Day 108 - Heritage Cruise of MacQuarie Harbour & Gordon River, South West Wilderness National Park, Tasmania, Australia

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Thursday 5th March 2014. Heritage Cruise of MacQuarie Harbour & Gordon River, Strahan, Tasmania, Australia

We had a cup of tea in our cabin and walked down to the jetty in Strahan. The boat was called The Eagle. We collected our boarding passes and went straight to our allocated seats inside the lower cabin. The Eagle is a fast, quiet, spacious and environmentally designed cruise ship for the Gordon River. The hull and engine design ensure minimal impact to the pristine wilderness, whilst the interior
features create the best possible experience for passengers. There were interpretive facilities including maps, photographs and guidebooks and plenty of deck space to enjoy the freshest air. Once we had set off we managed to bag a couple of prime seats at the back out of the wind.

We sailed off towards the mouth MacQuarie Harbour which is known as Hells Gates (the narrow entry to Macquarie Harbour named by the convicts on their way to the 'Hell on Earth' of Sarah Island). The harbour is named after Scottish Major General Lachlan Macquarie, 5th Governor of New South Wales. This body of water is six times the size of Sydney Harbour. We cruised up towards Hells Gates passing Bonnet Island, to our starboard, which has a lighthouse. We took some pictures as we cruised past. On the port side the mainland had many posh holiday homes which are only accessible by water.

The King River which cuts through the West Coast Range and the Gordon River empty into Macquarie Harbour. Hell's Gates has hazardous tidal currents - hence its name. Outside of the Harbour the entrance area is known as Macquarie Heads, and the most western point is Cape Sorell. The sheer volume of fresh water that pours into the Harbour through the rivers, combined with the narrow exit result in barometric tides. When there is rain in the mountains surrounding the Harbour, the tide rises, and it falls when the atmospheric pressure reverses and results in less rain.

We went through Hells Gates passing Entrance Island, which also has a lighthouse, to our starboard. Once out of the harbour we could feel the swell. We were now out in the roaring forties and the boat was rocking and rolling (which M loves). We cruised south towards Cape Sorrell which also has a lighthouse, which is the second highest in the Southern Hemisphere.

We returned through Hells Gates which is a notoriously shallow and dangerous channel entrance to the harbour. The actual channel is between Macquarie Heads on the west and Entrance Island on the east (the main length of the harbour runs southeast of Hells Gates). There is a wider area of water between Entrance Island and Macquarie Head, but it is too shallow to get a boat over. When we looked at Hells Gates from outside the harbour we could see Entrance Island on the left, with the Bonnet Island lighthouse visible in the distance. We could also clearly see the wider channel which is too shallow to navigate in a boat.

Once back inside the harbour we cruised past Liberty Point to the fish farms. The skipper of the boat also owned one of these farms so he was very knowledgeable. Here there were aquaculture pens stocked with thousands of Atlantic salmon and Ocean trout. Atlantic salmon are raised in inland hatcheries then transferred to floating pens like those we could see in Macquarie Harbour, where they grow to market size. Commercial farming of Atlantic Salmon only began in Tasmania in the mid-1980s and is now worth more than $150 million a year. Tasmania grows the only farmed salmon in the world that does not require treatment to remove impurities (so the skipper said anyway). Fish farms in the centre of the harbour produce over 9000 tonnes of fish. Incidentally, a coal seam runs under the water and the shores contain some of the oldest plant fossils ever found.

After the fish farms we headed for Sarah Island. This convict settlement pre-dates Port Arthur by decades and was feared by every convict. The island has some of Australia’s oldest convict ruins. Created to put the 'fear of God' into the convicts of Van Diemen’s Land, this tiny outpost of 18th Century British penal history hides a fascinating tale of human triumph over adversity, brought vividly to life by expert guides who are all members of the Round Earth Theatre Company that performed the play we had seen last evening. The passengers from The Eagle were split into 3 groups - each with their own 'expert' guide. We really benefited from having seen the play last night as we had a rough idea of the history and could really appreciate what we were looking at.

We met our guide at a plaque showing Sarah Island as it was. It stated that there were no trees and that there were hundreds of people living here. There were small buildings of stone, brick and weatherboard all crowded together. Towering Huon Pine fences separated the buildings, isolated the convicts and stifled the winds that roared up the harbour. A network of well built roads linked all points of the island. Any remaining space was turned into gardens. Our lady guide was brilliant - you could tell she was an actress. She really made the ruins come to life as she explained the history of the place. The penal colony operated between 1822 and 1833. The settlement housed mainly male convicts, with a small number of women. During its 11 years of operation, the penal colony achieved a reputation as one of the harshest penal settlements in the Australian colonies.

