The sail from Spike Bay was more of what is getting to be too much of the usual around here: 20-30 knot headwinds. The forecast had been for fourteen. Typical. I'm starting to get a little weary with every day being a real sail stretcher. We also had wind against tide crossing the gaps between islands, which made everything even less comfortable. We were both relieved to find it relatively calm in Trousers Bay.
A BIG weather system was heading down the New South Wales coast and wreaking havoc there. The entire east coast of mainland Australia was experiencing once in fifty-year floods. Large debris, like pieces of buildings, was being washed out to sea, creating hazards for shipping. Our current weather on Flinders Island was way out at the leading edge of all of this. It was expected to be terrible here as well, but not for a day and a half or so. With this in mind, we were up early to do the top thing on Flinders: Climb the big hill.
To be honest, neither of us was really sure we wanted to tackle the climb. It was still cold and gusty and most of the time, we couldn't even see the tops of the mountains as they were enveloped in cloud. Still, we knew that we only had one chance, so off we went.
After rowing ashore, it is a 3.5km walk along the road to the trailhead. During that portion of our hike, which took about forty minutes, we saw exactly zero cars, but quite a lot of really sad road kill (wallabies and wombats).
After climbing over a stile, we encountered a boot cleaning station. There, we filled out the trail register and our flat hike turned immediately into an uphill one. We were headed to the summit of the Furneaux group's highest point, Strzelecki Peak.
The mountain is named after Sir Pawel Edmund de Strzelecki (a Polish explorer and geologist) by his friend Capt. Stokes of the HMS Beagle. Strzelecki is responsible for exploring huge swathes of Australia, including virtually every summit in Tasmania. I could find no direct evidence that he climbed this particular hill, but it seems unlikely that he didn't, considering the amount of time he took to get from Tasmania to Sydney and his proclivity for climbing everything along the way. {Maryanne: Actually he’d did climb it on the 13 January 1842, and while I’m interrupting Yes he was on the same HMS Beagle that Darwin sailed on, but about four years later}.
As the trail steepened and transitioned to big stone stairs (thanks, Park Service!), I imagined Sir Pawel bounding upwards, dressed in the style of the 19th Century, wearing a waistcoat and a cravat and remarking to his companions what a jolly good morning walk this was. I think Maryanne and I would characterize it more as relentless.
Still, once you put your head down and get into the groove of it, the climbing becomes a vigorous way to pass the time. Every now and then, we would break out of the forest into a clearing, which rewarded us with ever better views for our efforts.
Ascending Mt. Strzelecki to a cloudy, blustery top
Just before the summit, that all came to an end. We had entered the cloud base, which was whipping past us and turning everything wet. Since we were almost at the top, we decided to continue anyway, just so we could say we did.
When we got to the top, just fifteen meters short of the summit of Mt. Rugby, our other big Tasmanian climb, we could see no further than the edge of the summit boulder. We knew from looking up at it from Begonia the day before that we would fall halfway back to sea level if we took one step too far into the mist.
It was much too cold and gusty at the top for us to want to linger any longer than necessary, so we were quickly on our way back down. At the first lee we could find, we stopped for a few minutes for a snack and got lucky enough to see the cloud lift out of the way for just a few minutes. We could see the whole of the Furneaux group and even all of the way back to our last mainland Tasmanian anchorage. We were pleased to see that Begonia had stayed put in all of the day's gusty winds.
Views from the Strzelecki Peaks; the clouds parted for a few minutes allowing for a few pictures!
The way down was easier than going up, but not much faster. When climbing, the mountain is right in front of you, so it's easy to find and use hand and footholds. On the descent, it takes a great deal of care to keep momentum from carrying you off if you make a wrong step. We did well for the most part, with only a few minor slips. Just before we got off of the really steep part of the trail, I stepped on a rock that looked flatter than it was. My ankle rolled. I remember thinking that might hurt a bit, when my leg bent backwards and I fell on it. I'm pretty sure I felt my foot hit me in the back. That is not something that I should be able to do unless, of course, my leg had just snapped. Without the support of that leg under half of me, the rest of me did a forward roll right off of the side of the trail. Luckily, there were trees there to bring me to a stop. As I lay there upside down, unable to turn over because I had pinned most of my limbs under me, Maryanne's first words to me were, "Do you still have your phone?" followed by “Hold on. Let me get a picture.” She swears that she really does love me.
