Cruising to Wineglass Bay

While Jeanne, Annapurna and Eileen got from Coles Bay to Wineglass Bay the hard way, Jeanne's parents (Jim and Cathy) and I got there by boat. The walk sounded strenuous and the cruise sounded quite civilized.

We got to the dock in plenty of time and waited around while the crew got things ready. This involved

  1. pulling a wire basket of oysters out of the water and loading it on the boat for later consumption. They like their seafood fresh in this part of the world.
  2. making sure the boat was sea-worthy and doing all the usual sea captain things.
  3. chasing sticks.
Rastus was the crew member responsible for stick-chasing: I imagine from his coloring and sheep-dog crouch when waiting for a stick that he had some border collie in him. His main responsibility on board was to bark whenever he spotted dolphins. I don't imagine he had to be trained for that job - he seemed like the kind of dog who would sense what was required in that situation instinctively.

So we all got on board and settled down in the seats. Jim and Cathy moved up front where the chairs were protected from the elements but I knew from past experience on whale-watching expeditions that I would want the full benefit of spray in my face if I wanted to enjoy this junket so I sat in the back where the wind blew unencumbered. Our guide was a woman named Gemma and she explained where we were going and what we would be seeing.

Here:

is a map of the course we followed (the route labelled The Full Wineglass), around the Freycinet Peninsula, through the Schouten Passage, north to Wineglass Bay, and then back the way we came.

Our first stop along the way was at Refuge Island, where a whaling captain named Hazzard apparently wrecked some time in the late 1700s and had to cross over the Peninsula to get help. There are several interesting points about this story. First, Hazzard was apparently African-American, at a time when (at least I imagine) opportunities for seafaring African-Americans were scarce. His crossing is thought to have been the first on foot across the Peninsula, and his name has since been attached to the big pink granite mountains that form its backbone. I haven't been able to verify any of this information, even with the whole internet at my disposal (except for the bit about the Hazzards being named after somebody named Hazzard and not because they are particularly risky places) but it's certainly interesting.

Anyway, we looked at the scenery, which was breathtakingly beautiful. (I'd insert a photo here but Jeanne had the camera, so you'll have to look at her blog entry to see the pretty pix.) Sheer rock cliffs, the desolate cries of lonely sea birds. Keep in mind that if you kept going south from there, the first landmass you'd hit would be Antarctica.

We saw a bunch of other cool things on the way to Wineglass. There was a tree that had the nest of a white-bellied sea eagle in it. We all looked at it, trying to see the eagle that was sitting on the nest. I had my binoculars but didn't have much hope of seeing it, but even the other people around me were straining to distinguish it - one wag suggested the nest had been constructed by Parks and Wildlife Tasmania. Further along, there were several underwater caverns in a row. One of them was more of a tunnel, you could see light coming in from the other end but the others burrowed into the heart of the Peninsula and it was not known where, or if, they returned to the sea.

After the sea caverns is when things started to look a little grimmer for me. We were more out in the open ocean at this point (all right, not exactly open, but the sea was definitely throwing a bit of its weight around) when somebody spotted a seal. And no, it wasn't Rastus, he might be a bit of a dolphin-specialist - there is a theory that he can hear the dolphins' ultrasonic calls to each other, which maybe seals don't make. Anyway, as soon as the seal was spotted, they cut the engines so we could watch and, as I remembered from my voyage to watch the whales in Massachusetts, cutting the engines to look at something in the water is guaranteed to make me notice how the horizon is swinging and pitching and what-have-you. I settled myself on one of the benches and closed my eyes. I've seen seals before; I could skip this one.

Eventually, we started up again and made our way to Wineglass Bay. It's absolutely beautiful. I could go on about how beautiful it is, how clear the water, how unspoiled the whole thing looks. But (a) I couldn't do it justice and (b) Gemma told us a few stories to kind of take the unspoiled-wilderness edge off the picture. Apparently, in the old days when Tasmania was a whaling center rather than a tourist destination, Wineglass Bay was the perfect place to drag your dead whale and butcher it. The name Wineglass derives not only from the shape of the bay but the fact that when the whalers were busy, the whole bay would fill with blood and look like a glass of red wine. If you peek over the edge of the boat, you can see masses of what looks like kelp here and there in the water. While it is indeed kelp, it is kelp clumped around the bones of dead whales. I guess the bay is still dotted with whale remnants from years ago and the kelp likes to grow on them. From time to time a storm will blow some of the bones ashore and you can see for yourself just how big-boned whales are.

We anchored at Wineglass Bay and they handed out refreshments. Captain's biscuits and Tasmanian cheddar cheese with native pepper in it (quite good). Champagne and good Tasmanian apple juice. And Duncan, the captain, shucked the oysters they'd brought aboard, which, it turned out, were from the Freycinet Marine Farm just down the road. I didn't trust my stomach to seafood at that point but Jim and Cathy assured me that they were outstanding oysters. Rastus waited patiently on the edge of the deck while we snacked, then came and cleaned up the crumbs after we were finished.

We looked ashore to see if we could see Jeanne and the girls but there weren't very many people visible and they were all strangers.

On the way back to Coles Bay we saw some amazing birds. Flocks and flocks of mutton-birds (shearwaters) on their annual migration from Siberia to Tassie. They were an important food source for the local aboriginal people and, as you might guess from their name, for the early European settlers. We also saw an albatross - a very very large bird. Absolutely amazing.

It's an amazing spot altogether. The beauty of it beggars the imagination, or, at any rate, my vocabulary. After we returned and had lunch (for which I was surprisingly hungry) Jim and Cathy and I did a short drive up to the Cape Tourville Lighthouse for more views, including some of Wineglass Bay in the distance. None of us said very much. After a while, it sounds stupid to keep mentioning that the sea is very blue and the cliffs are very steep and the Hazzards have a striking sort of pinkness. Then we got back in the car to go and meet Jeanne and the girls for dinner.