The beach is strewn with the litter of journalism. Notebooks, slates,
cameras, batteries and underwater housings are spread out before a
couple of PVC kayaks that look for all the world like they should be
three times bigger to accommodate the mess. Camping paraphernalia is
dumped unceremoniously into black rubbish sacks, and food – the
freeze-dried, just-add-water, poly-unsaturated variety – forms an
untidy queue that leads all the way back to the car. Chargers are
twinkling overtime to squeeze another few minutes of precious energy
into the lithium batteries I forgot to charge last night.
So begins the great escape. It’s always the same. And I’m at the
familiar stage of heat-fatigue and frustration that plagues any poor
sod in a state of comprehensive disorganisation - too much stuff, not
enough space. We should have left at 9am. Now it’s midday and the tiny
crabs that looked so cute when we got here are latching into our
deli-sandwiches; it's the last luxury lunch before the terror arrives with those buns
that Mary squashed into naan bread so they would fit in the dry bag.
There’s the period of total hopelessness, the thorough disbelief that
what you hope to pack won’t fit where you intend to pack it. Then comes
the ruthless edit, beginning with the space-hungry items. "Towel? -
don’t need it." "Jersey? - I’ll just wear my jacket." And working all
the way down to the infinitesimal. "If I empty all the surprise peas
into my cup, wrap it in my thermal top and ram it with considerable
force into the microscopic void between the tent and the rudder fixing
…"
Miracles can be achieved. And the light little boats we veritably
wafted from the trailer now sink ever so slowly into the estuarine mud
of Moulting Lagoon. It takes two staggering paddlers to carry them down
to the water’s edge where we don jackets and spray-skirts, all the
while quietly contemplating whether in fact the kayaks will still
float.
It’s a small relief to gain buoyancy, especially when you fully expect
to continue sliding down the muddy incline and disappear into the
depths of the estuary; spirited away by the enormous ballast you spent
an hour packing into the boat. But despite the load, the boats feel
light and quick, responsive to a flick of a rudder and the pull of a
paddle.
"But for
everything it has lost, Freycinet has retained that which makes it
unique."
It’s an elegant form of travel and the sweat of preparation is rapidly
burnt off by a cool southerly that filters into the lagoon and the
soporific lap of water against sand. Oystercatchers probe the golden
sandbanks in their dinner suits and terns join the gentile party in
bowler hats. A massive pelican swoops down like a Boeing on finals, big
black primary feathers just centimetres from the surface of the water,
and ploughs in, feet spread and chest proud.
Freycinet Peninsula extends 30 kilometres into the Tasman Sea from the
east coast of Tasmania, Australia’s smallest and only island state.
On a topographical map it looks rather like a great arm desperately
searching the sea for something that it lost. The Aborigines have gone,
the whalers left with the whales and the farmers and stonemasons who
hoped to find their fortune, didn’t and left as well. But for
everything it has lost, Freycinet has retained that which makes it
unique.
Over the next week we will paddle the length of the peninsula, one of
Tasmania’s first national parks, tracing the history of the place and
the people who have come here, and gone again.
A swift outgoing tide rips us toward the mouth of the estuary where
river meets sea and the current meets the onshore wind. The result is a
wide expanse of shallow white water where the waves stand up stiff and
rolling, threatening to pitch us back from whence we came. We pull hard
and the kayaks plough on punching clean through the spume and exiting
drenched, blinking the salt away in time to witness the next monster
crash onto the spray skirt. Water leaks through the rudder release and
trickles over my thigh - a kayak is a terrible place to have an itchy
leg.
A few more strokes and we’re clear of the bar, the water changing
colour from gold to a deep blue. The 20-knot wind has abated to 8 and
the seas are slight. It’s easy going; the paddle is beginning to feel
comfortable in my hands and the movement well rehearsed.
Before us is Muirs Beach and the hook of Coles Bay dominated by a set
of mighty granite monoliths known as The Hazards. Scientists reckon the
granite was formed in the Earth’s belly 400 million years ago when the
first plants were beginning to gain foothold on land, the most advanced
animals were fish, and Australia was part of the super continent
Gondwanaland. There was an ice-age (probably a few actually) and
massive glaciations until it all inexplicably thawed out some 260
million years ago. The sea retreated leaving a floodplain and dense
marshy vegetation. Things kicked off again 60 million years ago when
the area was subject to massive seismic events lasting tens of millions
of years. The entire peninsula was rammed upwards as other parts of the
east coast subsided.
A couple more ice ages and half a dozen sea level alterations in the
last million years and viola, geology has created a monument to itself.
And it’s impressive. The Hazards rise more than 400 metres straight out
of the bay, rosey-pink headstones of long-forgotten events. At the top
they’re balding and eroded, smooth with great stands of eucalypts
around the base spilling down to the water where we camp on a secluded
white beach called Honeymoon Bay.
