Those Roaring Forties - famed in this region

So the morning dawns wet and windy. Roaring forties is isn't but it is more blustery than yesterday. The whitecaps are dancing in the bay in front of our unit. And the exposed front of the motel units are being showered with salt-laden air blown in from the water over the low bushes that have also succumbed to the stiff breeze. Certainly explains the rusting on outdoor furniture and window and door frames.

The motel has a tired, defeated air. Planter boxes outside each room have plants that are clinging stubbornly to life. Just. The rooms are clean, we have met the cleaner both days - she is pleasant and seems efficient, but everything is being done on a tight budget. The motel has a For Sale sign, but any buyer will be knocking down the dollars for sure. The 'accessible' room that we have been allocated is nothing of the sort. There has been a token effort - handrails have been added to the toilet and shower but the facilities themselves are not accessible - it would meet any standard inspection.

It has a comfortable bed, but when you see all the schmick advertising for King Island this is not what you expect.

In fact, King Island has not been anything like what we expected. There is beauty here, a rugged defiant beauty. The land is under considerable strain. When we tell people we are from Queensland, they beg us to send the rain this way. The land is in drought and looks like it has been for some time. Its yellow and dry and the incessant wind is eroding areas where uncounted heads of cattle have walked the same path one after another time after time. There are not a lot of large trees, there are stands of paper-barks and stringy mulga with the odd white gums that shed their shards so that they drape on the bushy undergrowth. When we drive through wooded areas there is enough ti-tree that you can smell it on the air.

Gen goes down to the Bakery to buy Egg and Bacon Rolls for breakfast and adds cheddar to each and avocado to hers. They are delicious. Freshly made on lovely soft long rolls with crusty semolina tops. They are too big for me to finish, but only because of the generosity of the fillings. And the coffee is good. And strong. Mmmm.

We have decided to take a look at the south of the island today. We head out towards Grassy (grassy what, afterall, it is usually an adjective) and take a detour to see the Calcified Forest. Remembering what we were told by the car rental agent, if its on the map, its okay. So we confidently set down the gravel road. Now, the same rental agent also told us that the map is not accurate. As we lose GPS on Gen's phone, we also learnt that this statement is very very true. Distances are approximations only and roads are not marked accurately - like listed once when there are two entrqances, like distances not being anywhere near correct - kind of helps to explain why so many ships hit the rocks - the directions are shite, and have been so for hundreds of years! But the outcome of not being where you think you are is that you are more likely to have an adventure!

We head off on what we think is Seal Rocks Road, and later turned out it was Seal River Road. The road (read bush track) gets sandy. Gen tenses up and I tell her to breathe. Let the car find its own way. We finally end up at a locked gate and the track abruptly stops. So we turn around and go back to the junction, only then realising that we mis-read the sign and have travelled down Seal River Road, not Seal Rocks Road. We continue on what is now the correct road, gravel but much better than the bush track we have just left. We work out that we have been down to the Colliers Swamp Conservation Area, getting as far as Big Lake. Our plan had been to visit the Calcified Forest just near Seal Roacks. Nearing the correct site, we see a new(ish) Parks and Wildlife sign announcing that we have indeed arrived at the Calcified Forest! Well, we have arrived at the carpark.

As I mentioned earlier, the map is at best a mud map, the signs are just as contradictory!  One sign says 630m each way and the other says 1.5 km return. While my maths might have once been questionable, even can calculate that the two figures differ by 240m. Not a big deal normally, but to me it most definitely IS a big deal. I had said to Gen this morning that I would have a go at walking the track - it is graded a 2 - easy, but not wheelchair friendly. Just after leaving the carpark we are met with the first of the uphill sections. Now, remember that the base landform here is one of dunes. And dunes travel (might explain the dicsrepancy in the length) but these are well stabilised dunes with grasses, mulga, ti-tree and the odd gum. Up hill, down hill we walk. And again, and again. In steeper parts, the path has been compacted with light gravel and edging boards, but overall it is very sandy. We have been walking for about 30 minutes with Gen leading the way and pausing every 40 - 50m to turn back and check that I am still following. Its about now that my legs are heading for jelly, as I said, an easy walk compounded by the sand. We see yet another hill so Gen suggests that I wait a minute while she pushes forward to see how much further it is. she is back quickly to announce tht the walk ends just over the next hill BUT it ends at a 100m walk across loose sand before you reach a timber viewing platform. With timber steps that begin with a large step from soft sand. Disappointed was not the word either of us use. There is now way that I can do this safely. So Gen pushes on to climb the platform and get some photos, while I turn to walk slowly back to the car. Now, natue is a strange beast - there is a small swallow on the path ahead of me. We chirp away together as I plod on. About 30m ahead, it hops ahead of me, stopping frequently to make sure I'm still with him. My own light avian guide!

