Frederick Henry Bay: Pittwater Nature Reserve: Penna Beach

November 13, 2016

Touching the Land of the Moomairremener Band

Penna Beach

When you fly into Hobart’s airport, peninsulas of land and bodies of water spread out below. One of these watery stretches is the large, relatively shallow estuary/lagoon that forms Pitt Water Nature Reserve and Orielton Lagoon (east, and just off this map). The Coal River, Penna and Iron Creek pour freshwater into it.

This striking body of water is crossed by McGees Bridge and the Sorell causeway, both tethered to a suburbanised headland in the middle of the lagoon called Midway Point. It enters the sea between Seven Mile Beach spit and Lewisham.

I love the view coming in to land, love crossing the causeways, the seagulls hanging in the sky, the salt spray… but it’s not an area that I’ve ever explored. I last flew over it a few weeks ago, returning from a postponed yacht delivery in Queensland. This time I went to the map to find out more about it. The names of the places surrounding Pitt Water intrigued me – Shark Point Road, Penna and Frogmore Creek. It was clearly time to go adventuring in the lands of the Oyster Bay and Big River tribes. The Moomairremener band in particular, spent a lot of time around Pitt Water. Their presence is there in the middens and quarries they left behind.

At Midway Point we turned right along Penna Road and quickly found ourselves in countryside with the water to our left. Then we turned left along Shark Point Road.

This road runs along the northern shore. There’s a row of houses, some beautiful, others not, but if you don’t mind the sight of traffic crossing the causeway in the distance, then the northern shore is a secret gem. The dirt road takes a corner and heads north, up into farmland, home to Highland cattle.

Shark Point Road, it turns out, gets its name because this estuary is much loved by sharks, including the gummy shark. They come here to forage and to breed. It’s the nursery for their babies and while they’re unlikely to nibble a kayak I may put on hold indefinitely my plan to paddle its perimetre. In recognition of its importance to the sharks it was declared their refuge and no-take area in 1995. There has to be something in this for people, right? These sharks are fished commercially.

We turned around and sought out Penna Beach on this northern shore and found that it’s in a part reserve, part dog exercise zone. We walked down to it through tussocks and an astonishing diversity of weeds, including box thorn and boneseed.

White shells clad much of the beach and they’re there again in the soil profile behind the beach, along with a thin trail of pebbles denoting an earlier landscape. We figured this is the same shell layer that is visible at Ralph’s Bay, that beautiful embayment on the Derwent River. Strolling along its full, extremely skinny extent we also noticed that the rising sea had nibbled into the soils behind the beach so that only the roots of the tussocks and a depth of about about 10 cm of loam defended the land from the fluid invader gaining might millimeter by millimetre.

As we walked along we discovered some lovely little salt marshes and wetlands behind the beach, although some had an algal infestation. We didn’t see the little blue butterfly that forages here but we heard some brief birdsong emerging from the tussocks. I thought the area could have provided a wonderful habitat for nesting birds but I suspect there’s far too much human disturbance for them to make a go of it. It was only later that I discovered that this area is renowned for its salt marsh diversity and rare plant species.

With an oyster farm tucked into a corner of Pitt Water at Barilla Bay, as well as at Woody Island and Shark Point, along with other human encroachment, such as homes and causeways, water quality has taken a battering. At least forty different types of fish, including eels, seahorses, pipefish, sharks and rays have been known to glide beneath the surface, some enjoying the seagrass once prolific in the quiet shallows.

There’s a man who, between 1975 and 1995, came to know this area, it’s plants and animals well. Geoff Prestige watched as the banded stingaree, southern conger eel, shot-headed eel, rock ling, pipefish, soldier fish, rock flathead, king barracouta, weedfish and smooth toadfish, once prolific, became rare or vanished completely. He also observed snails and worms and molluscs, along with other invertebrates quietly vanish.

Once at least seven types of migratory birds flew here from Alaska to enjoy Tasmania’s summer. This estuary, since 1982, has been a RAMSAR site – in fact, the southernmost site on the East Australasian Flyway but given our interconnected world and development across both hemispheres, this hasn’t stopped numbers plummeting like a distressed stockmarket.

One little known fact about Pitt Water is that it is the home of a tiny, rare orange seastar (Parvulastra vivipara), one of very few anywhere that gives birth to live young.

People like to fish on the seaward side of McGees Bridge and they like to bird watch at Sorell Causeway and the Waterview Sanctuary. Levees have messed with the tides that supported Pittwater although there’s a bit more flushing happening these days. Farmers have spread fertiliser on their fields, fostering algal growth in the lagoons. Dams on the Coal River have stymied freshwater flow. Seagrass has withered.

This area really symbolises the way we are hammering the lovely world but here’s a small plus. On all the slender extent of Penna Beach I only found two pieces of plastic litter, and I thought that a small solace.

Sources: Pitt Water and Orielton Lagoon Ramsar site and in particular, the NRM South Report to the Community (2012)

D’Entrecasteaux Channel: Tinderbox Beach (475)

September 6, 2016

Ancient Ripples

Queensland man with little mate — *Tinderbox Beach with jetty & Bruny Island across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel*

The headsail was torn, the furler broken and so on that fine day last summer I found myself down on Tinderbox Beach as the seabreeze swooped in and the tide ran out.

This beach is small and beautiful, with a jetty, yacht moorings and the great bulk of Bruny Island protecting it from the worst of the Southern Ocean’s temper tantrums.

I walked east, past children playing on the sand and adults relaxing and on to the rocks, heading for the small cobbled beach below Pierson’s Point. I hadn’t gone very far when a man stopped me.

