Still, we’d managed a little break in all of this and had packed a picnic and gone up river in Samos, enjoying the quietude of sunshine on water in Shag Bay and exploring hidden beaches on the other side of the river, just north of Cornelian Bay.
I had been on the river for a few days in a row, servicing winches, cleaning the bilge, sorting out engine problems and flat batteries. When I learned that Susan Murphy was leading a retreat on kunanyi I thought that I would take this invitation to escape my cocoon of fatigue (jetlag & flu) and find my way back into a practice that includes the fine honing of awareness and attunement to the natural world. ‘Everything that arises is an invitation…’* Strange to say, it’s quite companionable and will lie down on slippery seaweed if you need it to. Still, it’s not every day you walk out with a plank. I had consulted the 2015 tide table by mistake. I did reach a cobbled beach and later, from the top of Pierson’s Point, I walked through bush to the cliff tops, seeking a path down to another cobbled shoreline but my bushbashing was entirely unsuccessful.Īctually, it transpired that I was 365 days late for that low tide. It was in fact so high the shore was sometimes unrecognisable and I could not even find the sea cave. That tide had firm tenure on the rocky platforms. In the company of a plank, meant to provide a way across the gulch so that I could wander the cobble beaches, I returned to Tinderbox on what was supposed to be a low tide. * Tasmanian Year Book – Issue 23 – ģ Comments D’Entrecasteaux Channel: Tinderbox Beach History For more about life at the station, see Bill Harvey’s remembrances on the Beach Stories page. This beach would have been a great adventuring place for the children living there, and for parents to relax or mess about in boats, in much the same way as today. Up above the beach and a little to to east there used to be a pilot station at Pierson’s Point. But again a storm came raging and this put paid to that idea* and so this beautiful spot (along with Nevada Beach on the Bruny Island side) remains intact – in fact, more so than most others as Tinderbox Beach was declared a marine reserve in 1991. This made sense – it was reasonably close to Hobart and this is, after all, the narrowest point.
She’d been built by Thomas Inches and James McLaren further down the channel on the Huon River in 1853 and was owned by Edward Knight.Īs a small group of yachts moor off just offshore, and as the channel is a popular place to sail, there have doubtless been more nautical dramas on this little beach.īack in 1948 the Government planned a vehicular crossing between Tinderbox and Dennes Point. On 12 March 1925 the Rebecca, a ketch (but officially a ‘barge’), heading from Hobart to Strathblane, was overwhelmed off Tinderbox Point by a massive squall, blew out her mizzen sail and drifted on to the rocks. On the Alice, a ketch, dragged her anchors and went ashore in Tinderbox Bay. On 6 July 1822 a government vessel (name unknown) sailed from Hobart and capsized in Tinderbox Bay. As a consequence, a few boats have been caught out and come to grief on its shore. Tinderbox Beach lies close to the northern (Storm Bay) entrance and the gap between the island and Tasmania is particularly narrow and also shallower here. One day Joshua Ferguson came beach combing, picked it up, and thought, ‘I know – I’ll name this beach after it.’ Shipwrecksīruny Island may protect the channel from the vast fetch of the Southern Ocean but the wind can funnel up and down this waterway, aided and abetted by the hills and valleys, descending with rapid speed upon the unwary. Regardless, it’s owner sailed home to France but the tinderbox remained in Van Diemen’s Land. There’s also a chance that it had been traded or that it had washed ashore. Maybe this tinderbox slipped out of someone’s pocket or maybe it was left on a stone and forgotten. One day he found a silver tinderbox inscribed in French, an indication that some thirty years before early French expeditioners, perhaps with Baudin, maybe with Bruny D’Entrecasteaux, had visited this beach and most likely made a fire, and stood around talking, perhaps exploring a little. Land that once belonged to Joshua Ferguson – this house was once his barn, according to the interpretive panel at the beach. In the early 1800s Joshua Fergusson, who lived on the land just above the beach, saw a business opportunity and planted tobacco here with a view to supplying the local pipe smokers. Up on the hills, Tinderbox Peninsula is often so dry it’s pretty reasonable to assume that’s why it got this name, but the story is actually more interesting. Wrecks and Ancient Litter A silver memento
0 kommentar(er)
