Seeking Deliverance, we found direction

a walk along the Tasmanian coast

By Thomas Moore

April 25^th, 2018

Cape Direction in front followed by Deliverance behind & kunanyi (Mt Wellington) in the distance. Iron Pot on the left & Betsey far right.

Chart clipping showing Cape Direction, Cape Deliverance, and Iron Pot Lighthouse perched at the end of the River Derwent - Storm Bay and Betsey Island lay beyond.

Chart clipping from the Tasmanian Government LISTmap land information system.

to the end of minanya timtumili

Out past Fort Beach lies the end of minanya timtumili - the end of the River Derwent, as it was named after British settlement. Here the estuary waters give way to Storm Bay along a final reach of land from Cape Deliverance and past Pot Bay, finishing at Cape Direction.

The high cliffs of the cape overlook a semi-submerged finger of Permian rock pointing towards the Iron Pot Lighthouse - guardian of the entrance to minanya timtumili. Whitewater rolls round the reefs leaving mixed messages as to where might be safe for keel and sail and where lies ruin. Best keep Australia's second oldest light to starboard when making way for home. Her 1832 optic was the first in the nation to be locally made and in 1977 a conversion to solar power was also a first for Australian lighthouses.

The Iron Pot anchors the screen of rocks & reefs that sit just off the crags & cliffs of Cape Direction.

Steel-grey waters, the bay storms the rocky cliffs of Cape Direction.

Island of the silver rabbits

Further along the eastern shoulder of Cape Direction is dented, pocked with nooks full of stones and pebbles polished by a 250 million year cycle in the Storm Bay washing machine. You shift your balance as shoes slide across the slippery stones and slicker chunks of beached kelp. Just offshore sits Betsey, a low island with a tiny cousin of a rock off her southern flank with a sharky reputation - "Little Betsey".

If you scour old copies of Hobart's Mercury Newspaper (they didn't have a paywall in 1913) you'll find accounts of the island being used as far back as 1827 to breed "silver-haired rabbits, pheasants, and peacocks, imported from England per the ship Tiger." One James King intended to make their skins an "article of export" to China - 30,000 rabbits for the fur trade.

Today Betsey is a nature reserve - an important site for little penguins, short-tailed shearwaters, and black-faced cormorants. Now Betsey's trade skips China's giant economy as the shearwaters fly past each year on their 15,000 kilometre migration to the Arctic Ocean.

Bestsey waits offshore. "Little" Betsey waits with her.

Footnotes

To capture these images I was able to pack in a FujiFilm X-T2 and NiSi 100mm filter set. I used a Sirui T-025X Carbon Fiber Tripod with C-10S Ball Head to keep the weight down.

Button Label

FootNotes

To capture these images I was able to pack in a FujiFilm X-T2 and NiSi 100mm filter set. I used a Sirui T-025X Carbon Fiber Tripod with C-10S Ball Head to keep the weight down.