Bruny Island

We had an uneventful week in Hobart, a fine city with spectacular views from near by Mt Wellington. Unfortunately the weather was miserable.

Harrison flew back to Melbourne for the Labour Day weekend. We booked on line with Tiger Air and arrived at Hobart Airport were he boarded the plane and left for Melbourne. He was to return, on the same ticket on Tuesday Morning but I received a frantic call from him," dad they won't let me on the plane"!......at first I thought he had lost his ticket but this was not the problem.

The reception person at Melbourne would not talk to me, refusing to touch his phone..............................Harrison was not getting on the plane because I hadn't signed a form of Indemnity. He told them no one had asked us to sight when he took off from Hobart .................correct.

Finally I had to drive to the Hobart Airport, negotiate with them and then fax an Indemnity form. It was all a bit stressful.

In any case we got back together and decided to stay in Hobart until his school documents arrived before we left for Bruny Island.

"Bruny" is a large island about a half hour drive and half hour ferry trip south of Hobart.
The ferry takes all kinds of vehicle, buses, caravans etc. and I had read that the islands had some of the best beach camping in Tasmania. In any case we arrived to more rain and a strong wind.

We camped at Captain Cook Adventure Bay Caravan Park, opposite the beach, a well maintained clean park. The bay is quiet beautiful with towering gums edging to white sand, rocky edges and clear blue-green water.

The owners of the park, Chris and Jenny also run a fishing charter so the next morning we took off at 8am with a couple of other people to watch fish throw them selves onto our hooks.

It was ridiculous. I dropped a line and as it was going down the 40 metres to the bottom Chris said I think you've got a fish. "No" I said I'm still letting out line. Sure enough I pulled it in with not one but two large cod hooked. And so for the next hour it was like that. Harrison caught THREE FISH on two hooks ...........a smaller fish being swallowed by a larger cod.

We caught cod, sea perch, mullet and the occasional squid plus others that I cant remember the name of. We them moved close into the bay and caught flathead. I've never cooked squid before but it was not too bad.

In the afternoon we drove to the "capital" of Bruny, Alonnah and on to Lunawanna, a loop of roads and tracks.

In 1773 Tobias Furneaux discovered and named Adventure Bay; four years before Captain Cook stayed in the bay for two days. The island itself however is named after the French explorer Bruni d'Entrecasteaux who explored the Channel region in 1792. It was known as Bruni Island until 1918, when the spelling was changed to Bruny. The island has a population of about 600 permanent residents.

The aboriginal name for the island was Lunawanna-Alonnah.

Alonnah was a small village with a general store (closed), pub (the only on on the island) and a couple of state Gov offices. It was a disappointment so on to Lunawanna, the big difference being no offices or pub but the small general store was open...................It looks like the attractions of adventure Bay are out stripping the less aesthetic side of the island.

We grabbed a burger at the general store and set of aided by the GPS to Cloudy Bay then back towards Adventure Bay.

The GPS said turn right up Conley Road which quickly went from a graded dirt road to a rough loggers track and after about 15 minutes we arrived at what appeared to be the end of the road, a deserted logging camp.

Main Road Adventure Bay

The GPS insisted that we continue straight through the camp of stacked logs and a bulldozer but we could not find the track save for a cutting in a verge.

We got out and walked the cutting for about 100 metre and found the track again with water, ruts and mud, but by now we were committed.
It was a very rough track full of old ruts from the logging trucks, rocky and narrow but the GPS said keep going.

After about 10 minutes in low gear 4x4 we stoped and looked at a wide water filled trench very muddy and impassable with out getting wet. We could not go back so on we went.

Half way through the land rover was at 45 degrees leaning into the water and we were bogged.........the water was slowly seeping under the door frame on Harrison's side. We climbed out the drivers side and sure enough we were bogged up half way to the passenger side door with water and no grip on the driver side wheels. A few sware words and laughing followed.

After trying to rock the car backwards and forwards we could see it was just getting worse.

THANK GOD for a bull bar and winch. We hooked the winch to tree one and moved forward a little then tree two. finally we got close enough to a large gum and working as a team, Harrison on the winch and me driving we pulled to land rover out onto a small clearing. We were wet, muddy and excited, it was great fun.