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A West Coast wilderness wonderland
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THERE’S a lazy 3500 kilometres between Tasmania’s West Coast and the Kimberley in Australia’s far north-west. Temperatures are a bit brisker down this way, too.
Temperatures are a bit brisker down this way, too. But that didn’t stop beach lovers Letitia Wilkie and Garry Sullivan leaving their jobs at Voyages El Questro Wilderness Park on the eastern edge of the Kimberley and taking on the challenges of tourism operations at Corinna. ‘‘We’re both hard working and love a challenge,’’ Ms Wilkie said, before excusing herself to make sure that other diners in the Tarkine Hotel’s Tannin restaurant are being looked after. Early next morning we are leaving Corinna and stop to take photos of the Fatman Barge bringing mine workers across the Pieman. Driving the barge is Ms Wilkie. It’s easy to talk the talk of hard work but before our eyes is evidence of the broad range of skill required to run a multi-faceted tourism operation. Take the Tarkine Hotel —four of the old miners’ cottages are still available for the truly nostalgic, there’s an old guest house but the biggest change down Corinna way has come in the form of 14 wilderness retreats. These are new cottages built to look old school and they back on to Tarkine rainforest. So close, in fact, that when I spot a pademelon at the front, she doesn’t have far to travel back into the bush when she eventually tires of my closer-andcloser photography. Ms Wilkie and Mr Sullivan have driven an eco-friendly philosophy through their management of Corinna. Generators support solar power for much of the power needs of the site. Despite the rustic, eco-friendly style you can still rely on Corinna for a hot shower, gas refrigerator and gas hotplates. Each cottage retreat collects tank water from clouds that haven’t touched land for 20,000 kilometres. It’s good stuff. They ask guests to take their rubbish with them to ‘‘help us achieve our position of being truly carbon neutral and minimising our footprint on this precious part of the planet’’. Bushwalkers have been taking the carry-it-in carry-itout approach to rubbish for ages but this is the first hotel I’ve seen employ the technique. There are no televisions, no hairdryers, no toasters and people desperate for mobile phone coverage are encouraged to take the 25-minute walk up ‘‘Telstra Hill’’ where they can pick up the outside world. It’s a seriously green approach that has seen Corinna full during high season. Plaudits have flowed from travel television teams and national print media. ‘‘To get Corinna on the map was our goal,’’ Ms Wilkie said. There are also fabulous activities around Corinna. The most obvious is the cruise up the Pieman on the Arcadia II, a 17-metre Huon pine boat put together in 1939. Kayaking, canoeing, fishing and bushwalks can all be organised from the hotel but we have time for none of these and push on north, up the Western Explorer. This road is surprising. It starts with a surface of silica tailings near Corinna and varies from gravel to bitumen as it winds through some wonderfully varied territory. From thick rainforest to open grassland to bushfire-scarred plains, we cross Savage River and Lindsay River and see two wallabies and 11 ground parrots on our journey north. The proposed, controversial $25 million Tarkine Loop Road is further to the north, its future recently clouded by the Federal Government decision to list the Tarkine Road on the National Heritage Register. There’s something about controversial roads in this area. In the 1980s, when the Western Explorer was being built, the media dubbed it the ‘‘road to nowhere’’. It leads to Corinna. That’s not nowhere. Just far from anywhere. ABOUT CORINNA— Rooms start at $130 a night for an original miners’ cottage to $229 for the twobedroom eco retreats. See www.corinna.com.au |
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