Maria Island
Boxing Day, 2000.

Scribe: Laurie Ford
Thoroughly sick of house building for the last 17 months, I needed an excuse to go off on a long paddle somewhere. I was starting to think about a late January trip to Flinders Island for 10 days or so, or a quick nip down to Maatsuyker Island, or a cruise out to Albatross Island for a few days.

Then out of the blue came an email on the 12th December - a young German lady (Maria) asking about the possibility of a trip somewhere between 19th Dec and 9th Jan. She learnt to kayak in Scotland, and was currently living in Townsville.

This presented a bit of a problem, because I’m not keen to go off on a trip without first seeing the person on the water for a few hours first - to judge their skill level, and more important - their mental attitude. The trouble is that a lot of people think they know a bit about sea kayaking, but not in the weather that we normally paddle in Tasmanian waters. Many years ago one of the alleged top paddlers from interstate came to Tasmania for a 10 day trip, and found that we paddle in much stronger winds than they would normally paddle in - and said so in an official report written for his State Canoeing Organisation.

However, we have regularly taken beginners across to Maria Island over the past 20 odd years, and I decided to do a trip out there this time. Most of our really bad weather comes from the west (or SW or NW) so it would be very easy to raft up with a novice and sail across to Maria, and then if the worst comes to the worst - there is always the ferry three times a day to get back.

So I offered Maria a trip right round Maria Island, which obviously intrigued her, to be circumnavigating an island with her name. We settled on a Boxing Day start.

Maria duly arrived at our place in Orford at 9.00am Boxing Day (Tuesday), and we waterproofed her gear, and adjusted the footrest in the North Sea Tourer (NST) that I was lending her - fully fitted with a sail, rudder, electric pump, and hatches and bulkheads. I then showed her a short bit of video of sailing in some fairly strong winds off Flinders Island - just to give her a bit of an idea of when we use them - not just in mild conditions as some people might think.

Cec drove us around to Earlham to start the trip, this being the closest point to Maria Island, not much more than an hour to Encampment Cove in Chinamans Bay - where there is an excellent campsite sheltered from the west winds. And west winds we had in plenty. There was a strong wind warning for today, but of course we don’t normally let these ever stop us going out paddling. In fact many years ago we were paddling along the side of Schouten Island, and came across a fishing boat anchored in a sheltered bay. The skipper yelled out to Kaye that didn’t she know there was a strong wind warning - insinuating that we should be ashore out of it. She sweetly gazed up at this bloke on the deck of the fishing boat as she paddled past, and said, “We laugh at strong wind warnings!”

I’m not sure that Maria was actually laughing today, but she didn’t show any obvious terror so we launched and headed across to Chinamans Bay. The further we went across the bigger the waves got, and I put one of my sails up a couple of times to go off for a short burst downwind - it was great. But I certainly wasn’t expecting Maria to try her sail out in these conditions - she was still coming to terms with the NST, and its slightly tippy feeling. I’ve always maintained for many years that new paddlers would be far better spending their first 12 months paddling a NST - they would end up a much more competent paddler than if they started out in a Greenlander or some other very stable kayak. The NST forces you to become very good at support strokes. Of course nobody ever does get a NST to start with - they mainly go for a Greenlander, which is why we have hundreds of very mediocre paddlers that only ever go out in flat conditions.

Not so the Albatross Sea Kayak Club. If we say we’re going to Maria Island on Boxing Day, and coming back on Friday - well we do, and to hell with the warnings.

Just as we started to enter Oyster Bay there were a few bigger than normal waves, and I watched Maria teeter on the top of a couple of these, thinking she’s going to go in any moment. But she didn’t, she handled the conditions very competently, even if she wasn’t used to them. She later said that in Scotland they wouldn’t go out in these sort of conditions.

Chinamans Bay was dead smooth, and the campsite a haven out of the wind. We landed and changed into dry clothes for an afternoon stroll. I was contemplating a rest day from paddling tomorrow, to give the weather a chance to settle down - and thought we might climb Mt Maria. I wasn’t quite sure where the track was from this end of the island and wanted to go and check it out this afternoon. First we strolled over to the old convict cells overlooking Point Lesueur - a series of 6 foot square cells where convicts were locked up at night after working at various farming activities in the early days of settlement in Tasmania. There were a lot of grey kangaroos about, the first wild ones Maria had seen since landing in Australia 3 months ago. Despite the wind it was quite a warm day as we then wandered off to look at the old farm house (Frenches farm) that has been done up for camping in. It was somewhere near here that I remembered the track to Mt Maria starting - and we found it without any trouble.
 