The penal station was established as a place of banishment within the Australian colonies. It took the worst convicts and those who had escaped from other settlements. The isolated land was ideally suited for its purpose. Sarah Island was separated from the mainland by treacherous seas, surrounded by a mountainous wilderness and was hundreds of miles away from the colony's other settled areas. The only seaward access was through Hells Gates. Strong tidal currents resulted in the deaths of many convicts before they even reached the settlement due to ships floundering in the narrow rocky channel. The surveyor who mapped Sarah Island concluded that the chances of escape were "next to impossible". Neighbouring Grummet Island, a small island to the North west, was used for solitary confinement.

Despite its isolated location, a considerable number of convicts attempted to escape from the island. Bushranger Matthew Brady was among a party that successfully escaped to Hobart in 1824 after tying up their overseer and seizing a boat. James Goodwin was pardoned after his 1828 escape and was subsequently employed to make official surveys of the wilderness he had passed through. Sarah Island's most infamous escapee was Alexander Pearce who managed to get away twice. On both occasions, he cannibalized his fellow escapees (charming!).

Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell wanted the new penal colony to be economically viable. It could then reimburse the British government for the expense of its establishment. Convicts were employed in the shipbuilding industry. For a short period, it was the largest shipbuilding operation in the Australian colonies. Chained convicts had the task of cutting down Huon pine trees and rafting the logs down the river. Eventually the heavily forested island was cleared by the convicts. A tall wall was then built along the windward side of the island to provide shelter for the shipyards from the roaring forties blowing up the harbour. We could clearly see the remains of this wall on the tour.

As Sarah Island could not produce food, malnutrition, dysentery, and scurvy were often rampant among the convict population. The penal colony had to be supplied by sea. Living conditions were particularly bad in the early years of the settlement. The settlement was so crowded, convicts were unable to sleep on their backs in the communal barracks. Punishment involved solitary confinement and regular floggings - 9,100 lashes were given in 1823. We saw the remains of the Penitentiary and the land that was reclaimed (using convict labour) for the shipyards. It was finallyclosed in late 1833. Most of the remaining convicts were then relocated to Port Arthur.

We re-boarded The Eagle and cruised past the majesty of the rugged mountain ranges in Tasmania’s World Heritage-listed South West Wilderness National Park. As we cruised we were invited in groups to help ourselves to the fantastic buffet lunch which had been freshly prepared on board. It consisted of smoked salmon, cold meats, a selection of salads, fresh fruit, Tasmanian cheeses and local bakerybread. There was plenty of it - and it was delicious. We washed it all down with a bottle of Tasmanian wine.

We cruised down the serene and imposing Gordon River through native pristine rainforest, which reclaimed the land after the last Great Ice Age. We arrived at the Gordon River/Heritage Landing and disembarked The Eagle. This was one of the highlights of the cruise. We were able to go for a stroll in the ancient forests at Heritage Landing. We walked through some of the world's last remaining temperate rainforest, featuring myrtles, leatherwood trees and species of native pines found only in Tasmania. A raised timber walkway lead us through the damp forest to a fallen giant - a 2000-year-old Huon Pine that has fallen to the ground but continues to support new life in the form of saplings. It was fantastic. We followed the loop walk (in the correct direction unlike some of our fellow passengers) and re-boarded The Eagle. We returned down the Gordon River and stopped Morrison's Huon Pine Saw Mill. Here we could see the giant pines being prepared for use. It was a bit touristy with lots of trinkets for sale like pot stands and coasters - we resisted! We walked back to the Discovery Caravan Park where we had a rest.

We had been told that sunset on Ocean Beach was a must do. The beach is just north of Hell's Gates and is a 40km stretch of coast that faces 8000km of the Great Southern Ocean. We drove the car to the beach car park and went for a stroll, waiting for the sun to set. It was fabulous. We went to Molly's Cafe for dinner but they had stopped cooking. Luckily they had a portion of shepherd's pie and some roast beef left. M had the pie and D the beef - again washed down with some Tassie wine. Tomorrow we head back to Hobart.

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Photos

27. Cape Sorrell Lighthouse
The second tallest in the Southern Hemisphere

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[pat & fred allen]

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