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) 

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?

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

See also On the Convict Trail

And Beach Stories, for life at the old Pilot Station