A tale of two islands

Girt by sea ... the view across Killiecrankie Bay on Flinders Island.Credit: Andrew Bain

On the chalk-and-cheese isles of Flinders and King, Andrew Bain satisfies his appetite and sense of adventure.

Flinders Island and King Island are like chalk and cheese: the chalky white beaches of Flinders Island and the renowned cheeses of King Island. Though they share latitude and are in Bass Strait, there's little else that's alike. The islands offer vastly different travel experiences.

In a nutshell, you travel to King Island for the finer things in life and to Flinders Island for the fitter things in life. Flinders is about adventure; King is about appetite.

The defining feature on Flinders Island is its landscape - wherever you look it is gorgeous - while on King Island you must seek the true beauty spots. Flinders is gift-wrapped in inviting beaches and headlands ablaze in orange lichen. Hills pierce every horizon, culminating in the 782-metre-high Strzelecki Peaks rising above the pin-up-perfect coast at Trousers Point. Viewed from sea level, it's a sea-meets-summit scene at least the equal of Tasmania's infinitely more famous Wineglass Bay.

The Strzelecki Peaks offer Flinders' prime outdoor opportunity, with a bushwalking trail winding up the slopes to the mountains' exposed summit. The climb traverses rainforest and bare rock. At the end of the two- to three-hour walk comes the best view Bass Strait has to offer, staring out over Trousers Point - its waters as clear as a lap pool - and across the sea as far as Ben Lomond on the Tasmanian mainland.

Lesser walking challenges present along Flinders Island's west coast to Castle Rock, a wind- and wave-shaped boulder almost worthy of being an island itself, or around the base of Mount Killiecrankie to the Docks, once a rock climbers' playground now beckoning rediscovery.

King Island's greatest natural treasures are at its extremities. In the south, the cliffs at Seal Rocks, backed by an ancient petrified forest, rise above raging seas and glow gorgeously at sunset. In the north, Penny's Lagoon sits pooled above the water table in the same sort of balancing act that's made Fraser Island's lakes so famous. Past the lagoon is Lavinia beach, where King Island has its rare moment of adrenalin.

Here, south-west swells propel waves Surfing Life magazine once rated as among the 10 best in the world. Known until recently to just local surfers, the waves have now drawn world champions Kelly Slater, Tom Carroll and Sunny Garcia to the island (as well as a few celebrity surfers, such as Eddie Vedder and Richard Tognetti).

One thing the two islands do share is a rich history. Bunkered low against some of the world's roughest seas, the islands - raised like a pair of eyebrows above Tasmania - have acted like a set of crash barriers for ocean traffic. More than 100 ships have wrecked on King Island (including Australia's worst maritime disaster, when the Cataraqui smashed into rocks in 1845, killing more than 400 people), while the first-known shipwreck on Australia's east coast was just south of Flinders Island.

Today, one of the lures of King Island is its trio of lighthouses, while on Flinders you can still see the consequences of the absence of lighthouses. At King's northern tip, the towering Cape Wickham Lighthouse is the tallest light station in the southern hemisphere, rising 48 metres. In the main town of Currie, the Currie Harbour Light is one of the few lighthouses in the world to be recommissioned, its light switched back on in 1995 - six years after it was deactivated.

The ship scene at Flinders is a little more stark. In the brutally named Pot Boil, a turbulent section of water off the island's south coast, the 1912 wreck of the barque Farsund is wedged into a sandbar. Almost a century on, the wreck has accumulated enough plant life to almost qualify as a floating nursery.

But Flinders's greatest claim on history is not maritime. In empty fields along its wind-blown west coast, almost straddling the line of the notorious Roaring Forties, the Wybalenna Chapel is a forlorn memory of Tasmania's attempt to exile and isolate its Aboriginal population.

In the 1830s, almost 200 Aborigines were taken to Wybalenna, where most died of disease or homesickness in the next decade. The National Trust is said to regard the chapel as one of the most important historic sites in Australia.

At day's end - whether you've hiked, surfed or been immersed in history - an island trip almost invariably creates a continental-sized appetite. Most people travel to King Island with food in mind, though it can be curiously difficult once here to source some of the legendary produce - most of it leaves the island for larger markets.

But there remains enough on this virtual pasture in the sea to tempt and reward.

Appropriate to its workaday atmosphere, King Island's best restaurant hides behind an unprepossessing facade. At Kings Cuisine, inside the RSL-like Grassy Club, former Kosta's chef Steve Russell chooses his beef not just from the island but from preferred farms.

A short distance up the coast, at tiny Naracoopa, the beef is equally good at Rocky Glen Retreat, with the accompanying vegetables plucked from the restaurant's own glasshouses.

For many, a King Island visit hinges on cheese. Now commanding about 25 per cent of the Australian speciality-cheese market, the famed King Island Dairy is one of the few places on the island where you can directly source local products, with an attached shop selling the makings of a decent island picnic.

Cheese in hand, it's a short drive from the dairy back into Currie and King Island's most enticing and scenic "eatery". Clinging to the harbour edge, immediately below the Currie Harbour Light, the vibrantly coloured Boathouse is a unique lunch, dinner or picnic spot. Known locally as the "restaurant with no food", the one-time storage shed contains a barbecue, seats, tables, mugs and plates but no food or drink - this is BYO the lot. For use of the facilities you pay what you wish in the honesty box.

Like the dairy and Cape Wickham Lighthouse, the Boathouse has become an emblem of King Island, a measure of both its trusting nature - the hardest thing to find on the island is a locked car - and its resilience against harsh conditions. When the Boathouse burned down two years ago, residents quickly banded together to reconstruct it. The meal must go on ...

Flinders Island's culinary reputation doesn't stretch quite so far - in the main town of Whitemark, the only dining option on a Sunday night is self-catering - but it's no gastronomic desert. It supports Bass Strait's only winery, with the highly rated whites and pinot noir from Unavale Vineyard readily available in the Furneaux Tavern in Lady Barron, run by the vineyard's owners.

The apex of the food scene is the organically licensed Chappell's restaurant at Vistas on Trousers Point, at the foot of the Strzelecki Peaks. Once a health retreat, it's now where locals head for special occasions. But even here, the length of a strait away, meals invariably conclude with a platter of cheeses from King Island.

Andrew Bain travelled courtesy of Tourism Tasmania.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Sharp Airlines flies to Flinders Island from Essendon Airport in Melbourne four times a week, from $212 one way. Rex and King Island Airlines fly daily to King Island from Melbourne from $145 one way.

Staying there

- The best accommodation on Flinders Island is Vistas on Trousers Point, pinched between the Strzelecki Peaks and the beach at Trousers Point.

Rooms from $155, see vistasontrouserspoint.com.au.

- On King Island, the luxury self-contained units at Portside Links, on the former golf course in the old mining town of Grassy, are recommended. Rooms from $190, see portsidelinks.com.au.

More information

See visitflindersisland.com.au and kingisland.org.au.