I get to the car about 4 minutes before Gen and am happy to stop, leaning against the dusty car to catch my breath. Too bad I didn't think to get one of the bananas or the water we are carrying from Gen before we parted! She's back before I know it and we both have a well-earned drink, draining the water-bottle dry. Sitting back in the car, we eat our bananas and are set to leave when another car arrives. Out hops a lady who takes a pack out. Booted up, pack on her back, I am sure that she was better suited to take that walk and even if it was a 1.5km return walk, it probably only felt like 1260m to her! Still I'm proud of myself. I would have walked just over a kilometre - the best I've done in a long time and even a low-graded walk, I can't help but think that if an anthropologist were to walk that path today, they would probably scratch their head and at our tracks (how do you explain a perfectly round small indent alongside my footprint?!

We still haven't reached Grassy (grassy what??) so decide to give Surprise Bay where another boat was wrecked. Back to Pearshape - yes, that is the name of a locality here -settlers obviously had a sense of humour - can't believe that they have named an area Snodgrass - a favourite Goon character of Michaels! We get to Grassy - the second largest settlement on the Island and is laid out in a more ordered grid pattern. Still very tired looking, there is evidence of some newer construction. Lord knows what it would cost to build over here- all construction materials would need to be freighted in by barge. But for the most, it is simple weatherboard construction which weathers poorly really - it is whited-out, an outcome of inhospitable weather. The most modern building here apart from one or two swanky new-come homes, is the hospital.

Right along this coast there are countless shipwrecks. And its easy to see why. The Island itself might be sandy, but it is completely enclosed by rocky outcrops and platforms. There is another lighthouse, the main port that had been used until the 1990s to ship scheelite mined just above the port. This is a mineral used in the making of tungestan and the company will have made some tidy $ during its operation, but they have done a very poor effort to rehablilitate the land. At the point beyond the port, which is now used to live-ship beef cattle (We see one laden trailer being shipped to the wharf area) there is a Penguin colony. As it is the middle of the day, we don't bother going all the way down to it as they are nocturnal and so will only be seen at night. We want to visit the Historical Museum at Currie that is only open and manned by volunteers every second day, so today it is. It is open between 2 and 4, and its almost 2pm now.

We follow the main road back and ignore Siri when she wants us to take the scenic route. There are lots of wildlife for us to encounter on the way back, all of which like to use the roads, perhaps because it warms up during the day. We dodge wallabies, pademelons, Cape Barren Geese, domestic turkeys (gone wild) farmed geese and a myriad of birds - turn out that the Island is a bird haven with a number of hides strategically located at various sites across the island - Cecile would love it! We see eagles, hawks, thousands of finces, and of swallows, magpies on steroids, butcher birds and more black birds than there are people on the Island. We even encounter a small herd of Black Angus cattle on the road and patiently need to wait for them to decide which way they will scamper.

Like the rest of Australia, roadworks rule the activity here - there are a number of projects being funded with federal government funding displaying the all familiar signage that I know from work. And with that construction we also see a tree-feling crew - god knows why, the trees are already well back from the narrow roads.  As Gen says, "why are they knocking down our CO2 filters? Lots of newly sealed roads with loose stones. Gen drives like a pro!

We well and truly get our laugh for the day when Gen pulls alongside a gaggle of geese, oh hang on, it was a rafter of turkeys and we spend a few, minutes gobble gobbling back and forward with then. The rooster is becoming quite indignant, probably at our atrocious pronunciation, so we head off laughing before he thinks to attack us!

Finally we arrive back at Currie. We want to have a look at the King Island Museum which is manned by volunteers and only open every other day. Turns out today is the only day it will be open while we are here. It's on the edge of town just below yet another lighthouse. It's only when you get up to lighthouse levels that you can get a true appreciation for the treachery of the rocks. Close to the shore there are a myriad of rock ledges and platforms, and just past them, there are rocky outcrops where the waves break. Makes for testing photos, but I can only imagine how difficult it would be to navigate.