Four kms south of the farmhouse found us sitting on the beach at Riedle Bay, gazing at the picturesque scene of flat water and two yachts anchored in the bay - a different picture to the angry whitecaps on the other side of the neck that we had paddled over in. I’d been telling Maria that we have quite often portaged kayaks across here in the past, and it was interesting to note there is now a good track cut from one side of the neck to the other. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want a track from beach to beach - other than to portage sea kayaks, and I surmised that maybe it has been put in specially for the commercial kayak operators that come out here.

We knew they came out here because when we landed to camp in Chinamans Bay there was a fully loaded double kayak sitting behind the bushes. We assumed that the weather had been too bad to paddle, and that the occupants had caught the ferry home.

After a pleasant sit in the sun we strolled back over to Shoal Bay and along the beach back to the campsite, and got a fire going just as it started in to rain. It was very intermittent, and eventually cleared for the night - as we chatted to a couple who had ridden pushbikes down from Darlington, complete with a trailer to carry luxuries they didn’t usually take on trips. They were from Lilydale in Tasmania’s NE, and had obviously spent a fair bit of time travelling overseas - as we exchanged stories about places we’d been to.

We shared the campsite with a burnt out fibreglass runabout which has been dragged onshore after burning to the waterline.

Wednesday bought another strong wind warning as expected - but the long term forecast for the next few days seemed to be worse. I hastened up the hill behind the campsite to look back over Mercury Passage, and it looked pretty good at the moment - the next front not expected till later in the day. I decided to give the mountain a miss, and take the opportunity to get round to the eastern side of Maria Island where we could expect flat conditions no matter how hard the westerlies blew.

Just as we left the camp site a power boat came across the bay from the neck, towing two single sea kayaks, and were heading for Encampment Cove to pick up the double there as well. Apparently they had got stuck here on Christmas Eve with bad weather, and got the ferry back to be home for Christmas.

The 10km down to Cape Peron were a bit of a slog into the small waves and wind, Maria not seeming to have a lot of strength paddling into the wind. But of course she hasn’t done any serious paddling for years - work taking her to places like Maylasia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines etc - she is a marine biologist. But she isn’t one to give up, and we did cover 6km in the first hour. Off Cape Peron I ducked inside The Pyramid, expecting Maria to go around the outside, because there was a bit of a break across the opening. I mentally applauded her when I saw her teetering on top of a wave as she chose her moment to follow me through - and she commented that it was great!

The seas were much flatter across to Haunted Bay, and after a few minutes I put both sails up. I’d only gone a hundred metres or so when I heard the sail on the NST flapping, and thought, “Good girl.” I took both mine down to wait for her in case she needed any advise on setting the sail, and then we had a very pleasant sail across to Haunted Bay. Towards the end Maria was even paddling down a few waves trying to catch them - as she became more comfortable with her first ever sail in a sea kayak. She was starting to get a bit of wrist trouble, and after we landed I offered her an unfeathered paddle, but she opted to keep going with the one she had.

We lazed around on the beach at Haunted Bay for about an hour - checking out a couple of penguin burrows - with chicks, before Maria suggested we get going again. It was a bit choppy along the southern coast till Cape Maurouard, and then dead flat again. We paddled into one cave, turned around and paddled out again - not bad, but nothing like the one on the northern part of the island I was hoping to take her into tomorrow.

I could see Maria was tiring as we got to Riedle Bay, and opted to go straight across to Whalers Cove to camp, rather than go into the beach at Tregonia Corner for a brief stop. We managed another sail in light winds across the bay, and just barely got our tents and tent flys up when the front came through with a vengeance. The sky darkened, the rain came down in buckets, the wind whistled through the tree tops - then half an hour later it was blue sky again, and mild breezes. It alternated all afternoon - brief heavy showers and wind, then fine blue sunny periods. We got a big fire going down on the wet sand, and collected enough wood to keep it going till about 9 at night.
Whalers Cove is an excellent sheltered campsite, but doesn’t have the potential for going off on long walks, as you can from most of the other campsites we use.

