Maria Island - exploring Point Lesueur

[Kyle]Another big storm was on its way and Wineglass Bay was not going to be a good place to be. We decided to spend it in Chinaman’s Bay at Maria Island after an overnight stop at Mooreys Bay on Schouten Island.

The sail to Schouten took us by some cool geology

The sail on to Maria Island was a bit gloomy

Maria Island's Chinaman’s Bay (within Shoal Bay) is huge and shallow, so we ended up a long way from the beach. We were exposed to the wind, which was fine because our turbine would keep the batteries filled, but protected from the open ocean swell crashing ashore on the other side of the low part of the island.

Before two and a half days of strong winds and rain, we had one nice one to go ashore.

We rowed to the beach and walked the track northwards to the peninsula at Point Lesueur. There, we joined the trails to the old convict ruins. I kept joking to Maryanne that our goal for the day was an “easy” 18.5k – just 80% of our last walk. I thought there was no way, but by the end of the day, after various side trips “to see what’s over that hill”, etc., we pretty much nailed it.

Maria is beautiful. We definitely want to come back to spend more time here. We didn’t even get to see the really good stuff – yet. What we did see were several of the world’s most adorable creatures – the wombat. Over the course of our day, we counted eight different little furballs munching their way through the meadows. We got to within a few meters of some of them, which you have to do very carefully because they can incapacitate you with their cuteness, leaving you cooing in the undergrowth like a helpless little infant possessed by thoughts of pinching their little cheeks.

Kyle adores wombats and here we saw plenty of them!

Maria Island also has some stunning geology, which we look forward to seeing on our next visit as well as being home to good numbers of Tasmanian Devils and several different species of parrots, of which we only spotted a few. I recently saw a meme that called parrots “Tie-dye chickens that scream real words at you” - they’re definitely my favorite dinosaurs. We only got to explore a tiny part of the island (Point Lesueur), so hopefully will find a different patch to visit next time.

We thought about the animals during the subsequent tempest, hoping the wombats were safe in their burrows and the tie-dye chickens were in sturdy, old-growth trees.

Begonia got a good rinse and our anchor took a bit of welly to un-dig from the mud when we eventually departed.