‘What’s over there?’ he said, sweeping his hand across the northern extent of Bruny Island. ‘More of the same?’

‘Not at all!’ I said and passionately described the unique qualities of Bruny Island. ‘Not to be missed,’ I concluded.

‘More of the same,’ he said morosely. ‘I think I’ll just climb in the back of my ute and have a sleep with my little mate.’

He was well set up. He and his travel worn blue heeler had driven down from Queensland rather quickly, then crossed to Tasmania on the overnight ferry which makes port on Tasmania’s north coast. They’d then hurtled down the extent of the island to this beach at the southern end, all in one day.

Walking on beneath the cliffs, I found some beautiful rock platforms that were (at least to my untrained eye) tessellated. There are well known ones at Eaglehawk Neck but on my walks I was finding them in many more places. Soon I noticed a couple who had set themselves up in a small, sheltered corner and I stopped to ask how far it was possible to continue walking in this easterly direction.

‘Not far,’ they told me. ‘You come to a gulch that’s just too wide to jump. We’ve often thought we should bring along a plank to get over it.’

Looking north again from Tinderbox Beach — *From the rocks at Tinderbox looking north into the Derwent River*

It wasn’t long before I came to that gulch. I had paused at many rock pools along the way – amongst the most beautiful I could recall seeing in Tasmania – but this gulch was exceptionally dense with beauty – kelp and a variety of other bright seaweeds. I regretted leaving my rocky shore guidebook at home because quite clearly a person should never visit a marine reserve without one.

The gulch was just too wide for me to jump. The pebble beach beneath Pierson’s Point was simply unattainable, at least today.

The other exquisite thing about the gulch was that it led into a small sedimentary sea cave. The rocks at its base and under the water had a shimmery pink glow. Right at the end of its deep resounding depths, small cobbles had been pushed up in a pile by the water, which was just deep enough to deter me and so I took a seat at the entrance of the cave and listened meditatively to what it had to say; and taped its voice.

Seacave and gulch at Tinderbox Beach — *The sea cave*

I could have sat there all afternoon, listening to that gurgling water resonate in the cave but eventually I roused myself and walked back, climbing the cliff and finding that it ended up in someone’s garden. The man who had given me directions was now alone. We discovered we had mutual friends and I told him about the places I’d been and what I’d seen along the coastline and how puzzling the paucity of nomenclature was. We were standing on Mouheener land – they’d once enjoyed the bounty of the Derwent’s western shore, the Channel and Bruny Island. He thought the Aboriginal tribes probably named significant spots on the landscape for people in much the same we so frequently name them but I shared my different perspective, that places are named in accordance with long held myths, that the landscape is redolent with story but has lost its voice and then I walked back along the rocks, wishing I’d brought a plank with me.

The blue heeler was not asleep although his big mate was. We acknowledged each other and then I crossed the beach and walked westward, bound for North West Bay.

Swimmers told me the temperature was not too bad and in fact, that summer, the waters around Tasmania experienced heatstroke, their highest temperatures ever, the East Australian current extending further south than usual and bringing with it fish from warmer climes.

Rocky platform west of Tinderbox Beach.jpg — Rocky platform west of Tinderbox Beach. Looking into North West Bay (right)

I had the rocks to myself. The sandstone cliffs were photogenic. I was able to walk almost to the point where North West Bay begins – but not quite. Still, I was satisfied to have discovered that kayaking along here was likely to be rewarding, and so after studying the ripple marks of ancient beaches etched in the surface of ancient sandstone I followed the sea breeze back into Hobart, feeling exultant.

Historic photograph of this view is at https://stors.tas.gov.au/AUTAS001124067968w800 – View of Tinder Box Bay, the northern part of D’Entrecasteaux Channel Residence of Joshua Fergusson Esq. Walter Synnot.

Derwent River: Tinderbox Beaches: Pierson’s Point

June 30, 2016

Geographical Anxieties

D’Entrecasteaux gave the point this name when surveying the area in 1792. It was also known, briefly Point Lewis and Blythe’s Point.

(Source: Robinson-Moore, 2014)

Light and cannon and Bruny from Piersons — *Piersons Point with the Tasman Peninsula in the distance and Bruny Island just across the water*

Just because you’re a long way from an empire’s capital, with limitless miles between your island home and battlefields and just because a feud can begin and end in the space of time it takes to receive a letter doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get the jitters hanging out at the end of the world. So when Governor Lachlan Macquarie visited the Hobart Town settlement in 1811, his mind turned to the enemies that could arrive unannounced up the Derwent River – the French, for example, not that long ago defeated in the Napoleonic Wars. His perspective was military; the place clearly needed fortification, and so a network of batteries, some interlinked by means of tunnels, took shape along both the eastern and western shores of the river. I had long ago passed Alexandra Battery, which sits above Blinking Billy Point. The battery at Piersons Point is significant because along with Fort Direction on the far side of the river, it protected the river mouth (although it was a late comer to the system as it was actually only constructed and used during WWII). Prior to that time there was a pilot station here, at the junction between bay, river and channel and on fine days the family based at the Iron Pot lighthouse sometimes rowed across for a bit of conviviality.

When we’d arrived after our wander along this stretch of shoreline, there were some Sudanese children playing tennis on the court that seems as oddly placed here as the idea of a battery is now. Bruny Island is a short hop across the water, the river was to my left, the D’Entrecasteaux Channel flowing into it from my right, and Storm Bay spread south. I could look back down the long stretch of coast I had explored and across the river to Cape Direction and the Iron Pot light.