Maria’s hands were starting to get a bit stiff and sore from the unused to paddling, but basically was in good shape and doing pretty well. She is obviously a very experienced camper, and was in fact better prepared than I was in some areas. I hadn’t done a trip since last Easter, and because of building the house, had my gear scattered about all over the place. I found I’d come away with only four matches, and had to rely on Maria’s lighter. I also realised that although I has a fibreglass repair kit, I’d taken the brush out for a small painting job on the house and not put it back in the kit.

Maria found my diet a bit strange, but then, who doesn’t? I was eating half a packet of biscuits (Cheds) a day (dry), plus a 1.25L bottle of Coke, plus the occasional mini Mars Bar. I explained that some times on weekend trips I don’t bother taking any food at all. We also talked about maybe coming back for a Flinders Island trip in January 2002, with other members of the Townsville Canoe Club, but I did say that she would have to train a bit more - you can’t be a part-time sea canoeist. And as far as I’m concerned, the ONLY training worthwhile is getting in a kayak and doing some paddling on a regular basis.

Whalers Cove was amazingly free of rubbish, which was not the case at Haunted Bay. That was an absolute disgrace - bottles and cans 10 or 15 cms deep, plus a hell of a lot of broken glass. Such a shame, because on a nice summers day there is probably no better lunch-spot in Tasmania.

The forecast on Thursday mentioned fresh westerlies, but no actual warning so we anticipated a flat windless day to within a km and a half of Darlington. And once round Mistaken Cape it was just that - you could paddle right up to the cliff face in perfect safety, and we were never far off shore as we slowly toured along - peering into the numerous shallow sea caves. But the only really good one is just on the south side of Beaching Bay. From out at sea it looks exactly like all the others, but once you paddle straight into it and get accustomed to the dimmer light, you can look up and see a high cathedral ceiling covered in stalactites. And then you notice that the cave turns to the right, and you can paddle under a low ceiling and enter another slightly smaller cave, again with stalactites. This second cave has its own entrance to the sea - and you paddle out into the sunlight in a tall narrow gulch opening to the sea. This is one of the better caves in Tasmania.

We landed at beaching Bay for a rest - this being exactly halfway to Darlington.

From here on conditions changed unexpectedly. The fresh westerly was now curling right round the top of the island and blowing down the east side as a stiff northerly. Maria went slower and slower, till just near Bishop & Clark was fairly knackered.

We had been hoping to get to Darlington by about midday, and walking up Mt Maria in the afternoon - leaving all day Friday to wait for a break in the weather to run for home. Apart from running back to Beaching Bay, the other alternative was towing, so I clipped on the towrope and headed around the corner and across Fossil Bay. Maria was too far gone to do any paddling till we were almost under the fossil cliffs, when she found she was getting very cold. There are some good flat rocks right under the fossil cliffs, covered with kelp - and we just ran straight up on these and got ashore. We were now completely out of the wind, and it was a blue sky and quite warm. So even though Darlington was only two km away, I chose to have at least a couple of hours here till maria warmed up and h got some of her energy back.

There were four tourists about 50 metres away, also warming up because they had just been in snorkelling. It was an easy walk to Darlington if all else failed. Then down came the rain again. We ended up under a big overhang, and I lit a fire - there being ample drift wood along the rocks. By the time the fire was really going, of course the sun was out again. Fossil Bay alternated between being a sea of whitecaps, to being fairly calm. Two and a half hours later I could detect a calm period approaching so we got back in the kayaks and cruised round the corner to Darlington, in mild conditions. At Darlington we carried the kayaks into the small closed off river and paddled up closer to the campsite. This is probably the WORST campsite in Australia. It has no shelter of any sort whatsoever. It is just a flat paddock that the wind howls across. Normally you like to find a belt of trees or a mound of some sort to camp in the lee of - but there is nothing at all at Darlington, which is why we never normally choose to camp there. Chinamans Bay and Whalers Cove are far superior. If you camp at Whalers Cove, then you can normally be at Darlington in the middle of the day for a quick lunch stop, then back across Mercury Passage and home.

There were quite a lot of people camped at Darlington - the slightly better spots already taken. We camped smack in the middle of the paddock, the weather was distinctly cool in the wind, even though it was still sunny. I ended up lying under my tent fly while Maria went off to have a look at the Painted Cliffs. When she returned I borrowed her lighter and went across the bridge to the day-use only barbecue shelter. This has four gas operated barbecues, and two fireplaces - and lots of sawn dry wood. I just beat our cycling friends from Chinamans Bay to the sheltered fireplace - they were cutting their trip short due to the cold windy weather, and heading back on the ferry the next day. We pulled two tables and seats up to the fire and shared it till late into the evening.

