Tasmania to Starboard
NORDLYS
David and Annette Ridout
Sun 19 Feb 2006 23:56
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Hobart to Port
Davey
Port Davey
19th February 2006
The D'Entrecasteaux Channel is formed by mainland
Tasmania and Bruny Island. Running for about thirty miles south south
west from just south of Hobart it provides delightful cruising with an almost
endless series of beautiful and sheltered anchorages. We spent several
days exploring a few of these. Included in our anchorages was one off the
hamlet of LYMINGTON. We had to spend a night there.
Unfortunately the Tasmanian Lymington supports neither a cafe nor pub so contact
with the locals was not made.
 Lymington Tasmania from our deck
 Note the absence of traffic!
This picture taken by Annabelle when we drove through
here
Our last anchorage at the southern end of this
waterway was in Recherche Bay. Pronounced Research (!). Here we were
lucky enough to meet several Australian yachts from Freemantle. It was one
of those cases where we were sad that some of them were going in the opposite
direction to us as friendships could easily have been made. One boat
however was coming with us to Port Davey and as I write she is moored about 100
meters from us. Much wine and also meals with locally caught mussels
and cray fish have been enjoyed together. Recherche Bay has been in the
news here lately because the owners of a lot of it wanted to sell. The
logging companies wanted to buy. An outcry ensued as the cutting for pulp
of many native and long growing trees is a very thorny subject here. It is
a classic case of greens versus those with either commercial interests or those
wanting jobs. As I understand it at the moment the woods have been saved
by one Dick Smith, a local Australian entrepreneur who owns a nationwide chain
of electrical goods shops. He has put up the necessary money to get the
land bought by others than logging companies. I do not pretend to really
understand the situation and I am sure that the greens are unrealistically green
and the logging companies are very rapacious if given the chance. While
touring by car we drove for miles through forestry land that had been cropped in
the '60s and '70s and was now regenerating. As a PR exercise the
logging companies made the area available to the public for recreation and there
were many signs up saying what year each area had been cut. To my
inexperienced eye this seemed a happy compromise between financial gain,
with all that that does for the community, and saving the land from long
term damage.
The passage round the southern coast was in reality
easy. The frustration of calm conditions followed by a brisk headwind when
some twenty to twenty five miles from our destination was more than made up for
by the beauty of the scenery we were passing. Dolphins played for hours
round the bows, albatross wheeled around us and always the wild shore was there
with its colours changing vividly in the clear light as the sunshine came and
went. The anchor dram after logging 75nm from dawn to dusk was enjoyed in
perfect calm in a cove just two miles up this waterway. Port Davey is
a misnomer these days as nobody lives within seventy miles of this area.
One thing we did experienced however were three meter swells due no doubt
to a southern ocean storm many miles away. One moment we were seeing the
beaches or rocks at water level, the next only the tops of the
cliffs.
 On the top of a swell
 Same view thirty seconds later
I am writing this at anchor nine miles from the
sea. We have walked some hills, we have cowered as the wind caused Nordlys
to vibrate at her anchor chain and we have motored in the dinghy another three
miles up the Melaleuca river to the short crushed rock airstrip that brings
in the walkers and kayakers who are our only companions other than the crews of
two yachts. When we went up the river it was so calm that the reflexions
of the bankside trees were almost lifelike. With so many miles to do
before April we would like now to be on our way but mother nature has decided
otherwise. Today and for the next three days the wind is due to be
blowing in the twenty to thirty knot range from the north west. The
direction we want to go! Very frustrating as about a hundred to a hundred
and fifty miles north of us the wind is much lighter and from the south
west. We are not yet desperate enough to contemplate beating this distance
into such a wind. Perhaps I should add that at night the temperature is
dropping down to about ten degrees. We may not be tropic only birds but we
are not that tough either.
 Melaleuca river on a calm day
I could go on and on describing this place because
it does have the same magic as the Scottish coast from Oban to Cape Wrath, which
it closely resembles, has. However this would cause readers to
yawn. I will say that all the time we are here we feel privileged to be
enjoying one of the worlds last great temperate wilderness regions at the
same time being so far from civilisation brings with it a feeling of
awareness of the power of mother nature, especially when the comforts and skills
of civilised mankind are so far away.
Happy times to you all dear readers.
David and Annette
 Nordlys at anchor at the entrance to Melaleuca inlet.
Airstrip is
to the left of the furthest bit of river which is three and a
half miles from Nordlys
 The views were worth the climb. Previous picture taken
from here
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