It had taken a bit of research but I now knew that the river was not only a drowned river valley but also a rift valley. I knew there was a bar beneath some 15m of water just north of Pierson’s Point and I knew that there was likewise a bar running from Piersons to Dennes Point on Bruny Island, because the depth instrument on Samos registers this as we sail over it. But the geo had also put me straight about the the river, the channel and their geological inter-relationship and his take is attached at the bottom of this entry.

It was ages since I had set out to explore beaches, yet here I was still in the Derwent. I had discovered parts of the shoreline I hadn’t really known existed. I had discovered it’s vague and sketchy nomenclature and I had discovered that it wasn’t supporting nearly as many birds as I had anticipated. I now knew these beaches were pocket beaches and that it’s pointless walking beaches without giving equal weight to the coastline in between and I had discovered that the means of travel impacts greatly on the experience. My most profound realisation had been that I was not nearly as hefted to the land as I had once thought I was.

I’d walked along Tinderbox’s spine but the road is narrow and while picturesque it can occasionally be at an unrewarding distance from the river. I knew I would cycle it one sunny day, but that’s more about a ribbon of bitumen than it is about the river and its beaches. I sail this coastline frequently, but then my attention is more on the boat’s interaction with wind and water. That being so, I felt I wouldn’t have done it to my liking unless I kayaked it too. I thought that in my kayak I could really acquaint myself with its rocky shore. And besides, hidden among those cliffs was, bizarrely, a secret door and I was keen to find it.

We set out the teapot and cups, then sat down and enjoyed a little tea ceremony to honour the Derwent. There were cumulus clouds in a blue sky. On such a stunning day, watching the ferry crossing the channel further south between Kettering on the Tasmanian mainland and Roberts Point on Bruny Island those old geographic anxieties seemed peculiar indeed. My geographical anxieties were of a far smaller scale than the governor’s. They were focussed on how I was going to co-ordinate my blog with the places I was intent on exploring. How to proceed, I was wondering. South down the Channel, and if so by what means? Or north from Sandy Bay through Battery Point and if so, how far up river? And if I mixed it up how would I keep a sense of continuity going in both my brain and on my blog?

Dennes point from Pierson's Point — *Looking across at Dennes Point, Bruny Island from Piersons Point.*

*Lacking the grace of an old lighthouse and looking more like something from outer space. Automated light at Piersons Point with the Iron Pot lighthousein the distance.*

The geo’s take: Derwent Rv and D’Entrecasteaux Channel.

Derwent River: Tinderbox coastline: Passage Point

June 18, 2016

With a Dark and Stormy in one Hand and a Pencil in the Other

PASSAGE POINT

Passage Point is a notable promontary at the mouth of the Derwent Estuary and is both lovely from the water and green and pleasant from the road – a rolling hillside, a rustic shed, an abrupt cliff line carved by the waters of the Derwent, the D’Entrecasteaux and Storm Bay.

Map from the Kingborough Council Signage at the start of the Tinderbox Hills track: nomenclature is thinly used. Passage Point, Piersons Point and Tinderbox Beach, all important landmarks, are not noted. (Passage Point is to the left of Mount Louis.)

Having finally decided that ‘not the real Fishermans Haul’ was in fact the real Fishermans Haul (see last blog post), we went to Passage Point to see if there was some way we could access the little cobbled beach I’d noticed. There wasn’t. We had to make do with expansive views but as these were superlative and so vast in scope we could hardly complain. Mount Louis, Tinderbox’s highest point and forested in eucalypts rose behind us.

Birngana long distance race off Tinderbox — *Birngana* off Passage Point

My guess on how Passage Point got its name was all tied up with waypoints, landmarks and the ocean because if you’re heading off in your yacht on a trip of any distance, it pays to sit down and plan your passage. With a ‘dark and stormy’* in one hand, and a pencil in the other, take a careful note of the tides, currents and potential hazards. Become familiar with the landmarks you’ll pass, navigational signs you’ll encounter, channels or reefs you may need to negotiate and choose your waypoints. Make Meteye your new best friend and despite being in love with your chartplotter, tuck the paper version into your nav table too because it’s less likely to let you down. Departing the Derwent at this point to head out across Storm Bay is always a bit of a passage into the unknown because the bay is notorious for conjuring tempests up out of the most benign conditions.

Because this familiar promontary is just there where the waters of Storm Bay, the Derwent and the D’Entrecasteaux merge, it’s symbolic of passages about to begin and passages almost completed. So it goes without saying that this is how it got its name, right?

Wrong.

I checked Placenames Tasmania and found some unverified information. A boat called the Fancy was one of ‘the few remaining trading boats called passage boats.’ Back in slower more leisurely days these boats used to ply the Derwent and the Channel. In doing so, they had to round Passage Point and in so doing, they gave the point its name.

This information in the database comes from a boating article in the Saturday Mercury, Jan 2002 where it’s also noted that ‘most features on coasts were named by mariners and seeking reasons for names means looking at it [sic] from a mariner’s point of view. Thus Passage Point was a marker for south-bound boats of the entrance of ‘the passage’ or the Channel.’

Exploring the sweep of shoreline from Sandy Bay to Tinderbox had triggered my curiosity about the way places were named but I had not considered that mariners had a big hand in the names of the places I was exploring. This was an unforgiveable oversight because it’s obvious that many major features first got their names from the early voyages of discovery. My impression of the western shoreline of the Derwent was that places were usually named after the early landowner’s or overlooked in the naming process altogether but I could see that in a tiny colony at the end of the world there’d be a sense of familiarity and homeliness for locals who plied these waterways in naming the places they were passing by the names of the people they knew. On dark and stormy nights in particular, the ability to recognise familiar landmarks and tick off waypoints is comforting and engenders hope when you’re toughing out rugged conditions.

