Monday

My alarm went off at 0630, and I sprang from my lovely bed to the cold floor, swigged milk and pulled briefly into the Bark Mill Bakery—bakery by morning, Tavern by night—and got a hot croissant to eat with the last of my cheese. It was an hour’s drive to Coles Bay in the twilight. Predictably, I got there half an hour early and listened to morning talk radio until 0845, when the last few kids rolled in for the 0830 departure. Not predictably, the radio talk show was called “The Spirit of Things” and the guest on the show was lauding the secularisation of religion with politics. So this is what Tasmanians listen to first thing in the morning. I huddled in my car, the sun now brilliant but the air cold, and waited for the kayaks to arrive.



The wind was chopping the Bay into violent green hurdles, so our kayak tour guides, Jessie and Adam, directed our little convoy of cars down the road to enter the calmer river. There were nine of us, so I shared a double kayak with Jessie, a hearty young lady from the UK who, when she runs out of jobs to do in Oz, wants to live in New Zealand until the jobs run out there. I have always admired these type of carefree adventurers, mostly personal trainers or ski instructors or kayak tour guides, who can be found scattered all over the world. As for Adam, an Aussie, I could hardly understand a word he said—he had one of those heavy brogues, in addition to a rather soft voice.



We saw cormorants, terns, and Pacific gulls, which apparently are suffering a high cholesterol crisis due to the amount of chips (French fries) they eat at tourist shops. We paddled around an oyster farm, being careful not to slip over the oyster beds, that is, except for our obligatory non-English-speaking couple—in this case, Japanese—who paddled directly over the oyster farm, peering delightedly over the side of their kayak, and had to be extricated. After an hour of easy paddling, we pulled up parallel into a bank of rushes for tea. We ate enormous biscuits with and tea or Milo or coffee while Jessie and Adam waded back and forth, passing out sugar and milk with their paddle skirts hiked around their waists. We were back on the beach by 1130.



My park pass didn’t expire til three, so I drove off to find a few more nature walks. Driving up windy, steep, potholed paths seemed to take longer than the hikes themselves; nonetheless I walked around Honeymoon Bay, the Tourville Lighthouse and Sleepy Bay before grabbing a wash and a Tassie calendar at the Visitor Centre, and bidding goodbye to Freycinet.



Back in Swansea, I stopped for a somewhat unsatisfying piece of beer-battered trevalla with salad, so I finished again at the Berry Farm with a wedge of summer pie—apricots, peaches and nectarines with cream and vanilla ice cream. Finally I was ready for the long drive. I stopped only once, for a quick photo at the convict-built Spiky Bridge. The plaque reported that no one really knows why, a hundred and fifty years ago, the bridge had to look Spiky.



I did manage to entertain myself on the road, whenever Perry Como cut out, with the names of the little geographical features I passed—“White Hot Springs”, “Break-me-Neck Hill” which was quickly followed by “Bust-me-Gall Hill”. To name anything along this road appeared to be a simple matter. Pick one word from the following list: Yellow, Rocky, Brushy, Gum, or any Dutch name, and combine with a second word from this list: Rivulet, Hill, Creek, Plains, Banks.



Home at last, sandy and sweaty, and chilled through even after a shower, I wandered out in search of more hot soup. At the crowded famous fish restaurant on the pier, Mures, they quickly found me a table for one.

I relaxed at last, back in civilization, and really enjoyed a rocket salad with cider while waiting for my seafood chowder. After about ten minutes, the waitress asked me if I was done with my salad, but I said no; apparently this created some confusion in her mind, because after half an hour I was still picking over the salad when she came back to ask if I was ready for my seafood chowder now. Apparently she had been loath to bring the soup before I had fully finished with the salad. Luckily, she brought it out within a minute, and it was actually quite good. As I was writing up my notes for the day, she asked if I was a journalist and we had a friendly chat; a few minutes later a waiter came over to say he had heard I was an American—he was from New Mexico. We had a nice chat, too. I finished my chowder and walked back through the dark along the waterfront, looking at the moon.