Bruny Island

Today, I went to the Neck, a thin isthmus that joins North and South Bruny into a single, oblong island. The first time I visited Bruny, in March 2003 --recorded in my journal as the day dissidents painted “No War in Iraq” on the Sydney Opera House--the beach at the Neck was covered with scores of penguin tracks. Penguins and muttonbirds spend October to April at the rookery here, and their numbers can be impressive. While climbing to the top of the Truganini Lookout, a steep, 200-stair ascent that affords you a 365 degree view of the Channel and the Tasman Peninsula, I could hear some Japanese tourists scream "blue" at the staggering vista of the ocean below.

Down on the beach itself, though, it was mostly deserted. As I walked a little ways, the wind picked up suddenly, and the smell of death grew distinctive. Further on, what must have been either a seal or a small whale, I couldn’t tell, was being buried under a shifting sheet of sand. Out in the surf, some children were swimming unsupervised, which made my chest tighten: certainly, if they got into trouble, they were on their own. This is the most remote and utterly wild beach, isolated as it is on the edge of terra cognita; it stretches for miles, hemmed in to the north and south by headlands.



Penguin tracks/
Children on the beach at the Neck