land because of bad weather. Furneaux made it OK, in March 1773 and named it Adventure Bay, stocking up on grass for the ship’s cattle and drinking water for all aboard. He then carried on to New Zealand. Meanwhile, Cook found his way to the same spot, but four years later, and also landed there. 

On board with him as master, was WillIam Bligh.

A year later in 1778, Bligh returned. On board with him was a botanist called Nelson and they planted fruit trees which they had brought from the Cape of Good Hope. This was all came from feeding slaves in the Caribbean, finding foods in various places and seeing if they’d grow elsewhere and feed people.  When he came back a third time, in 1778, Bligh found one of his apple trees still growing although the rest had been destroyed by fire. Apparently, this tree became known as the first Granny Smith apple tree and started apple growing in Tasmania.

Blight also planted watercress in a creek - now called Bligh’s Creek. 

His crew and Cook’s crew fished in it in 1777 and 1778. Hopefully they had better luck than Nadine with her rod. But rather annoyingly, we missed Cook’s tree. It is up by the memorial and apparently, according to the ships log of Comte de Beavoir in 1866, it says ‘ Cook, 26 Jan 1777’. And early bit of grafitti, a ‘Cook wuz ‘ere’ tag of its day.

I was quite taken with Adventure Bay and the whole Bruny coastline. It is still very much as it would have been back then, sandy flats, gum trees and low bush along the shore line. There are a few buildings now but not many, mostly single storey holiday homes, dotted here and there along the shore road but it is still very empty and undeveloped.

It particularly interested me because years ago when I was a young copper in London, I used to walk past  William Bligh’s house in Lambeth Palace Road, just down the road from Kennington nick. It has a blue plaque on it, mentioning the mutiny on the Bounty and here I was today, almost as far away as I could possibly be from it, knowing about him and looking at what he would have seen; the same bay, the same sand and the same trees as when he landed here. 

It was quite surreal experience, and certainly a better one than when I used to plod past all those years ago in all weathers, wondering why the bloke who could go anywhere and had navigated his way 6000kms across the ocean in an open boat with next to nothing after being cast adfrift by his protege Fletcher Christian, would want to live in Lambeth. Why?

The wind had whipped up when we got to the ferry but the crossing was surprisingly smooth, but the bloke driving had to crab the vessel along sideways so as not to miss the dock at Kettering. 

As it was, he did clang it into the side a bit when we finally got there, but the bump was negligible in comparison to some we’re endured riding some of the island roads today.