King Island is a small island situated off the North-West coast of Tasmania in the Bass Strait. While the Strait is infamous for its sudden storms and violent winds, the island is famous for its beef and cheese. Legend has it that, before the island was settled, a boat was shipwrecked on the shore. Two things made it to land; a herd of cows, which swam to safety and initially survived by eating seaweed, and the crew’s hay-stuffed mattresses, which sprouted in the salt-laden air and covered the island in grass.
Regardless of the truth of this lovely story, it is an arguable fact that the milk from King Island’s dairy cows makes the best cheese in the world.
Bronwyn had been offered a chance to work at the hospital on King Island, so Berrima and I flew up with her a week early to have a little holiday and to explore.
Sharp Airlines didn’t make a normal boarding call for the flight from Hobart International. While the other services were announced in the usual way, at around our boarding time the tannoy binged and simply announced “This is a message for King Islanders at Gate 2”, and that was all. We wondered idly what the message was meant to convey. Then a few minutes later, they paged “the Reading family” by name and we realised that we were supposed to have joined the handful of other passengers who were waiting for us at the gate. Hurriedly we followed the ground crew across the tarmac to a parking bay containing our 23-seater Metro 111.
The engines spluttered and then roared, as the propellers blurred into invisibility and we motored off down the tarmac. The nose lifted, and we sank back into our sheepskin-covered metal seats. There was a noticeable thump as the wheels came up, and a definite dip as we passed over a dam just outside the airport. This was real flying.
An hour later, we dropped down to the King Island airstrip. The plane stopped in the turning circle at the end of the runway, and we walked across to the small terminal building. While we waited for our baggage to be stacked under a protective roof, we chatted to the lady at the rental car counter. As well as giving us our car keys, we also got a quick run-down of all the eateries and snorkelling sites on the island, and then she closed up shop. There were only a handful of people on the little plane, and we were the only tourists.
As we were loading our bags into the car, the car rental lady came running up to me, leaflets in hand, and said, “Since your wife will be working, here are the opening times for the new brewery. And also a flyer for the local distillery…” That was our first introduction to Island hospitality.
Just round the corner, in the town of Currie, was our lovely little rented wood-clad cottage, complete with flower garden, chickens, shelves of books, far too many cushions, and an enormous flat screen TV that was completely out of character. Got to keep the tourists happy, I suppose, though why anybody would come to King Island and then sit indoors to watch TV is anybody’s guess.
We had previously arranged for the local supermarket to leave a box of groceries on the doorstep. These had not only been delivered, but also put away in the fridge and cupboards. After all, the door was never locked. How’s that for service?
Currie isn’t a huge metropolis. We briefly cased the dinner options, then tried out the Football Club for a steak. I asked if they had a porter or stout, and the lady said no, but reeled off a long list of all the beers that they did have. Impressively, they seemed to have a light and a heavy beer from almost every State and Territory, as well as some from Asia. Strangely, though, each of the chosen beverages was exactly the same style: Aussie golden lager.
The steak was pretty good, though.
Kelp, Blowholes, Calcified Trees
It’s not every day that you get a chance to take your 6 year old snorkelling in the Bass Strait in winter, so we went out to see if we could find some sheltered bays.
First we drove up the Kelp Track on the west of the island, where piles and piles of kelp had washed into the extensive rock pools. Kelp is big business here, collected from the beaches as it washes up after every frequent storm, to be dried and then rendered into useful medicines and chemicals. Everywhere you go, you see kelpies wading around, picking up the choicest pieces.
The rock pools looked good for snorkelling, but there was a certain piquancy to the air which turned out to be part rotting kelp, part sewage outflow, so we took the leisurely 20 minute drive to the eastern side of the island.
Here we followed the dirt track signposted Blow Hole Beach, which comprised long long stretches of idyllic sand punctuated with crumbly rocks which has been eaten away to form a wonderland of small caves, many of them blow-holes which exhaled with every incoming wave.
It was fun and dramatic, but not great for snorkelling.
Berrima was tired, so Bronwyn took her back to the cottage, but I wanted to see the Calcified Forest and so took the car down the dirt road to the south.
Along the way, I stopped to look at Currie Lighthouse, which is built of steel and looks not unlike a 1950s rocket ship. I watched an enormous eagle eat a dead goose, was examined by lots of curious beef cattle, and bumped along a dirt track to a monument to the wreck of the Cataraqui, Australia’s worst civil maritime disaster, where 400 lost their lives in 1845.
Finally, I walked a pretty path through the mallee to get to the Calcified Forest itself.
