Travelways

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On the less travelled trail

WITH our tent pitched on soft sand, surrounded by caves and a moat, we look to the inviting swell rolling in from the south. By 3pm it's 24 degrees so we do some body surfing and give the sweaty walking gear a wash at the same time. Wilderness laundry, says walking companion Dane Flynn, as a I lay out my shirt on the sand near soggy socks and boots. The next stage is the moment I've been anticipating for weeks. I've always harboured a hope that one day I'd find some secluded bay with pre-European levels of marine life. A piscatorial El Dorado. A crayfish cornucopia. Lots of underwater stuff. This bay, somewhere to the west of New Harbour, is the first test site for this optimistic theory. The first snorkelling expedition doesn't reveal much: I pick up a big abalone but the swell is pushing us around a bit and although the fish life is all right I don't see any of the varieties, trumpeter, magpie perch or leatherjacket, that would do for supper. I'm looking under huge branches of bull kelp for crayfish but see little sign. The water off Tassie's north coast has been unseasonably cool and way down this southern tip it's quite bracing. We stay in for about 40 minutes but then need to get out, dry off and put on some warm clobber. It's a beautiful spot for doing little. We have the bay to ourselves until two couples arrive and camp in among the gum trees about 100 metres around the corner behind us. We have a chat about quolls and devils but for most of the evening we hardly know they are there. Flynny and I polish off the rest of our wine, reduce cream of onion soup around the sliced abalone and talk about important man topics, such as work, raising children and whether Dr Who will ever have an offsider with big breasts. We also embark on a twilight safari to see if the beach draws nocturnal creatures but our timing must be out. Instead, we take the time to notice the bright lights of the southern sky and I wish, once again, that I could remember to bring a stargazing guidebook along on a bushwalk. Tuesday arrives with a different sky. Light drizzle is falling but that most defining of natural elements, the wind, has yet to fire a salvo. That's what the wild south-west of Tasmania is most famous for. Wind. But our trip has been tranquil. Our plan for Tuesday is to maintain our camp but walk west with a daypack and it's just as well because my body was about to rebel against further exertions. We toddle off before 9am and before long find a bootwash station on the track. Here westward walkers wash boggy boots to prevent the spread of the root-rot disease, Phytophthora. This track is heavily overgrown and we are constantly walking through cobwebs and brushing past undergrowth. At last, it's starting to feel like we are moving into rare country where the human footprint is scarcely visible. But there's a surprise in store.