I feel I’ve crossed one divide here, as of last Saturday, when we spent a day on Bruny Island. (The specific divide you’ll figure out, I’m sure, as you read.) We caught the 7:30 ferry and our first stop on the island was to look along the beach where the penguins head out to sea every morning at first light. We weren’t there at first light, though, so we all we saw of them were the lines of their footprints on the sand and a few burrows in the dunes. That viewpoint overlooks The Neck, and on the beach on the other side of the road we watched a pair of pied oystercatchers walking and bobbing at the water’s edge.
We hadn’t had breakfast, and were on the lookout for a place to eat. The café at Bruny Island Charters was open, and they had just pulled trays of blueberry muffins out of the oven. We settled ourselves at a table and savoured the muffins (not too sweet, with lots of berries in them, very lightly dusted with icing sugar) and good coffee. The music on the sound system caught my attention, it sounded familiar—and sure enough, when I checked it was Harry Manx!
Once we’d eaten we headed off to the Mavista Nature Walk that runs through a forest of man ferns and other trees that enjoy a certain dampness. The understory seemed open, relatively speaking, more spacious than, say, at Leven Canyon or in the rainforest dell at Lake St Clair. The air was filled with birdsongs, but we caught only a single glimpse of a small brown bird. Eventually black currawongs began to call, several, invisible except for an occasional glimpse of a wing high in the canopy. They kept up for 15 or 20 minutes at least, and we devised various collectives for them: a clamour of currawongs or a call are ones I remember. Irene came up with something much more descriptive but I’ve forgotten it.
As we headed back along the trail to the car Irene asked me to photograph a particularly lovely rectangle of moss with a flourish of leaves lying on it—it looked, as she said, something like a forest gravemarker. As I got my camera out I noticed a thin black critter fingering forward like an inchworm and was about to say “look at that!” when Kevin yelped “There’s a leech!” We looked down and they were on our boots. We scraped them off and continued, stopping every 15 steps (Irene was counting) to scrape yet more off. When we made it back to the parking place I rolled up my pant legs and one dropped off my leg leaving a small bloody mark. Another was clinging to the inside of the fabric and I had to shake it loose before we got into the car. In fact I felt nothing when the leech attached itself, and it left no long-lasting indication of its presence. But next time I’ll tuck my pant legs into my socks.
After the leech adventure we drove to the lighthouse at Cape Bruny. There we paused in the parking lot to eat the next round of muffins. It was very windy and cool. Kevin and I walked up to the light and stared over the island and the sea. In a shed by the lighthouse a starling had a nest in the eaves, with young; I could hear their squeaky twittering. (Non-electronic.) Irene stayed with the car and watched the sparrows and fairy-wrens.
From the lighthouse we headed to the Bruny Island Cheese Factory since we were hungry again. There we bought a lovely cheese platter complete with chunks of a sourdough bread, and some delicious very tiny olives, also a product of the island. While we were waiting for the food to be packaged we heard and then saw a young kookaburra, still a bit fluffy-looking, with an adult. The youngster was working at its call, but not there yet. We took our food off to Denne’s Point, where we hoped we might spot the rare 40 Spotted Pardalote, but no luck. However, eating the cheese and olives and bread by the sea was lovely enough. Then it was back to the ferry and Hobart, tired but happy as they used to say in children’s books.
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