We paused here to savour the view. Passage Point felt extremely evocative for me: I had walked out one wintery morning and followed the Sandy Bay Rivulet down to its mouth. I had turned right and wandered the shoreline from there to here, a distance of some 35 kilometres, give or take a few and although I had done this as an urban explorer, little bit by little bit, it had been fun, it had changed the way I related to the coast as well as dramatically expanding my knowledge of the city I live in.

And then we continued on our ‘way ‘ – a word itself entangled with ‘passage’, and like ‘passage’ one with an evocative history. I liked the definition from the Free Dictionary best: ‘a. A road, path, or highway affording passage from one place to another. b. An opening affording passage’.

Dark and Stormy: rum and Coke / ginger beer or ale; a drink that’s popular with sailors. The link is to one version, but there are many.

Derwent River: Tinderbox Beaches: Not the Real Fisherman’s Haul

June 14, 2016

Beaches T 471 (Fisherman’s Haul) & T472 Fisherman’s Haul South

Having scrutinised more maps I began to doubt that the Lucas Point Sewage Plant was actually at Lucas Point. It’s the landmark that helps identify Fisherman’s Haul and as conversations with locals had helped me fix it in my mind that it lay just south of Flowerpot Hill I started to think that the problem was one of language – ‘just’ is a stretchy kind of word for a start, and may not have been used by anyone I’d spoken to. It may simply have been a supposition I’d made from what had been said to me.

Our modus operandi was to drive along the Tinderbox road slowly (not difficult – there were quite a few cyclists out and about) and check for detours down the slope. The geo noticed a sizeable piece of green land with car tracks on it, somewhat sheltered from the road by a partial row of caesurinas. We did a u-turn and went back to investigate.

Close by a man was burning off. He ambled over to talk to me and I asked him if this was Lucas Point.

‘Some people think it is, but it isn’t really.’

‘Is it back where the sewerage plant is?’

‘Nope. Some people think that’s Lucas Point too, but it isn’t really.’

‘So where is the real Lucas Point?’

He pointed vaguely over his shoulder. ‘Back there a bit.’

‘Okay… And so I’m wondering, if Lucas Point is back there, then is this Fishermans Haul?’

‘Some people say it is but it isn’t really the real Fishermans Haul.’

‘Is there a beach down there?’

‘Nope.’

‘Is there a path down?’

‘Maybe. You should be okay if you’ve got your balancing shoes on.’

‘Well, thanks, I might go and explore.’

The geo was down at the bottom of the slope reading a sign. It stated ‘Lucas Point’. A thin band of caesurinas lined the vertical cliff top so we put the dogs on leads and slithered down a very steep path of sorts beside a short deep gully carved by another youthful rivulet, at that time dwelling soley in a few remnant pools. An old rusty cable lay beside the track but we couldn’t identify a use for it unless haulage came into it. It didn’t take at all long before we came to the end of the path. It stopped for me at a rather cracked and fragile looking rock arch left over from a previous coastline. It might have been fine to walk over it onto the high rocky platform but I didn’t like the look of the cracks in the unconsolidated cliff face to which it was attached. The geo and the dogs stopped a bit further back because it really wasn’t a place for the dogs to be at all – it was all rather precipitous.

Looking down at Lucas Point Tinderbox — The rocks at the real Lucas Point; climbers’ secret

It goes without saying that the long views were superlative. Down this end of the river we were getting closer views of the Iron Pot, the lighthouse at the entry to the Derwent River and in the southern curve of Lucas Point (the cliff I was presumably standing on) was a very beautiful and quiet cobbled beach and just to the north of where I was standing was another cobbled beach. Looking directly south at the cliffs that work around to Passage Point I saw a third. And looking directly down was a tiny narrow gulch.

Fishermans Haul North from Lucas Point — Fisherman’s Haul

Looking south to Passage Point from Lucas Point — Looking south from Lucas Point, the beach below Passage Point just visible.

Andrew Short notes a Fishermans Haul (S) and a Fishermans Haul. Here’s his description of Fisherman’s Haul:

‘Fishermans Haul is a small curving cobble beach (T 471) located to the lee of 40 m high Lucas Point. Steep vegetated bluffs rise to 50 m behind the small beach, which is partly sheltered by the point and rock reefs resulting in low waves at the shore. The road runs along the top of the bluff 100 m west of the beach with access via a steep descent. ‘(Short, 2006)

And here’s his description of Fishermans Haul South:

‘Beach T 472 commences 100 m south of the Haul, and is a 200 m long east- to northeast-facing narrow high tide cobble beach located at the base of 50 m high cliffs, with a steep gully descending to the centre of the beach.’ (Short, 2006)

New discoveries! Seen so often from the water but not really properly seen at all. I was happy to believe the sign and this time, added to the slippery geography I’ve been doing battle with, was that local’s wicked sense of humour and the entertainment he got from causing confusion.

This coastline may seem impossible to access on foot but later I discovered that it’s loved for being a climbing area rich in deepwater solos, that method of climbing that evolved in SW England. Nick Hancock makes it clear that for this you need a kayak you can tie up while you climb up dolerite boulders or columns at this point and you need to be confident that the water is deep and safe enough to splash down into. Don’t even think about trying this unless you have plenty of experience, not just about deepwater solos but weather conditions and the sea state too because Tinderbox is unforgiving. And if you think the name makes it promising for fishing, pack your tackle and take your rod further afield. Too many fish have been hauled and this area is now protected within the bounds of the Tinderbox Marine Reserve – no fishing allowed.

