My Year of Living in Tasmania: August 2005

Recherche Bay

Recherche Bay

This area is a World Heritage Site and the sign at the entrance to the state park here reads: "A ring of wild water circles the southern extremity of the Earth. Surrounding the world's largest continent, Antarctica, the South Ocean forms an almost unbroken band between latitudes 40-60 degrees south. Only three fingers of land poke into this barrier--Tasmania's southern coast, the southern part of New Zealand's south island, and Tierra del Fuego, on the tip of South America. The spin of the Earth generates prevailing winds which drive ocean currents. In these latitudes, the westerly winds that blow unobstructed around the South Ocean have well earned their dramatic names--the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties and the Screaming Sixties. It was these constant winds that filled the sails of the small wooden ships of Abel Tasman, James Cook and Bruni d' Entrecasteaux. Looking into the eye of the wind from any point on the coast of Tasmania, the next land to the west is Argentina, 12,000 kilometers away, and to the south, is Antarctica, 2,500 kilometers away, as an albatross flies."

Huon Island

Detail of derelict cottage front door

Today, winter relented a bit, so some friends in Verona Sands decided to take their dinghy out to Huon Island. Verona Sands lies at the convergence of the Huon River and the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, and the island is less than a 5 minute ride out. Huon Island is teensy, and all three of its original, turn-of-the century cottages remain standing-- two are still lived in; one is derelict. The island's geology is a bit of an anomaly, and early on, settlers took advantage of the felicitous conditions--not only the island's rich, fertile soil, but also its lack of frost. By the turn of 20th century, Huon Island was a market garden, especially renown for its stone fruit and potatoes.

In the years before there were any real roads in Tasmania, the Channel was the main corridor of transport from the Huon Valley to Hobart, and up to 23 ferries a day passed Huon Island. Growers would use a semaphore system, hoisting a flag to get a ferry to call.

While we were tying up at the lone, wobbly jetty, four sheep scampered up to the waterline, just feet away from clumps of brown kelp that kept poking up in the surf. The anger of the bullock and teamsters’ unions, who burned down the island’s original, more numerous jetties, at a historical moment when road transport was new and the threat of ferry business taking away the driver's revenue was real enough, was as romantically remote I felt, as the obvious glee of the Hobart socialites who used to come to the island to play croquet. They would show off their garb on the large front lawn of the most prominent of the three cottages--an old Georgian beauty that was owned by a doctor who took particular pride in caring for all of the island’s landscape. Walking up the overgrown path from the jetty, we stopped along the lawn and the air wafted all variety of scents from the estate's still viable ancient fruit trees, the most spectacular being a massive cherry.

Further down the path was a derelict cottage that last belonged to the mother, now deceased, of an acquaintance who lives in Kettering. The cottage garden felt to me to be her autobiography-- a strong and passionate woman who obviously cherished the isolation that living alone on Huon Island offered her. While the cottage now looks like it forever has been in disrepair, there is a modern solar panel on the roof, and a wind turbine adorns the top of one of the massive Macracarpa pines that were originally planted as a modest hedge to shield the property from wind. Out of all the flowers that she planted, it was the lavender Heliotrope growing along a dilapidated wooden fence that leapt out at me. Its blissful aroma smelled like a cross between vanilla bean and cherry pie. I then recalled, somewhat discouragingly, a quote from "Essays in Idleness" by Kenko Yoshida, a Japanese recluse/ Buddhist priest, who wrote that summer’s height is 150 days from the first winter blooms.