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.