The view east from Lucas Point Tinderbox — View across the river to South Arm from the real Lucas Point. The Iron Pot is that tiny dot to the right.

Derwent River: Tinderbox Beaches: Flowerpot Coastal Reserve (T469?)

June 2, 2016

The Artist and the Donkey

Flowerpot Coastal Reserve Beach

Beneath the Lucas Point Sewage Plant there’s a bay and in that bay there’s a thin cobbled beach divided by boulders from another stretch of tide constricted beach. (Possibly Andrew Short’s beaches T469 & T470, but I could well be wrong.)

We’d started the day with brunch at MONA, Hobart’s incredible Museum of Old and New Art, way upriver and I only mention this because I’d spent an inordinately long time at the Marina Abramovic exhibition, engrossed in watching her meditatively regard a donkey and the donkey’s long considered response to her. The immaculate stillness of it all; the way the observer is absorbed into the dynamic of the interaction and how, in paying attention, new details about the donkey, or Marina, or even the pared down environment emerge into focus long after you think you’ve observed everything there is to see alerts you to the fact that perception is fickle and attention is a skill that needs honing.

It made me wonder how long I should spend regarding a beach and how you express gratitude to such a multi-diminsional part of this planet.

Later we packed a rucksack and headed down to the Tinderbox Peninsula. The off the leash exercise area behind the Lucas Point Sewage station was vibrant with canine energy but we detoured up Flowerpot Hill’s southern slope. A blue sky, and a light sea breeze …we reached the place I’d stopped before and paused to consider the various blossoms in flower along the edge of the cliff line.

Gum blossom Flowerpot Hill south — This beautiful eucalyptus is not indigenous to this area.

I quizzed each local I met about beaches. I was particularly after information about a beach called Fisherman’s Haul but no one could enlighten me.

We snooped around the sewage plant and debated taking a tangled path then elected instead to descend to the shore via another steep path that followed the edge of the short deep gorge carved by the rivulet that inhabits this valley. There’s no sign to identify it but it reaches the Derwent via a cobbled beach and there, that day, it stopped behind the pebbles heaped up on the steeply sloping little beach that was being pounded by business minded waves. Occasionally we’d hear the sound of those cobbles making music as the waves retreated.

The tide was high and I had to calculate the time between waves in order to reach a spot at the northern end from where I could peer over boulders into the Lucas Point Sewage Plant’s beach (if indeed it really was a separate beach).

Tinderbox Flowerpot Coastal Reserve Beach — Lucas Point Sewage Plant’s beach just north of the Flowerpot Coastal Reserve beach.

The tide had left only one small, dry patch at the southern end and so I didn’t think it was wise to gamble with the waves. There was graffiti on its cliffs and above that I could see the sewage plant. Both detracted from its original beauty, one of austere rock and wild water. I could see Soldiers Rocks and just this side of them a lone man fishing. It seemed somewhat too close to the sewage plant to be a palatable past time.

Meanwhile, the geo had brewed the tea given to us by a friend who’d departed in his yacht to sail home to NZ. We sat back and contemplated the beach and the little rivulet, the cliffs to our south and the kayaker who surfed one of the breaking waves before heading on north with no break to his momentum.

Tinderbox Flowerpot Coastal Reserve kayaker — Lone kayaking along a rugged shore ~ Soldiers Rocks in the distance

In that beautiful setting the tea tasted divine and lent a meditative quality to the attention I was lavishing on the shoreline. Then I performed a tea ceremony to honour the beach. A little liquid connection. A means of feeling my way towards how one says thank you to a beach for its existence.

Tea at Flowerpot Coastal Reserve Beach — Gratitude to all things beach and water

Afterwards I walked the small bushland path beyond the dog exercise ground by myself, wondering where it would take me. Like a lot of my coastal explorations, I ended up walking a circle. What beach we’d found I did not know but I did find out it wasn’t Fishermans Haul – the map said no. So for want of knowing the local name, I’m calling it Flowerpot Coastal Reserve beach and if you’re idling in this area it’s worth seeking it out. Because it exists, and it’s hidden away, and it’s very Tinderbox.

Derwent River: Tinderbox Beaches: Zawns and Sea Caves

May 27, 2016

Walking on Sunshine and Fat Boy Splashes

Leaning into the Vertical along the Tinderbox Shoreline

This Tinderbox shoreline is another where the cartographers have pretty much mooched on by, leaving others to fill in the blanks. But it would seem that many locals, spending their time on the clifftops only, are ignorant of the particular beauty of zawns and arête, cobbled beaches, sea caves and the communities living below the water.

Down on the reefs it’s a multicultural world. There are green and snakeskin chitons, common beaked and flea mussels, tall-ribbed and scaly limpets, chequered, ribbed and tessellated top-shells, common shelf-limpets, banded austral winks, lined whelks and common cartrut-shells… and there are the refugees that jumped ship and found a rock to cling to, escaping the polluted bilge water of their vessel of choice – the mediterranean mussel and pacific oyster may have arrived this way. (Grove, de Little).

These fantastical names and molluscs could arguably be equaled by the climbers who have transported a love of a particular sort of coastal climbing (deep water soloing) from the Cornwall and Devon coastlines to Tasmania and who have applied colourful names to the vertical routes that they alone can see and cling to. Pinnacle zawn has climbs called Fatman’s Splash and Fatboy’s Swim, Walking on Sunshine and Danni’s Pants. Climbers’ fingers and toes have found cracks in the chimneys and buttresses, they know the arête and sea caves and they’ve swum or kayaked across gulches to reach their next challenge.