Back in the campsite under my tent fly I knew I was in for a bad night. I only ever use a tent fly (no tent) and put it up so one end is pegged down to the ground (where the wind is coming from), and the other end raised. The wind was increasing again, and the forecast pretty bad. The Sydney Hobart yachts were copping a bashing coming down the Tasmanian coast - not far away from where we were.

I’d actually managed to doze off despite the constant flapping when suddenly the wind reached a crescendo, and I found rain pouring onto my face. I opened my eyes and now found that I could see the sky where I couldn’t previously - my tent fly had split right down the middle. This didn’t worry me too much, because it has happened before, and my sleeping bag is always inside a Gortex bivvy bag. All my other gear is still waterproofed from being in the kayak - so I just reached out and took the one tent pole down to stop the fly ripping any further. I then zipped the bivvy bag closed and tried to get back to sleep. But the fly was still flogging up and down in the violent wind, and after an hour I decided to move. I cautiously unzipped the bivvy bag a poked an eye out - to be greeted with a starry sky (and no rain). I knew this would only be a temporary break so quickly leaped out of bed, rolled up the sodden tent fly and placed it under a couple of big pieced of wood. Then I gathered the four corners of the ground sheet with everything inside and sprinted for the barbecue shelter, and the new toilet/shower block. I just made it before the next downpour, the sky clouding over in minutes. The fire was still just going (it was now about 2.00am) so I stacked a lot of wood on it and retired to the shower block - where I spent a very comfortable night.

I wasn’t the only one with problems, as I was leaving the campsite there were a few torches on in various tents as the occupants tried to deal with collapsed and leaking tents.

I rose in the morning warm and dry and built the fire up again - before going back to the campsite to retrieve my tent fly. There appeared to be a lot less tents - others had moved in the night, and some were still collapsed on the ground with the rain pouring into them. I hung my tent fly under the shelter, and the screaming wind soon dried it off - and I packed all my gear up and took it down to the kayaks - ready for instant departure if there looked like being a break in the weather.

Maria came and found me in the shelter later on when the sun had risen, by this time the seas had actually dropped off considerably, and it wouldn’t have been too bad out there. However it was still a very cold morning, and if we left and the wind increased again and caused a capsize - we’d have been in serious danger of hypothermia. I told Maria we wouldn’t entertain leaving before 10.00am, when the day had warmed up a bit.

We sat in front of the fire all day. 10.00 am came and went and still the wind blew through Mercury Passage. We watched the ferry make several runs, buffeting the waves and throwing up spray. It brought several loads of day trippers who dumped their eskies and other gear in the shelter, before venturing off to inspect some of the ruins.

At one stage during the morning I walked out onto the jetty to get the full force of the wind, and inspect the sea from close quarters. I could have paddled back to Orford without too much trouble by myself - but knew that it would be beyond Maria.

I hung around all day, hoping that it would drop enough to let Maria paddle back under her own steam. Although there was a gale warning, it was also predicting moderating winds later in the day. But it was not to be. I finally announced that we would leave at 3.00pm, and that I would tow her across to Oakhampton Beach if necessary. I was pretty sure I could sail without any trouble, so towing would be fairly easy.

We launched into Mercury Passage just before the 3.00pm ferry was due to leave, and straight away I could see that Maria wasn’t going to get very far at all. The tow rope was clipped on and one sail raised and away we went - it was a breeze. The ferry passed us close down wind just for a look, and then it was just a steady paddle/sail across to Oakhampton Beach. As we turned downwind a couple of km off shore I threw off the towrope as towing downwind is a bit dicey - the following kayak tends to ride up on the rear deck of the front kayak when it catches a wave.

Maria had no trouble at all in these conditions, and was soon ashore accepting a hot cup of coffee from a camper at Oakhampton, while waiting for Cec to pick us up. The campers had had a miserable four days in the incessant wind and rain.

I give Maria full marks for not being intimidated by the conditions at any time. I feel it was only lack of paddling fitness that slowed her down, and when we were discussing the ferry option to get back she was adamant that that was a last resort if all else failed.