CLOCKWISE: Glamping at its finest; Bushwalking; Soaking up the peace and tranquillity.
A walk on the wild side
Tasmanian Walking Company
NATASHA DRAGUN
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opular among daytrippers who make the pilgrimage south for cheese, wine and wildlife, Bruny Island also offers plenty of reasons to linger. Lace up your hiking boots for a long weekend spent exploring this postcardperfect Tasmanian isle. A wind whips along Neck Beach, sending sand sideways into the ocean and reminding me just how close we are to Antarctica. From here – a deliciously deserted beach on the east coast of Tasmania’s Bruny Island – there’s only 3000 kilometres to the icy southern continent. On days like today, when mutton birds burrow into their nests and a salty sea spray dimples my cheeks, it feels even closer. Our group of eight follows guide Rob Knight up a vertiginous cliff track carved through scrub, she-oaks and casuarinas, Gore-tex jackets zipped high and cameras at the ready. It’s our first morning here as part of the Bruny Island Long Weekend, a food-focused affair broken only by heart-starting hikes followed by luxurious lie-ins ensconced in glamping tents. Many visitors to Tasmania make the 45-minute pilgrimage south from Hobart to spend a few hours cruising Bruny’s spectacular coastline or savouring wine, cheese and oysters. But few get to experience the island’s rugged heart and dramatic remote beaches for more than a day – we have them almost entirely to ourselves for three.
Gourmet wanderings
Our first day marching along east coast trails is a glorious introduction to 24 Journeys
JULY 2020
Bruny’s flora and fauna. The island is home to 150 species of birds, including all 12 endemic to Tasmania, and also has the world’s largest population of endangered forty-spotted pardalote. And then there are those mutton birds, 240,000 breeding pairs at any given time. Behind the enormous coastal dunes of Neck Beach we discover a dilapidated hut that mutton bird hunters once used as a refuge between expeditions. Today, it’s the perfect perch to boil a billy and refuel with hot chocolate and dense brownies. Knight and his team use mealtimes as a way to showcase the island’s incredible produce bounty, which we get a taste for later in the day back at the Long Weekend’s base. Set on a dreamy patch of eucalypt-laced bushland in the foothills of Mount Mangana, the campground’s four safari-style tents and the main lodge are completely off-grid. But the focus on sustainability doesn’t come at the expense of style, and our accommodations come fitted with plush double beds and cosy linens, with hot water bottles slipped between the sheets when it comes time to turn off our torches. Most indulgent of all is the large alfresco shower, a semi-open pavilion set at the end of a ferny path. Steaming water falls while I gaze out over a dense tangle of forest. The only sounds are the patter of droplets hitting the ground and the chatter of birds high in the canopy above. While we warm up, Knight prepares a meal that has an almost non-existent travel footprint: oysters
Tasmanian Walking Company
plucked from the surrounding sea, gooey cheeses made just up the road, a plummy pinot noir pressed nearby at the world’s most southern vineyard. There are Spring Bay mussels steamed in a white wine and saffron sauce, a rump of Murryfield lamb atop quinoa salad, and a satisfyingly wobbly leatherwood honey panna cotta topped with local berries.
Southern exposure
Day two’s 12km walk takes us up East Cloudy Head on Bruny’s windsculpted southern coast. We scuff along the sand, barefoot and on the lookout for shells and sea creatures that have washed ashore, and then scale scrubland to a lookout affording views of Tasmania’s remotest reaches. Bruny is actually two masses connected by a long, sandy isthmus. In contrast to the north, the island’s southern shore is hilly and heavily forested. It’s home to a national park and state reserve, not to mention the
