Flinders Island Day 3: Exploring the Island's Edges

Fotheringate Beach, with the Stzrelecki National Park in the background

Today’s main goal is to find a prehistoric shark tooth. There’s a location on the island known for these. We take the long route there.

We cover a lot of the island today.

First up is Trousers Point – an oddly named cove alongside the island’s national park in the south-west. Legend has it that the area got its name from a crate of trousers that washed up ashore from one of the many shipwrecks the island is known for. The other potentially apocryphal story is that a survivor of a different shipwreck made it to the beach sans pants.

I think this is Mount Chappell Island in the far distance

Red-necked wallabies graze along the roadside as our car winds through the bush; they dart back a few metres and watch from behind trees while we pass. As we alight from the car and explore the beach, a beautiful secluded cove in the shadow of Stzrelecki National Park’s towering granite mountain, Green Rosellas chirrup over our heads. We follow a bushwalk to the other side of the point, sandy paths of faded pink sand surrounded by windswept beach shrubbery – a gentle slope that overlooks rocky outcrops in the sea, a nice photo opportunity interrupted by occasional tiny clouds of sea spray that float down around us.

After this we head to Cameron Inlet on the eastern side of the island. The biodiversity on Flinders Island is incredibly diverse for such a relatively small place – so much of the island is filled with completely different environments. We drive along salt-encrusted sand roads surrounded by lagoons and black cockatoos sighted for the first time since we got here. This area is also filled with Australian Shelducks, goose-like relatives of ducks with sunburst-orange necks. Eventually, after wondering how far this remote drive will take us, we arrive at a small clearing and pick out path through to the inlet’s beach.

Cameron Inlet

More than anywhere else, this feels like another planet. The grey sand whips around us in tendrils of mist as fearsome winds sweep across the sea and roar in our ears. Bobo is armed with earphones today to cut down on the overwhelm and he helps as we begin our search. The lagoon is vast enough for us not to see the other side and so it looks just like the sea. The sand is riddled with shells and prehistoric remnants that have been carried up to the beach from millions of years ago. It’s renowned for shark teeth – obsidian-like artefacts from Megalodons. We search for as long as we can manage in the freakish weather and Nicole finds something long and tooth-like with a strange texture and weight. Is it a shark tooth? We’re not sure.

Next stop is Lady Barren where we take in a nice lunch at the Furneaux Tavern, a lively pub that overlooks the collection of islands to the south – Little Green Island, Dog Island, Vansitartt Island, and in the distance, the large mass of Cape Barren Island. Cape Barren Island is the only other island in the Furneaux Group (aside from Flinders) that has a permanent human population; something like 90 or so people, an Aboriginal community who care for this island and the more remote Clarke Island underneath it.

The bar room inside is filled with locals who seemed to have been bussed in by two vans for a quick lunchtime swill. They’re all gone by the time we finish lunch in the bistro area and I take Bobo into the main area to see a pilot whale skeleton suspended above the bar, a cigar glued between its teeth. The bartender tells me it’s a Flinders Island Flathead but then admits that’s just what they like to tell visitors – about 35 years ago a pod of these whales became beached in the area. Nicole shows this bartender, Maxy, her treasure from Cameron Inlet. Maxy suggests it’s most likely a prehistoric whale bone. It’s definitely something fossilised.

The Furneaux Museum at Emita. Only open from January to May.

The last part of our day is spent back on the eastern side of the island. We navigate our way through the coastal settlement of Emita, briefly visit Allports Beach, and set down at the neighbouring area of Wybalenna. I hop out of the car and walk several hundred metres to the chapel – a building nearly 200 years old and a remnant of the island’s dark history.

As I approach this chapel, I notice hundreds of bones dotted alongside the road in the short grass, all bleached white by the cold Bass sun and the island’s relentless winds. I see a skull and later spot a long hind leg – Wallaby remains; a traditional food.

Wybalenna is a place I’ve read about, and written about. At the end of the Black War, when Tasmania’s colonists finished their conflict with the Aboriginal Tasmanians in the 1830s, a line of convicts, settlers, and soldiers joined forces and swept across Tasmania’s rugged landscape – driving the last survivors of the Aboriginal people to the edge of the isle. The Aboriginal Tasmanians were then forcibly relocated to Flinders Island and ‘settled’ at the Wybalenna Mission. Conditions were miserable, and over 100 of these survivors perished in just two years.

Wybalenna Mission Chapel

Today, the chapel and accompanying buildings stand as a testament to both Indigenous spirit and colonial cruelty. The island’s Blonde Wombats watch from nearby tussocks as we walk in reflection, darting into their burrows if we get too close.

One thing I’ve noticed among the residents in the last three days is an underlying respect for Indigenous culture and a willingness to acknowledge the atrocities of the past. Tasmania’s Aboriginal lineage is perhaps no stronger than here in Flinders Island and the other islands of the Furneaux Group.