This coast is loved by jumpers too. The young and the reckless risk broken backs, head injuries and death, doing backflips off Soldier’s Rocks and leaping off the Cemetery at the Blowhole (see Blackmans Bay Beach).

Lacking this intimate geography of place, no boulders known to me, I checked my chart, I peered at my maps, took a spin on Google Earth, then set off in search of hidden beaches. Top of my list was Fishermans Haul or Fisho’s and I thought I knew exactly where I could find it.

Derwent River: The Tinderbox Peninsula

May 22, 2016

A Different Sort of Tasmanian Beach: Hard, hidden and hostile

Whole sign Tinderbox Hills — Tinderbox Hills Trail: signage delineating the peninsula

The Tinderbox Peninsula, approximately 5.5 km long, points south east and rises steeply from the water. It’s forested with eucalypts that make their living on hungry soil and its cliffs make the Alum Cliffs look positively inviting. What’s more, they shoulder into at least three bodies of water: the Derwent, the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and North West Bay. I think it’s reasonable to add a fourth because water pays no heed to lines in the sand. Storm Bay is supposed to come to a halt a tiny bit south at Dennes Point, North Bruny Island but I think it exercises free will in this regard. Tinderbox is not outside its orbit.

If you take the lovely walk along the Tinderbox Hills Trail (see sign above), following the backbone of the peninsula the views of all this water – all the same water really – are pretty spectacular.

VIEW FROM TINDERBOX HILLS OVER RALPHS — Looking across the Derwent, South Arm Peninsula and Ralphs Bay to Frederick Henry Bay from the Tinderbox Hills

Tinderbox Hills looking se — The south west view to Tasman Peninsula from the Tinderbox Hills

South Africa (once my homeland) has one vast and magnificent peninsula, the Cape Peninsula, which is justly famous. There, mountains plummet into the sea. But Tasmania is an island of water bodies, peninsulas, isthmuses, mountains, lakes and islands. And there is quite a lot that is special about this particularly scenic peninsula. The white gums and blue gums that push their roots deep into the usually dry ground provide a livelihood for the forty spotted pardalottes, green rosellas and swift parrots. These trees are an endangered habitat and it makes for endangered birds.

This is a coastline I’ve mostly sailed along, both in calms and in gales. When you’re sailing along these Tasmanian beaches and the wind is from the west you can find yourself in a wind shadow along here. Conversely if it’s whipping across from the east beware this lee shore. One wintery night stands out. We’d been becalmed and then, passing Blackmans Bay a sinister, warm wind flowed over the beach and curled around the corner, a portent that as a rookie with a pretty sketchy knowledge of winds and landforms I noted with unease. We were becalmed again off Tinderbox, left far behind by the rest of the fleet, but what, two of us had been wondering, might be awaiting us in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel when we emerged from the shelter of the cliffs beside us? It had to be, and it was, total pandemonium.

Conversely, on the day this photo was taken I wasn’t on Birngana, the boat I was crewing on some time later. I was at Boat Sales, finalising the purchase of Samos, but after that was done I drove along the Peninsula to see how the long distance race was panning out. Birngana was in the vicinity of Passage Point, heading for home and an easy win. We were well positioned to win the whole series but a week or two later disaster struck and there would be no more racing.

On board they could see the cliffs and the beaches, which from the road aren’t visible at all. They could see the cliff top houses in their spacious grounds – although, focussed on victory perhaps they were not looking. And there was one building that would certainly pass unnoticed, no matter how hard they looked for it.

Some people build themselves castles (even in Tasmania) but a South African millionaire decided to build himself ‘a boozy bunker’ – a tunnel and a cave worth millions, behind the cliffs – as you do. A place to party, to drink and to feast. There’s a door (disguised by a veneer of sandstone) that opens on to a rocky platform. You’d never know it was there.

And here’s another thing. For a long time it was supposed that the waters of the Derwent feed the D’Entrecasteaux Channel but actually, it’s mostly the other way around – channel waters predominantly feed the Derwent. (This is something Christine Coughenowr, Manager of the Derwent Estuary Program) explained to members of the Cruising Yacht Club of Tasmania at a meeting recently.)

Another observation from sailing this shoreline – as you enter the relatively small opening to the channel between Tinderbox and North Bruny Island, the depth decreases quite dramatically, just briefly. Imagine a different geography, with Tinderbox and the island connected. During the last Ice Age you could have strolled across to Bruny Island, rather than paddling your canoe. Bruny would have been a long, ‘isthmused’ extension of the Tinderbox Peninsula.

Along the Derwent River side of the peninsula the Tinderbox beaches are mostly inaccessible, mostly cobbled. They are my kind of beach – the type you have to go searching for.

And so I did.

Derwent River: Boronia Beach (T466A)

April 28, 2016

Carnage in the Cove

Kingston has three beaches. Boronia, tucked away behind cliffs is the most southern one.

Boronia Point: returning to Kingston — Looking back at Kingston Beach from the Boronia Point track

May 2015

‘It’s a nudist beach,’ someone told me.

‘We’ve kayaked past it,’ the geo said.

‘Heaps of sea dragons. Brilliant for scuba diving!’

Whatever, the beach was there and I wanted to explore it. On foot. Especially because of a blog post and what the ornithologists had told me long ago – and then, when the time came, I totally forgot the most interesting thing about Boronia Beach. I was too engrossed in the place itself.

I had already had an encounter with Boronia Point. One Saturday, as we milled around behind the starting line with the fleet of yachts in the long distance race, I was surprised to discover that one buoy would be off that point.