Turns out, the museum is the former Lighthouse Keepers house. At 8 rooms, it was definately the most substantial building in the town. It has been built to weather the weather! The walls are about a foot thick and made of sandstone. The steps up into each room is large and the floorboards are wide original timbers. The museum has one volunteer on duty.  She tells us that she contacted her friend on her way in telling her that town didn't seem busy so there was no need for her to come in as well! Turns out she was wrong and so she was kept very busy - there three other groups there at the same time as us. She was a wealth of local knowledge and passionate about the island and its people. Each room has been develop around a theme. Is it obvious that this museum has had the support of a professional catalogue service. The exhibits are well displayed and relate well to the theme of the room. Gen isn't really a museum kind of person, but here she finds enough to keep her busy while I drink in family histories and even read up a bit on some of the shipwrecks. The volunteer was saying that up until 1976 anyone could salvage from shipwrecks, but that after that it was banned. One of the visitors commented that she saw evidence of someone with a metal detector on one of the beaches this morning.

I was asking the volunteer (Val) whether there had been a resurgence of population in town, based on the ABS statistics that I read this morning. She was delighted to tell me that there had been a number of younger families with ties to the history of the Island returning, bringing much needed children - so much so that an extra teacher has been sent to the school. We have seen much evidence of young ones, but it is still the school term, so I guess they are inside mostly on weekdays.

We have booked accommodation in for dinner tonight at Boomerang By The Sea- the motel where we are staying - by all a counts it is a good restaurant and at the time of booking we see that it is operated by different people. After our visit to the museum we had gone back to our unit and I had had a sleep - that walk had done me in today!

We hear cars arrive and when we open the door just before 7 to walk around to the restaurant, the car park is full.

Up some unfriendly steps into the restaurant which is not quite full, but definitely doing a good trade. We are seated near a large picture window that in the long summer days (and with the added benefit of daylight saving a mere week ago) would have afforded a stunning view. Tonight all we see is black as the sun had set hours ago. The menu is definitely more upmarket than the pub last night but I am disappointed that there is so little seafood on offer. A friend Prue sends a message to make sure we try the King Crab - oh, if only that was a choice.

There is a tour group of 8 people in and they are all served a half crayfish each - it must have been prearranged as it is not on the menu 😳. 

We select a fried Camembert with fig and walnut jam to share as a starter, served with foccacia. Not what we expect, but much lighter and to be honest, nicer. Gen is thrilled that they have a good selection of meat choices and settles for Aged King Island Scotch Fillet, cooked blue and served with confit local potatoes, baby carrots and brocollini. I had the Prawn and Crab Papardelle - hold the chilli. It to was cooked to perfection, although a very big serve with 8 large prawns still succulent and quite a bit of Crab broken through the dish. Our preferred King Island chesse plate was sold out (what the?!) so we chose a creme brulee and a Sundae. Hard to stuff those up. Port arrived, but coffee didn't. Not quite what we expected. We both got the feeling that the main tourism market is the golfer these days - overhearing the partners of the chest-bumping golfers, we get the impression that they feel likewise.

Back to our room, down those steps (our waiter was nice enough to offer a hand) and I begin the blog. Internet coverage drops out well before I am finished so I go to bed frustrated to have lost an hours worth of wit. 😞 😞

King Island - let the food porn commence . . .

We left the Leisure Ville Holiday Centre nice and early to make sure we were at the airport with plenty of time to load the wheelchair and me.

It is quiet as we leave the accommodation and the light still early. Nothing moves quickly here and we follow a car until the town centre turnoff at about 40 kph. But the airport is only 5 minutes from the Park so we have left plenty of time. Still took a wrong turn - its a little frustrating how long it takes the GPS to catch up with your real-time location. Gosh, talk about first world problems!

The airport is fractionally smaller than Hervey Bay. Yet is it welcoming, friendly and efficient. The first real surprise is the cost of parking - first couple of hours free then $2 per hour. For longer periods, the price drops dramatically. 3 days or part thereof is going to cost us the princely sum of $12! The next surprise was that at 8am the coffee shop opened and the regular travellers, complete with business suits and laptops all queue for their regular. 

