January 2020
We left for Norfolk Bay early on the first day of 2020, it was the new year and so new adventures were awaiting us. While sailing out of the Derwent River we noticed another boat, sails raised, heading up the river. The closer they got to us the more we began to realise who this boat was and where it had come from. It was the final boat of the Sydney to Hobart race barrelling towards the finish line. Nearly a full week since they had left Sydney they were finally nearing the end of their race so we waved to them as they passed us, happy to have seen the first and last boat as they sailed into Hobart. That day to get from Hobart’s Kangaroo Bay to Little Norfolk Bay we had to sail about 38nm, not an overly extravagant distance but far enough that we didn’t have time to dawdle. So with a steady 10-15kt breeze we set a first reefed main and staysail and had a flying sail down the Derwent River. With such good sailing winds it wasn’t long before we were sailing past the Iron Pot, a small island off the South Arm peninsulas Cape Direction.
Iron Pot actually has quite an interesting history, this island has Tasmania first therefore oldest lighthouse and also happens to be Australia’s second oldest lighthouse. The island was barely 0.4 hectares but that didn’t stop people from needing to live on this tiny island. In the late 1800’s the light had to be monitored and maintained to keep the lighthouse on and running for incoming ships. This meant that in even the worst weather the people had to stay on the island to keep the light going. One story I can remember reading depicted one of the worst storms to hit this tiny island, causing waves to break right onto the Iron Pot. The story goes that on that stormy night all the island occupants squeezed into the top of the lighthouse to hide from the weather, which was a good thing that they did. Because even at 20m tall, the lighthouse had waves crashing onto it leaving the occupants to find seaweed draped over the upper rails of the balcony of the lighthouse the next morning. They also awoke to discover that a lot of the other infrastructure on the island had been damaged or washed away overnight.
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As we passed the Iron Pot we couldn’t help but think back to this story marvelling at how furious the weather must have got and amazed that the waves could reach the top of the light house. Once past the small island our next task was to navigate between Betsy Island and the other end of the South Arm peninsula. But it was a little tricky as there was a couple of rocks in the middle of the passage called Black Jack Rocks, which we had to pass to our port side. This meant the gap we had to squeeze though was only about 500m at the narrowest section. However things were made a little more difficult because we could see another yacht approaching the gap from the opposite direction while yet another yacht was trying to overtake us. As usual all this was happening as we were trying to pass through a relatively narrow space. Thankfully we had perfect weather and in reality there was plenty of space for us to pass the other boats and all the passing happened before reaching the narrowest bit. So before we knew it we were out the other side.
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The rest of the sail that day went smoothly, we had to tack our way up the first part of the bay, Fredrick Henry Bay. But following the tacking we had a lovely downwind sail through Norfolk Bay into Little Norfolk Bay. We had actually picked this spot because we wanted to go ashore early the next morning for a bit of an expedition. One of the things I really wanted to see during our visit to Tasmania, although maybe a little cliche, was a Tasmanian Devil. But it became quite apparent early on that to see one in the wild was going to be nearly impossible, especially since they’re nocturnal and we’re generally back on the boat before dark. However during our trip to Hobart I had picked up a tourist brochure which followed by a little google searching I found out that there was a Tasmania Devil zoo, called Tasmanian Devil UnZoo. This seemed like the perfect place to see these little animals, although not in the wild this zoo offered the next best thing. The UnZoo had a unique set-up at their zoo, essentially it is based on a new age idea that many zoos are trying to move towards which tries to remove or conceal barriers. The idea is to immerse people in the experience, instead of the animals being caged for human enjoyment the people are educated and immersed as much as possible into the animals environment. The enclosures are more open and the animals have more freedom in an area that has natural or concealed barriers.
This seemed like an amazing concept and I couldn’t wait to check it out. The UnZoo was located in Taranna, which was only a short 1.3km walk from the jetty in the bay we’d anchored in. So the following morning we were up bright and early to go for a trip to the Tasmanian Devil UnZoo. The walk was very easy, a flat road which led straight to the front doors of the zoo. Once there we bought our tickets and were informed that if we hurried we could catch up to the first tour group which was about to participate in a wallaby feeding. So we quickly headed off, using our map of the ground to work out where to go.
Along the way we saw a small group of pademelon’s feeding followed by Hugo having a very unique experience with a bird. We were walking past a tree when a Yellow Rosella landed in the branches above us, singing and chirping while it observed us below. This caused us to stop and watch the beautiful bird, but this led it to do something completely unexpected. The Rosella flew down from its perch in the tree and landed on Hugo’s arm, where it proceeded to run up and down his arm even switching arms when offered to, it seemed to be looking for food. It was a truly extraordinary thing to watch, the Rosella had no fear of either of us. But the experience didn’t last long as when the bird realised we had no food it quickly gave up and flew back to its tree.