‘Where’s that?’ some of the crew wondered, and S rushed off to confirm it on the chart. I planned to take a good look at the beach as we laid the line to that buoy but a great gust of wind swept down the valley and gave us a whack right at the opportune moment. We heeled with remarkable swiftness. There were yells to reef along with the arrival of that particular intensity that sharpens focus when the mast leans down to kiss the water and it’s all action stations on board. That’s why I totally forgot to study the beach.

This day there was a lot of canine energy going on as we three urban explorers (two of us canine) headed off along the track, starting on Boronia Point behind the Kingston Sailing Club, where Boronia Hill descends down to the water. They pulled me along, at first along the cliff top path under gums and casuarina trees. There are paths and wooden steps leading down to the track from gardens and hill top roads, and there is a small wooden bridge. On this day music drifted out an open window. Someone was practising at their piano, and an elderly man sat on a bench where trees give way to a swathe of grass, absorbing the long views north over Kingston and Tyndall Beaches and across the river to the South Arm Peninsula. The river gleamed with patches of white foam and still water. (It’s worth mentioning that rather sadly the bushland of the point is separated by a thick strip of houses and roads from the lovely top of Boronia Hill where there are tracks through remnant dry sclerophyll forest and delicious views from a grouping of large lichen dappled boulders beneath the trees.)

Soon we arrived at a fence, a gate and a sign saying reserve; no dogs, not cats, no camping – and there we turned back. I’d known this would be the case and I didn’t mind at all. This track was a real find. It made me feel expansive. I was happy to walk it any time.

THE SECOND EXPEDITION

Snow was forecast and although the wild wind had calmed it wasn’t until I reached Kingborough that the sky turned blue. Again the beauty. Again the piano music . I had a vague notion of what to expect beyond the gate because I’d explored the point using Google Earth the previous night, seeking a connecting path to Blackmans Bay further south but it was still a surprise to find that quite quickly after the gate the path started to descend. There are cyprus pines, the small cove of Boronia Beach opens up and the cliff line comes into view. Honestly, my first thought was Mama Mia! This could be a beach on a Greek island. Clearly a conventional thought – I’ve now seen is described this way many times. (But the sky has to be blue. I brought my sister here one overcast day not so long ago and it felt uncharacteristically sombre.)

From Boronia Point — The great view east: South Arm Peninsula hiding Ralphs Bay from sight

Boronia looking south down the cliffs — Looking south with the Tinderbox Peninsula in the distance

The cliffs at Boronia Beach — Boronia’s cliffs. Not short on character

Some of the beach was in shadow but I had it all to myself (not a nudist in sight) as I wandered around absorbing its serenity. I discovered a manmade rock wall, quite low, just where there’s a rock platform, and I praised the cliffs for their beauty but mostly I was trying to find a way to walk to Blackmans Bay along the rocks.

There’s a small overhang below these cliffs (which are themselves full of incipient caves) and a crevice which stopped my progress. No route south, it seems, but as I walked back through the clearing I saw I now had company. Two people were walking stealthily and silently across the slope, bending down periodically to peer at the ground with torches. On their advice, I took a path that led me through a small gate, past a tap and into someone’s garden. Dead end. I turned back and discovered they had gone. Next I tried the path that led directly up the hill. It emerged through another gate (a weakness for this reserve – two gates) and onto a long dirt road, rather beautiful.

This sign reads no dogs, no cats, no camping… and people! Shut the gate!

Jindabyne Rd entrance to Boronia Beach — Jindabyne Road above the beach. Pony trap and picnic basket required.

I met a man collecting armloads of eucalyptus bark in a paddock on the other side of the road and somewhere around here the Boronia Country House Hotel once stood. Curzona Allport sketched it. You can see this print and a couple of postcards at the State Library of Tasmania. Back in the early 1900s people liked to take the ferry that docked at the Kingston Beach jetty and visit this hotel for refreshments, just like at Crayfish Point. A garden with rhododendrums and dreamy views. But I was more conscious of the cyprus pines and the casurinas that had dropped curled tendrils all over the paths, the wallabies that scattered as I made my way along the paths and evidence of middens, testifying to a pleasantly sheltered spot to light a fire and enjoy the river’s bounty before ships began coming up the river.

Easy access for scuba diving — Making like a swimming pool

Looking north to Hobart and across the river to the eastern shore. — Looking north up the Derwent River from Boronia Beach

It was only when I was heading home (through that first gate into this reserve – left open by the party of three I’d just past – that I remembered that the ornithologists had told me that Boronia Beach is the home of one of the last remaining rookeries of little penguins on the Derwent. Even the sight of that suspicious couple with their tiny torches, walking where, ethically, they should not have been, peering down burrows, risking putting their troublemaking feet right through them – even this had not triggered memory. But what I did remember more clearly was a blog post written by Mike Litzow, an Alaskan cruiser who liked visiting this beach with his family while living in Hobart for a year. Someone had not shut the gate, he wrote – and here I just have to say how sickened I am by how many gates to reserves along the Derwent I find left open. Who are these people??

I’m letting Mike tell the story of blood and carnage. His story testifies yet again to our great disconnect from nature. Here’s the link. It starts with the death of one little penguin, ends with the death of more than 20 and the comments are worth reading too.

The rookeries around the Derwent are very small and very endangered. At Boronia I’ve witnessed the gates left open, human feet trampling and, on my visit there earlier this month, people camping.

And all this is just so not okay.

Derwent River: Kingston’s Whitewater Creek: Beautiful and charismatic. Skinny, bruised and battered

April 19, 2016

Kingston Beach and Whitewater Creek

Three of us rode from the mountain to Kingston Beach, land once shared by the Mouheneer and the Nuenone but now an ever expanding suburb south of Hobart.