There are two planes on the tarmac. A Sharp Airlines Metroliner that is our plane for King Island and a Rex Airlines plane. I guess it is heading for either Hobart or perhaps Melbourne. They advise us that they will board us first before other passengers. I took one look at the steps up into the plane - there was no way I could manage them, and there was no guide rail, rather just a rope on either side, We book the wheelchair on as luggage - Sharp have one to take me out to the plane and once there they wheel out a manual lift which I walk on to and they manually crank me up. It feels like I am going to be higher than the plane itself! Once at my regal height, the 'lift' is wheeled the remaining 6 feet to the plane and once the lip is inside the plane, it is lowered so that there is no gap for me to trip on. "Mind your head ma'am" I am advised as a set of hands guides me from behind and another pair welcomes me in to the plane. 

We were surprised to see the plane already half-filled. Wow, this must be the plane from Launceston. It carries a total OF 15 passengers and two pilots. Configuration of seven rows of one seat on either side of the aisle plus one row of three at the very rear, adjacent to the divider from the freight half of the plane. Gen and I have two seats 7B and 7C in that back row. We assume that there is no-one in 7A and have to make a mad scramble when a lady, obviously a regular passenger walks down. She insists that she is fine to sit in the centre seat, but thankfully for us (and her) the co-pilot suggests that we would all be more comfortable if she moved to the other single spare seat on the plane. Without request, he brings a seatbelt extender and says that he didn't want Gen to feel like she was being strangled for the entire flight! 

After a short safety briefing which entailed an explanation on how to fit a life vest, and how to plug in to the oxygen supply if advised - none of this masks dropping from the bulkhead. There are quiet giggles when I ask if the life vests are all new "Never used" was his quick reply! The taxi out to the runway perimeter seems to take forever. Gen is not the best of fliers and this plane will be the smallest either of us have flown in. She tenses, eyes shut and fists tightly clenched as we roar down the runway and lift into the blue yonder. Today however, it is the white yonder, not blue as there is almost 8/8 cloud cover. Disappointing as I was hoping to get some nice photos of the Tasmanian coast as we flew over, and then of King Island on our approach. The cloud is slowly peeling back from the coast as the rest of the area around Wynyard comes to life. They cling on lingering in valleys. 

We reach cruising altitude not too far from Wynyard and from then on, we have a blanket of rolling white below us. The clouds look and behave much like waves with very distinct peaks and troughs. They look snug and cuddly. The light is short - 30 minutes, so its almost a case of as soon as we reach cruising altitude, we are beginning our descent! Gen again gets very tense as we come down through the cloud layer - this is the one bumpy bit on the flight. 

I am not sure what I was expecting King Island to look like, but it wasn't this. The land is flatter than I imagine - I mean there are hills, but looking from above, it is clear to me that these are stabilised dunes. There are a million small lakes/ponds/dams. And everything is so dry. The landscape is shades of yellow and light green as opposed to the lush green palette that I had been expecting. Before long, we have touched down and are taxiing to the gate. Gen and I wait on board while all the other passengers alight and then Gen walks ahead of me to the plane door. She alights and I am left at the top of the steps. A lift is being wheeled out - this one motor driven as opposed to the one in Wynyard. Once it is aligned with the door again I step onto it and they lower it ever so gently. I get the feeling that this is not used too often! I am happy to help them all hone their skills 😉. Seeing my wheelchair being unloaded, Gen suggests that we just use ours. Off we head for the terminal, Gen pushing me, me holding the ctutches, Gen also wheeling our carry-on luggage that had been booked as freight and the co-pilot wheeling the lift.

We are back in the land of tourism appreciation. "You are very welcome" is the catchphrase that we are greeted with at every point again. The young lady at the hire car desk at the airport is cheerful and confident. She explains the rules - if the road isn't marked on the map, then the insurance won't cover it. Unsealed roads are fine. so long as it is marked on the map! There is a network of sealed roads and about twice as many unsealed!

King Island is not large at a mere 1,098 sq. kms. But it is the largest island in the New Year Group and the second largest in Bass Strait, between northern Tasmania and southern Victoria. There are three main towns - centrally located Currie (the largest and centre of the Island's administration), Grassy in the south and Pegarah on the east coastline. Once we have the car organised, we decide to drive into Currie, 9kms from the airport to have some brunch. The King Island Bakehouse is renowned, so its here we head.