We drive back to Whitemark, scaring a pheasant off the road at one point. The customary one-finger wave seems like a game of chicken – which car will crack and wave first? I challenge Nicole to not give the wave first but she is reluctant to seem rude to the other drivers. Some of them seem to wait to the absolute last millisecond to lift their hand in greeting as they drive past. Eventually, Nicole proudly points out that she waved second to one of the drivers.

We stop by a cluster of turkeys once again and call to them out our windows. They cluck and gobble, the patriarch’s tail spreading out in pomp.

Convenience Store at Lady Barren

I'm not sure what this thing is. I told Bobo it was a sea mango. I probably shouldn't have picked it up.

Flinders Island Day 2: Out and About

There’s a custom on the island where all drivers wave at each other. It also extends to pedestrians but seems friendlier when drivers all lift one or two fingers from their steering wheel in greeting. We make a game of it – Nicole will count down from three and then all of us will wave at the same time. We’re probably a little too enthusiastic for the even-paced laconics of the island but it’s a nice tradition; a sign of community in a bottle realm where all people could feasibly know each other.

Being without network coverage or a GPS throws us back twenty years into a world of driving with more active executive function. Signs matter. Maps matter. Taking a wrong term requires critical thinking skills and a marriage counsellor.

Thankfully it doesn’t matter too much as our plans are fluid and we have one singular goal – to see the island.

We accidentally head south instead of north and find ourselves at Lady Barren, the second largest of the island’s settlements. We walk along an empty beach, sifting for shells amongst cuttlebones the size of footballs. So many cuttlebones and all so massive.

One of the highlights of Flinders Island is the unique wildlife. Most of the human-inhabited parts of the island are quiet, idyllic farmland – filled with cows, sheep, and the occasional pony. Filtering in and out of this agricultural environment are Cape Barren Geese. These large stocky-legged native geese are the rarest geese in the world, a bird almost driven to extinction in the 1950s but a species that continues to thrive on Flinders Island and its close neighbour Cape Barren Island. They are plump-grey with fluoro-lime bills, expressively honking if confronted.

The Bass Strait Wombat, known locally as the 'Blonde Wombat'

Today is also our first sighting of the island’s Blonde Wombats, a subspecies of the Common Wombat once found throughout the Bass Strait Islands but now restricted to Flinders. It is unbearably cute, and the rolling paddocks make for a charming backdrop when dotted with these floofy, lightly-toned, plush-toy-like marsupials.

We also see many birds I’ve never seen before – Firetail Finches, New Holland Honeyeaters, Sooty Oystercatchers, Pied Oystercatchers, magnificent Caspian Terns. There are also feral peacocks and more of the large feral turkeys, which hang about in packs, their tails fanning out as they gobble aggressively in response to our turkey calls.

It’s fair to say we see far more wildlife then we do people.

A pack of feral turkeys

We travel to the northern end of the island to Killiecrankie, a place of wild and breathtaking coastlines and multiple historical shipwrecks. We visit a local, an elderly woman married to one of the descendants of the first Europeans to settle the area – a fishing family originally from South Australia. More than 100 years ago, their boat was damaged ashore and they were forced to set up home. They discovered they liked the area so much that they would remain permanently, even after their boat was repaired. Anyway – the local woman specialises in Killiecrankie Diamonds, the colloquially-named topaz that can be found along the beaches in this area. Nicole hires some pans and a small shovel and takes to some of the known areas, sifting through the bracken rockpools and finding all manner of tiny treasures, but probably no topaz.

It’s bittersweet as Bobo is a curmudgeonly mix of under- and overstimulated by this point. It rains on and off all day, and it’s an annoying rain picked up by the wind so that it hits you sideways. It’s also cold and very windy, and Bobo has to sit in the car a lot as we travel from place to place. His patience wears out and he hits tantrum-town in Killiecrankie. He’s crankie in Killiecrankie.

Eventually when he calms and after Nicole has returned the equipment to the lady and found some topaz she likes, we travel a little further north to Palana – a rural settlement at one of the island’s two northernmost tips. There’s a certain awe in looking out into the misty horizon of the Bass Strait, knowing that Australia is somewhere there in the distance. In between us and the unseen mainland are the Sisters – two smaller islands once inhabited by the farmers who eventually settled in Palana.

We return to our base at Island Quarters in Whitemark and shelter in our room away from the wind and sea spray cold.

Cape Barren Goose

With Goslings

Sea-bitten mooring from years gone by

A house in Palana

Stone hut in Killiecrankie

Flinders Island Day 1: Launceston Launchpad

The first thing you should know about going to Flinders Island is that it isn’t a direct route. This means we get up at 3am. This means Bobo is so excited that he doesn’t even wake up grumpy at this time and he doesn’t go back to sleep as we drive in to the airport. It means we fly to Launceston and then have some time to kill while we wait for the flight to the island.

