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[Treading lightly on the Friendly Beaches] |
In my family we
call it “explorer blood”. It’s the urge to see new places; to choose different
routes; to go that little bit further to see what’s over that hill. I have it,
my father had it, and his father had it before him. But I didn’t expect it to
come into play here, on the Freycinet Peninsula, which feels known to me, tamed
even.
Yet as we walk from
White Water Wall towards Bluestone Bay, I start to get that old tingling in the
blood. It rises as Jodi tells us we’ll be taking a route that is not well
known; not often walked. It’s certainly new to me.
We carefully scrub our boots at the bay. We don’t want to be responsible for introducing Phytophthora root rot here. That fungal
infection has already killed many susceptible plants in other parts of the
national park, and we don’t want to carry it in on any infected mud on our
boots.
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[Boot scrubbing at Bluestone Bay] |
Overnight it rained,
pattering on the roof of our accommodation, lulling us to sleep after our long
day of walking. Today it’s cool and windy, and there are still showers about. At
the bay we watch a pair of sea kayakers launch into the water. We hope they hug
close to the steep cliff-bound shore in these blustery conditions.
As we climb through
the bush I imagine how Aboriginal people would have used their rafts along this
coast over thousands of years, hunting the seals and sea birds that are still
prolific here. We pass a midden which holds clues to other parts of their diet;
especially shellfish and marsupials.
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[A distant sea kayak near Bluestone Bay ... click image to enlarge] |
We’re soon high
above the rocky coastline, and looking down on the kayaks, now just small dashes
on the corrugated dapple of the sea. It’s exhilarating to be here, like seeing
an old friend doing new things in a new context.
 |
[Looking back towards Cape Tourville] |
Most of us take a
break at a high point with a view back towards Cape Tourville, but Jodi pushes
on to some place she and Eric refer to as “the yellow rock café”. When we
finally catch her up we get the joke. Jodi has hooked up a large yellow tarp
over an improvised table. An amazing lunch spread covers the “table”, actually
a piece of duckboard track.
 |
[Jodi and Eric at the Yellow Rock Cafe] |
After lunch we
start the slow descent towards Freshwater Lagoon, at the southernmost end of the
Friendly Beaches. There are old disused tin mines and random exploration digs
in the area. Most are now just revegetated holes in the bush, which is thicker
here in the sheltered low hills.
 |
[On the descent to Freshwater Lagoon] |
We eventually get
back to well trodden paths in the form of an old exploration track. This soon
leads us to the coast at Freshwater Lagoon. On the beach we see our first other
people of the afternoon: a family playing a game of beach cricket. As though to join
in this pretence of summer, Eric and a couple of others go in for a swim. The
day is now calm, and the low sun glitters off the ocean as we watch both
swimmers and cricketers.
 |
[A chilly dip at the southern end of the Friendly Beaches] |
We still have 3 or
4 km to walk up the beach and back to the Friendly Beaches Lodge, but in these
conditions that will hardly be a trial. It’s time for boots off and trousers
rolled. That makes me think of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my
trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair
behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel
trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids
singing, each to each.
 |
[Trousers rolled ... or shorts on for a walk up the Friendlies] |
But my own trousers
are neither white nor flannel, and today I feel far less maudlin about ageing
than Eliot. If there are mermaids singing today they are just the crested terns
which pose and chatter and wheel as we stroll up the beach.
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[Crested terns on the Friendly Beaches] |
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