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The first time I got close
to a bishop I was around 15 years old. Apart from his “funny hat”, I remember the
meaty weight of his hands, as he laid them on my young head and intoned “Defend
O Lord this thy child …”. Since then I’ve been on friendly terms with a couple
of bishops. Yet until recently I had somehow avoided meeting one particularly
solid Tasmanian example.
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Bishop and Clerk is a
mountain, or more accurately a cluster of dolerite spires, that rises 620m
straight up from the Tasman Sea at the northern tip of Tasmania’s Maria Island.
Its name derives from a supposed resemblance to a processing bishop and his attendant
clerk. From Darlington it’s a sometimes cloud shrouded backdrop, picturesque
and prominent but never intimidating. It has always struck me as an easy peak
to reach. Perhaps that’s one reason for us never having met, despite my dozen
or so trips to this beautiful national park. Perhaps it’s also that the island holds
so many other wonders.
But sometimes the ducks line
up. A long weekend; a break in the weather; a few other walkers who’d never
been to the Bishop, saw a group of us wandering up towards the stony cleric.
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[Looking towards Bishop and Clerk] |
620m doesn’t sound much.
After all most Tasmanian peaks worth aspiring to are double that height or
more. But I should have remembered my previous experience with Mount Rugby, in
Tassie’s south-west. It rises just 771m above sea level: but sea level is the crunch
here. Most Tasmanian mountains are climbed from foothills that are already
several hundred metres high. With Mt Rugby and, I should have realised, Bishop
and Clerk, you start at sea level. You have to gain the whole of its height
using leg power.
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[Looking towards the Freycinet Peninsula from Maria Island] |
For much of the way Bishop
and Clerk is actually a stroll, and a spectacular one at that. You amble along through
open pasture, climbing gently. To the left of the track are the spectacular
drop-offs of the Fossil Cliffs. To the north are distant views of the mountains
of the Freycinet Peninsula. Ahead are the rocky pillars of Bishop and Clerk,
oddly slow to come any closer.
The track steepens, the
woodland thickens, and still no summit. Finally the familiar sight of dolerite
scree offers the hint that you’re getting there. You shouldn’t get your hopes
up: there are more twists and turns to this summit bid than a Stephen King
thriller. As we get close to the top of the scree, one previous summiteer
reckons it’s only five minutes to go. Thirty minutes later, lathered in sweat,
we grunt up the last airy boulders and we’re there. And I’m immediately wondering
why I haven’t got acquainted with this bishop earlier.
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[Sermon on the mount? Mike takes in Bishop and Clerk.] |
The views are superb:
vertiginous beneath us, expansive and grand in most other directions. During an
early lunch on the summit, it’s hard to choose where to look; difficult too to
do justice to it photographically. Forest, cliffs, sandy beaches, glittering
ocean and sea birds all contend for
attention.
The descent feels even
steeper than the climb, especially when one of our party loses footing and
tumbles and rolls for several metres. Fortunately she suffers nothing worse
than bruising and a big shake-up. We travel on a little more circumspectly, giving
us time to take in even more of the island’s other wonders.
Ruins from the convict and
industrial eras are everywhere evident, though some are being reclaimed by the
bush. Wildlife is also abundant, and often quite unconcerned by human presence.
On the way back a flock of Cape Barren geese flies in and lands nearby. I watch
closely, intrigued by their spectacularly unlikely colour scheme: a grey and black
body offset by hot pink legs and a fluoro-lime bill.
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[A Cape Barren Goose on Maria Island] |
I am amused too by their
shape, the flouncing ballerina bustle accentuated by their dance-like steps;
deliberate, precise, a demi-plié
perhaps, followed by a turnout. The wary eyes betray the possibility of a pas de chat when frightened. The bird’s
gaudiness is such a contrast to the bishop’s dark and sombre tones. Yet somehow
the two typify the amazing contrasts that are Maria Island.
A part of me can’t help
wondering what the bishop might say to the ballerina.
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