Gen is ecstatic. Our hire care is a Nissan X-Trail. She sits higher than in the Lancer. While the inside capacity is the same, just the fact that it has a bit more 'grunt' makes her happy. I'm pleased for her! King Island has more than its per sq. km allocation of things to see and do. And that first stop for us is the Bakehouse. They are known throughout Tasmania  for their pies. We are standing looking at their menu board when the attendant asks what we want. "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" was my first reply that got a giggle. I really want to try their crayfish pie before we leave here, but fear that it will be too rich at this time of the day. So we settle for plain beef pies, a mini pecan tart and a slice of (sublime) honey cinnamon roulade. Plus a coffee each. we sit inside, out of the wind and slowly savour those morsels of local goodness.

Hunger dealt with we decide to drive north toward Cape Wickham. We start out on the sealed road, but its not too long before "Ooh, that sounds interesting" gets the better of me and we head onto gravel roads. We head for Quarantine Bay where there are the wrecks of four ships in the area. We travel through rolling dunes, miles and miles and miles of them. We see large herds of hereford and black angus bulls. Hundreds to the hectare, literally. I can't believe the load per hectare. It is maybe 100% more than I have ever seen before. The birdlife is amazing. There are flocks of paired Cape Barron Geese, more blackbirds than anywhere else - and they are HUGE. Then there are the domesticated geese being farmed, pheasants that take flight as we pass them. Millions of tiny wrens and swallows flock together in murmurations sweeping through the sky all around us. We saw a solitary eagle soaring on the thermals before diving to some prey we could not see. There was a peacock and two peahens dashing into the briar, turkeys being fatted and the ever-present seagulls - the common white ones as well as the brown Pacific gulls. Yes, King Island is a bird haven. There are a number of hides across the island and April is devoted to a birdwatching and monitoring program.

Moving on we are still driving north - its not far, but the roads need to be driven carefully and slowly. We pass the King Island Dairy, home to the wonderful King Island Cheeses, and we vow to have lunch here on our return trip. Finally we reach Cape Wickham and the Cape Wickham Lighthouse, home to Australia's tallest lighthouse, built in 1861 and then automated in the 1920s. It sends its light far out into the inky depths to the west of Tasmania and was built in response to the numerous ships that had crashed into the rocks of King Island. Initially it caused further sinkings when captains mistook the lighthouse for one on the southern point of Victoria and then turning south and sailing straight into treacherous rocks. Gen takes a walk along the beach and we sit for half an hour, just taking it all in.

Our hunger gets the better of us and we turn south back to the King Island Dairy. The cheese tasting and history building is quiet with only one other couple there. We opt for the cheese tasting - a sample of six of their cheeses: Three Rivers Triple Cream Brie, Victoria Cove Smoked Camembert,  Lighthouse Blue Brie, Endeavour Gorgonzola Style Blue, Surprise Bay Cheddar and Stokes Point Smoked Cheddar. I discovered that I do like (good) blue cheese and Gen is finally developing a palate for cheese (yay!). We also had a Baked Brie with walnuts, thyme and local (manuka) honey. Oh it was so good. we bought some souvenirs and have sent some cheese home. We will host a cheese tasting when we get home - better let us know if you want an invitation! In order to get them home, we rush back to Currie so that we can make the post. Our parcel will be kept refrigerated until it leaves the Island! Guess we aren't the first to do this.

The afternoon is drawing to a close, so we head to check in to our accommodation. Boomerang By the Sea. Set on the edge of a cliff with views out over a rocky cove we hold high hopes. Not fully dashed, but this property is very quiet and looks very tired. There are three rooms being checked in today - we know this because there is a sign on the reception door with our names and room numbers, and the advice that keys are in the doors! Talk about trusting! However, we know that there is at least one policeman on the Island because he was eating his morning snack at the same time as us in the bakery this morning - and its not easy to flee the island!! Still, the room is clean and the bathroom is accessible. Turns out Monday night is everyone's night off with the exception of Wild Harvest - the paddock to plate restaurant in Grassy. We phone expectantly, but they are booked out all month. So we head down to the King Island Hotel for dinner tonight. Very pub food, my Schnitzel was tasty with herbs and cheese in the crumb and Gen's Eye Fillet was cooked to perfection - blue but not leaking blood! She was happy. She was going to have vegetables instead of the house salad but at an extra $6 she decided no. Its easy to understand, we saw potatoes at $5.8/kg, mandarins at $15/kg and capsicum was $16.6/kg. Turns out, vegetables are at a premium here!

Day 1 of 3 done, we are tired and heading for bed. Tomorrow we will head to the south to Grassy and a Calcified Forest. Sleep well.