It’s a strange place. Despite the name, these aren’t petrified trees. They are calcium carbonate tubes which formed along the outside of tree roots, and which are now all that is left of the forest that was inundated to form the Bass Strait at the end of the last Ice Age. The tubes are now slowly emerging from the dunes as the wind blows away the sand. Quite eerie.
Around the corner was an attraction variously described as ‘Seal Rocks Lookout’ and ‘Boardwalk’. The first moniker is accurate, as a metal deck has been constructed jutting out from the top of the cliff, giving great views of the surf crashing into Seal Rocks below. I didn’t see any seals, though, and, despite a lengthy search, wasn’t able to determine any trace of a boardwalk.
Snorkels, Lighthouses, Cheese
Following local advice from a lady at the shop, we headed for British Admiralty Beach and a large rock pool to try a bit of cold-water snorkelling. Donning wet suits, we had a bit of a paddle about and I practised using the GoPro. There were plenty of interesting seaweeds, rocks and fish, but Berrima started shivering and so we cut the experience short.
Back in the car, we went right to the northernmost tip of the island, to Cape Wickham Lighthouse, possibly the tallest in Australia. It was impressive, tall and white, and of course now automated.
It was also very windy! We struggled up to the nearby golf club seeking coffee, but unfortunately it was closed for winter.
On the way back, we took a detour to Penny’s Lake, which is part of an enormous bird sanctuary that covers the North East of King Island.
We didn’t see any actual birds there, but the lake is beautiful, and by the road we saw wild turkeys and peacocks, both of which are common on King Island. There is also a bird watching area at Shag Lake, where – in typical King Island fashion – the bird hide comes complete with a decent set of binoculars in a waterproof case.
No trip to King Island would be complete without a visit to the eponymous Dairy. They are not equipped for tourism in the dairy itself, but they have an excellent tasting room and cheese shop. We gorged ourselves on mixed platters, and bought a lot of cheese.
Out and about
Kings Island is beautiful, rural, and only lightly populated. It covers a thousand square kilometres, and is home to less than two thousand people. As tourists, we stood out like sore thumbs, but were greeted with open arms and friendship wherever we went. Like the inhabitants of small islands the world over, the locals exude a comfortable feeling of self-sufficiency, and nothing is too much trouble.
The island has, on occasion, aligned itself with the State of Victoria to the north, and indeed most of the shopping and shipping comes from that direction, but currently King Island is part of the State of Tasmania, itself a collection of relatively small islands south of the vast mainland.
When we heard locals referring to ‘the mainland’, they were invariably speaking of the other Tasmanian islands to the south, rather than to the bulk of the Australian continent to the north.
The pace of life in Tasmania is slower and politer than on the mainland. The pace of life on King Island, is slower and politer again. You don’t pass somebody on the street without exchanging a greeting, or on the road without lifting a finger in acknowledgement.
There are only two towns of any size, Currie to the west and Grassy to the east. On one occasion, Berrima got upset in the shop in Currie because she had inadvertently spent her lucky 20-cent piece, and the staff began sorting through their change drawer to find it.
Some days later, I was standing and admiring the view in Grassy, when a passer-by stopped and asked whether my daughter had recovered her lucky coin.
Down by the side of Currie harbour is a bright yellow wooden building known as ‘The Restaurant with no Food’. It has tables and chairs and a little kitchen, plus a piano, hi-fi and an eclectic collection of paintings, sculptures, and items made from kelp.
Everything that you see in and around the building is for sale for the price that you choose to put in the honesty box.
The idea is that you bring your own food and drink, and use the facilities, and then tidy up after yourselves. It’s a lovely idea.
Solitude and Penguins
One afternoon, I drove back to Seal Rocks, to explore the Copperhead Trail. It was very rugged, clambering along the rocky cliff-tops, far above the crashing waves of the Bass Strait below.
About an hour, I clambered up some dunes to see what it looked like inland. I was presented with a vista of small scrubby bushes and surface puddles as far as the eye could see, with no sign of any habitation or human impact.
In fact, for the entire drive there and back, and the entire walk, I didn’t see a single other vehicle or person.
In the evening, we ate early and then drove down to Grassy Port where I had previously noticed the penguin colony. We arrived at dusk, and spent a pleasant hour sitting on the beach waiting for the penguins to come in. It was full dark when we gave up, having seen not one single penguin, but we were starting to hear them in the burrows behind us, so they must have snuck past somehow.
Walking back to the car, we realised that the breakwater was awash with penguins; rather than tackle the natural beach, they had clearly learned that it was easier to come into the harbour and scale the harbour wall, approaching their colony from the rear.
We drove very slowly out and past the Port Authority, stopping regularly for little groups of penguins to waddle across the road.
It was all just perfectly King Island.