We catch a taxi from Launceston airport and the taxi driver offers to take us to Cataract Gorge to give us something to do. He’s a 40 year old Indian guy with a neat beard and a black turban on. He gives us his business card so we can call him when we’re done… it’s Bobo's first time in a taxi and afterwards he confusingly keeps asking when the doctor is coming back to pick us up. It takes us a little while to realise he means the taxi driver.

Nope.

Cataract Gorge is beautiful but I was almost have a heart attack watching Bobo and Nicole float above my head on a 50 year old chairlift without seatbelts. On the other side, the Bobo is entranced by the many peacocks and starts getting amongst it, twirling around alongside one resplendent male as it puts on a show with its giant fan of feathers. Nicole starts filming, however, the Bobo gets a little too close to the bird and it shrieks and starts running at him – scaring him to tears. We later show the footage over lunch and he laughs himself silly.

We return to Launceston airport and make our way to the huge shed to the side of the airport that houses Sharp Airlines. These are chartered flights who specialise in trips back and forth to Flinders and King Islands; small planes that can fit up to about 12 people on them.

I try not to think about it.

Meanwhile, as we sit in the waiting room with the other 7 passengers, Bobo acts out the plane crashing and exploding!

It starts raining as get on the plane. The flight has been brought forward due to the unclement weather. As I stand over Bobo, frantically trying to get his seatbelt as tight as possible while the pilot politely waits for me to have us both buckled in, I sense the serious tone our fearless captain takes. He explains all the safety rules and then his co-pilot comes over to run Nicole and I through some extra rules due to our seats being adjacent to the emergency exits.

Tiny plane.

(Later, when we disembark, the pilot is suddenly relaxed and ten tims friendlier. I don’t appreciate the difference in demeanour. Was he worried at the trip’s beginning?)

As we fly into the grey fog that closes in on Launceston, I find myself nervously watching the captain a few seats ahead of us. His dials and readouts look like gibberish to me. All numbers and switches and nothing approaching a user-friendly interface. His hands grip the yoke and I’m struggling to understand what the function of the front window is – all we can see is the pure white of dense cloud. We’re kilometres above the ground, all we can hear is the fever-pitch chainsaw roar of the propellers, and we can’t see shit. How the fuck does someone steer a machine full of people through that? I just don’t understand it.

Bobo is beyond excited but towards the end of the half hour flight he falls asleep. The seatbelt is basically a sash around his waist so he starts flopping to the side, and I’m forced to reach across and hold his head up. Nothing will wake him at this point. Nicole and I take turns holding him up as the plane hits air pockets and tilts this way and that. He doesn’t even wake up when we suddenly hit the ground and miraculously land unharmed. Unbelievable.

Sharp Airlines operate out of Launceston and Melbourne. They charter flights to Flinders and King Islands in the Bass Strait.

We alight from the plane, Bobo is awake again, and the person from the car hire is there to meet us at Flinders’ tiny one-room airport. He explains that the reason we hadn’t had any confirmation from the car company is because the previous owner threw in the towel last week and that he – Norm – was now taking over. It takes a bit of going back-and-forth to figure out what we owe him and then he shows us to the car, apologising for some of its quirks – including a door where the window can’t be wound down past a certain point. He shows me where he’s had to use his island ingenuity to repair the door – rigging up a two-button system (the normal window control plus a second button randomly fixed into the side panel of the door at thigh height). He starts explaining to me how we can wind the window down without losing the glass inside the door and I stop him – it’s an incredibly cold and windy environment compared to Penrith, we are more than happy to avoid winding the window down.

Island resourcefulness

He shows us the booster seat for Bobo but tells us he has no chance of being able to install it – bids us a merry farewell and leaves us to figure out how to get the seat in place.

Nicole manages it and off we drive.

There’s no phone reception on the island and the maps don’t really represent the nuances of the island’s various roads. It’s easy to figure things out though as every turn and junction comes with signage. Five minutes after driving through the Flinders’ countryside, observing Shetland ponies, hovering muttonbirds, thickset cattle, and a mob of feral turkeys (that’s regular turkeys, not the smaller bush turkeys you’re likely to see in Australia – the island has a feral turkey problem for some reason). It’s beautiful and very different to anywhere else I’ve ever been.

We reach the island’s largest (main) settlement, Whitemark. Approximately 300 people live here – about a third of the island’s permanent residents. There’s a grocery store, a nice pub, a post office, a flash museum, a chemist, and that’s about it.

 

One of at least two public phones on the island.

The main street of Whitemark. Pub is on the left - this is the Interstate Hotel, one of two pubs on the island.

Calamari at the Interstate Hotel.