Following the photo, she did help me right myself and regain the trail. To my amazement, I was completely uninjured. Nothing was broken or punctured. I wasn't even sore. I was sure I would discover a serious injury later on, but for now, I was good to go.
On our walk back from the trail to the boat, we were picked up by a local, who saved us the last half of the walk. Even though we both were really starting to stiffen up by then, we knew we had managed to get away with something and decided to make up for the difference by doing the 1.9km Trouser Point Coastal walk as our extra credit assignment. We were both glad we did. It was wonderful, passing through fragrant causarina forests and over boulders covered with bright orange lichen. It was also nice and flat, which our sore muscles greatly appreciated.
Trousers Point Coastal Track
By the time we really were headed for the boat for real, it was getting to be that time of day when the wallabies were coming out for their evening meal, giving us plenty of excuses to stop and say hi. The four steps up the back of the boat from the dinghy felt almost as bad as the morning's climb. Almost. We certainly did sleep well that night!
[Maryanne]As for the name, there are two theories (according to one of the park notice boards. First (which I find the least likely) is of a fisherman who was anchored off the point and dragged ashore, he apparently scrambled to safety in the nick of time before his boat was lost, and found himself ashore without his trousers. The second (more plausible) is that a different wreck discharged a bunch of cargo ashore, including a large crate of trousers. But nobody really knows so you can go ahead and imagine your own scenario!
Flinders Island has three of Tasmania's 60 Great Short Walks. From Trousers Bay there are two readily accessible, and Kyle and I had disagreed on which one we'd do and 'negotiated' on the tougher 'Strzelecki Peaks' trail. Amazingly we managed to squeeze in BOTH during our day ashore, leaving us both happy (and exhausted).
[Kyle]The weather deteriorated overnight. By morning, it was blowing hard and raining in sheets. The 'eye' of the closed low-pressure system heading our way was now forecast to pass almost directly over us. This meant that, not only were we going to get the strongest of the winds, they would also be shifting rapidly from one direction to another. The east coast of Flinders does not have any anchorages that are protected from all sides, so it would be necessary for us to move to keep the land to windward.
Our first reposition needed to be done before dark, but it was a short one. All we needed to do was go around to the north side of Trousers Point peninsula to Fotheringate Bay and anchor there. Despite being nearby, conditions there were very different, likely due to our exact spacing with the mountains and valleys upwind. Half of the time, the wind was nothing, the other half it was gusting to thirty, sending us skittering all over our anchoring circle.
Overnight, the wind shift stabilized the direction and then it just blew hard. The wind started in the thirties and built. We recorded a peak of 46.9 knots. By morning, it was raining so hard that we couldn't even see the beach. A check of the weather revealed that the eye was now just about over us. We would then have three or four hours to get to our next anchorage on the east side of Prime Seal Island before the wind starts picking up again, this time from the west.
We pulled up the anchor in heavy rain, which stopped and then moderated for the trip to Prime Seal. The wind dropped to less than ten knots, which unfortunately wasn't enough to get us there before dark so we had to leave one engine running the whole time to keep our speed up.
We arrived half an hour before sunset, picked a spot that didn't look too weedy and set the anchor. Since we knew it was going to be blowing hard, we used a lot of power to back down. We thought we had it set, but then on our last big tug, we dragged. When we pulled it up it was choked with weed. Aaaugh! Second and third attempts gave the same result. By the fourth, it was getting so dark that it was hard to see landmarks for judging whether we were moving or not. Seeing all of this, the other boat at the island (Pipi), who was on a MAST (government) mooring, called us and said there were two empty fishermen's buoys behind him. I told him we would give anchoring one more try then consider it.
One more try later, we were milling around trying to find the buoys. With help from the other boat's spotlight, we were able to locate and pick it up. It turned out to be another regularly maintained government buoy. Most of the information we had said that there was only one here, but later research found reference to three buried deep in their website. That took some of the uncertainty out of wondering how old and sturdy the mooring is. It had been almost two hours since we had arrived at the island. Time to relax and let out a big breath, thankfully homemade potato soup was all ready to serve.
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