After our brief delay we quickly hurried to get to the wallaby feeding, arriving just in time as the keeper was starting to hand out the food. The wallaby feeding was in a huge open grassy area with about 20 wallabies of different ages milling around waiting to be fed, many of the females had joey’s in their pouches. Amongst the wallabies was also a small flock of cape baron geese, which were also enjoying being fed by us. This lasted for maybe half and hour before we were lead off to the next show which was a Devil feeding. We were seated in front of a Tasmanian Devil enclosure and had a perfect view of the first Devil of the day. He had obviously done this before and was eagerly awaiting the piece of meant that his keeper had. However before handing over her prize the zoo keeper gave us a quick talk explaining to us why there were so few Devils in Tasmania and the importance of this zoo. She told us about the Devil Facial Tumour Disease, a highly contagious disease which only affects Devils and is exactly what the name states. The Devils get tumours on there faces which over time prevents the Devils from being able to hunt and eat which leads to a slow and painful death by starvation. What makes the disease so challenging to control is that it is easily transmitted between Devils mainly through biting which is a apart of daily life for a devil in the wild. However there is a lot of research in how to get rid of the disease and many breeding programs in place to keep a healthy population in reserve should the natural population all be infected or disappear.
Once the short speech was over the keeper proceeded to feed the Devil. Although she wasn’t going to make it easy for the poor little guy, instead she hung it from piece of rope and tied it to a tree. This kept the devil busy but it wasn’t long before he’d pulled it loose and was munching away on his juicy prize a large piece of meat. We hung around for a little while after the show watching the Devil finish his prize before moving on to the next show. According to our brochure we had the opportunity to watch another three Devil feedings, see a bird show and observe two bird feedings that day. The UnZoo was definitely all about educating the public on their animals and with nothing better to do we followed the schedule and went to each of the shows. This gave us a day packed with activities and while we weren’t watching one of the various shows we were wandering around the rest of the zoo.
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The UnZoo definitely had a more natural feel then other zoos I had been too. The native wildlife could be seen all throughout the zoo. We had seen many pademelons hiding in the bushes and foraging in the open grasslands and could hear many different species of birds singing in the trees. Even the animals within “enclosures” had a habitat closely resembling there native environments, with places to run and hide if they didn’t want to be on show. It was finally in the late afternoon that we had exhausted all the zoo had to offer and were ready to leave. We’d watched four devil feedings and had been to all the other shows and talks so we were ready to go back to the boat.
However while walking back we noticed a small chocolate shop/ cafe which sold hand crafted chocolates. Unable to resist such a temptation we went into the store for a look. The range of chocolate inside was incredible, basically they had every flavour you could ever think of, however they were all a little out of our price range. Instead of buying any chocolate we bought a hot chocolate each made with there own special house recipe chocolate powder, we also tried a few of their chocolate samples while we waited. Neither disappointed us, the hot chocolate was probably the best I’d ever had and the samples we tried made me wish we’d bought a few of their blocks of chocolate for later, despite the price.
With our drinks in hand we finished the walk back to the jetty and was back on Allagai for what felt like a well earned rest. After our adventure ashore we decided to spent the following day on the boat, however we did decide to take Allagai and explore the bay. We wanted to check out Eaglehawk Neck from this side, having anchored on the Pirate Bay side not three weeks ago. With no wind and only about 4nm to travel we decided to motor, allowing us to appreciate just how different this side of the Neck was. Unlike the other side this side was more of a river or channel then a bay. The entrance was barely 500m wide but this quickly reduced to the point that the rest of the bay was between 100-200m wide and 2.5nm long, it really felt like we’d entered a river despite charts calling it Eaglehawk Bay.
Once at the end we decided to drop the anchor but we were disappointed that there wasn’t much to see, with houses lining the bay and the main road on the isthmus we felt a little exposed. We decided to stay here for lunch before retreating back to our previous anchorage where we felt we had a little more privacy , but also the weather the next day wasn’t great for staying overnight at the Neck. The next few days we stayed in Little Norfolk Bay, the weather wasn’t great for visiting other bays in the area and the cruising guide had little to recommend. It was while we were anchored in this bay that Victoria was having its huge bush fires which even though we were hundreds of kilometres away they were affecting the air quality here. Each morning we woke up to find the whole bay blanketed in smoke which had blown all the way down from Victoria, giving the area an eerie feel I’ll never forget.
However we didn’t sit idle while in Little Norfolk Bay, recently we had been noticing that the aft deck was losing its non-skid coating making the surface dangerously slippery when it got wet. With little else to do I decided to make use of one of our new purchases from Hobart, a cordless orbital sander. This worked perfectly on the deck, so well in fact that while I was at it I decided to sand the foredeck too, which was also looking a little worse for wear. It seemed in no time at all that we were rolling the new paint on the deck, Allagai was looking quite smart with her bright new deck paint. This took us a couple of days to do and once we were done we were ready to move on.
It was while anchored in Little Norfolk Bay that Hugo’s family decided that it was time for another visit after spotting a cheap flight deal online. No sooner had they told us they were coming that the flights were booked, the four of them were heading to Hobart for a visit. Suddenly we had to head back to Hobart and prepare the boat for guests as they were due to fly into Hobart in less then 7 days. This left us making a hasty retreat heading back to the place we had just come from, so back to Hobart we went.