The rivulet track was a loose, slithery surface beneath the forest canopy, Strickland Avenue a fabulous swoop, the linear park serene, Sandy Bay Road provided a cycle lane, the Long Beach precinct a bounty of birds – swift parrots, galahs and cockatoos in the tall eucalypts, Taroona a snack and Bonnet Hill the exhilaration of views and the final descent down to Tyndall Beach. We crossed the footbridge, rode along the Esplanade and headed on to the sailing club beneath Boronia Hill.

Kingston Beach lies between Bonnet Hill and Boronia Hill and it is beautiful and charismatic. Unlike many of the pocket beaches of the Derwent that come and go with tides and the seasons and are hidden away down side roads, it’s a focal point. It has a eucalypt lined esplanade, a road running past it, beachside houses and a small but popular café strip.

The beach lies open to Storm Bay, staring it straight in the face like an ocean beach and small waves lure people into the water even on some of the coldest days. The fetch is wide here and as Sydney to Hobart yacht races are often lost or won on this last stretch up the fickle Derwent, it pays to know the way landforms shape the flow of wind and water.

The beach has its offshoot, Tyndalls Beach, running below Alum Cliffs, it has Browns River, arriving from its source on the mountain, visible in the background, by way of the Summerleas Rd valley as well as via Vincents Rivulet that flows along Proctors Road beneath Albion Heights. And it is a generous urban stretch of blond sand that stops at a rock platform where the sailing club is based, just below the headland of Boronia Hill.

Tyndall, Brown's and Kingston Beach — Brown’s River separates the beach into two. Kingston Beach is on the right

But I’m interested in things less obvious and so to ponder the beach and its environment I went walking with my canine companions, down a path whose sign I’d previously ignored.

If Kingston Beach is the beautiful extrovert in the room, then the myriad of rivulets in its hinterland are shy and unassuming – Fisher, Coffee, Dunns Creek and the like. Whitewater Creek, while actually bearing signage and showing evidence of community adoption, is mysterious, and on first appearance gives every impression of being the skinny, bruised and battered victim in the corner.

We walked beside it from the Summerleas Road entry point, across a small bridge where, curiously, the rivulet goes two separate ways, and followed its leftward flow until we reached the entrance to an underpass, where signs amongst planted native vegetation explained that the pool in front of me was part of Kingston’s stormwater treatment plan. But the walk was desultory. Running behind houses on one side and the weed-choked creek on the other, it struck me that if there was an emergency number you could dial for a creek then I would be ringing it. Even the dogs seemed subdued. This was no path for an uplifting walk, I decided, but I would come back and ride it.

The next day I was back with my bicycle and the stretch we had walked (seemingly flat) turned out to be a long, descending gradient. With the wind at my back I was through that ugly underpass in no time at all, and continued my descent into Kingston.

And this was where Whitewater Creek showed me a different face. That stormwater pool was the first of many and when I crossed the highway and cycled down a path I’d never noticed before, I found myself weaving around a series of beautiful ponds, happily enveloped in flourishing native vegetation that local birds, including Tassie hens, were enjoying. There were sculptures, but most heart-warming was that the Kingston community was taking creative and active steps to make sure that the water spilling out of the creek and into Brown’s River was clean when it got there. I thought about poor, filthy, Sandy Bay rivulet. If only it, too, had this sort of support. Was there not scope for a small stormwater pool to be created somewhere along its urban extent?

I stopped for an ice cream at a café on the beach, then rode back into the wind and through the ponds and under the highway to the point where the creek diverged.

The rivulet and the track crossed Summerleas Road and I figured I must be headed towards the Fork in the Road. Tassie hens, a curious horse and browsing cattle turned out to be more visible than the rivulet itself, particularly as the path began to climb and close in on the highway. Beside a bridge it veered right and dropped me on to Spring Farm Road but I remained puzzled. All the other rivulets I’ve encountered take the most efficient course to the estuary but this wayward rivulet seemed to be having it both ways, travelling across country into the Blackmans Bay catchment.

I discovered that Whitewater Creek has a deep and ancient secret as the Mines Department discovered when surveying for a dam on its upper reaches in the 1970s. They discovered back in the there Tertiary era, far below the present horizon, another creek flowed beneath it in a ‘buried valley filled with sand, clay and gravel’. They traced it to Pritchards Road where it joined with an eastern tributary valley discovered in 1969. From here the water flowed south through the saddle between Doctors and Little Parks Hills (new names to me) down to North West Bay.

Well, who’d have thought?

‘From what had been up to this date strictly a dam site investigation widened in an attempt to trace the main Tertiary valley south to North West Bay and the two tributary valleys upstream into the two reservoir areas of the proposed dam sites on Whitewater Creek (Dept of Mines, 1979).’

Apart from learning a little more about the geology and geography behind Kingston Beach, I discovered the importance of geological surveys before you build a dam – leakage can be caused by an unfriendly geological substrate, like the faults this area is full of, and can render your dam useless.

I turned to my maps and saw that flowing south, it meets up with Boddys Rivulet to bring life to Leslie Vale, before flowing ultimately into North West Bay. Here were secrets I hadn’t known but now the course of the rivulets down from the mountain and the remnant vegetation around Brown’s River inform my view of what this landscape once looked like.

Brown’s River: the view north, an indicator of the forests and wetlands that once inhabited the floodplain behind the beach

Source: Tasmania. Dept of Mines. 1979. Whitewater Creek dam sites, Kingston and the Tertiary channels of the Kingston-Margate area. (Geological Survey ; Paper No. 3)

Tasmanian Beaches: Exploring the Coast on Foot, by Bicycle, Kayak and Sail

Tag: Hobart