A piece of paradise locals kept to themselves, until now

Newfoundlanders have a penchant for cod tongue. Well, not technically the tongue, their fancy is a small muscle sliced from the back of the cod’s throat, which tastes a little sweet, and a bit meaty, almost like a scallop. Newfoundlanders – and let’s call them Newfies, since everyone else does – like to fry them with thick pork fat scrunchions. That’s for stodge as much as flavour: for on this island, they’ll tell you, the wind will come at you at 200km/h and, like their black spruce (trees), they warn, it pays to have a solid trunk.

The entire north-western coast of Newfoundland is a rarely visited haven.Credit:

They obsess over their wind, as other places’ people dissect football scores, or politics. “The thing ’bout Newfoundland,” a local tells me. “It’s prettier when it’s raining sideways.” Another chides me for taking shelter when the gusts turn ballistic one afternoon. “Ooh, barely a breath, not worth your worry.” Another describes a north-easterly blast: “We call this the lazy wind. It won’t go round ya, it goes through ya.” Newfies take infinite pride in these descriptions of the elements that rattle their home.

Many consider Annie Proulx’s famed novel The Shipping News their tome, full as it is of grisly accounts on the toughness of being here at all: “The sea was endless, a black maw, a devouring monster”. They call their island “The Rock”. They’ll tell you about polar bears wandering outside their homes in early spring. I wonder though if it’s because they haven’t wanted to share their piece of paradise with the world. Until now, that is.

Newfoundland is a key part of a push to advance eco-tourism in parts of Canada where fewer international tourists traditionally go. For while some of us know the town of Gander thanks to Broadway hit Come From Away, which tells the story of an east-coast Newfie community harbouring passengers diverted during September 11, and about Newfoundland’s capital, St Johns (home to the most bars per-square-metre in North America), little else is known of Newfoundland internationally. It’s the size of three Belgiums, two Tasmanias, one Iceland and half of Britain; yet only about 200,000 international visitors arrive here by plane each year. Considering most of those arrive via St Johns, on Newfoundland’s east coast, and won’t venture far beyond, there’s a lot of Newfoundland with few international tourists at all.

I’m bypassing St Johns, flying instead to Deer Lake in the island’s north-west, a region home to four UNESCO World Heritage sites.

There’s barely a breath of wind as I take off north by road after touching down, reaching World Heritage-listed Gros Morne National Park in under an hour. I’m travelling outside the park’s busiest period when mostly domestic travellers arrive during summer school holidays. In late August, only a few RVs pass me by among a landscape of glacier-carved fjords and green mountains where waterfalls tumble, turning to mist long before they hit the ground. I’m surrounded, too, by red and orange tablelands, a unique geological formation once part of the planet’s mantle that you won’t see anywhere else. The roadway cuts through forest metres from the edge of a bay. Its calm, mirrored surfaces reflect those green mountains. When the road leaves the water’s edge, it squeezes through the only gaps between the mountains.

I enter a tiny hamlet beside the water, where Canadian flags flutter in a zephyr, and a couple of historic timber restaurants are built beside the water. Their back patios double as beer gardens with one heck of a view. This is Woody Point, population 244. It’s as visually impressive as Queenstown, New Zealand, but with none of the tourism development. On each side of me all I see are old fishing shacks painted bright colours, so their owners can spot them from their boats through the fog.

Downtown Woody Point is about as hectic as it gets in this part of Newfoundland.Credit:

I head out onto the water on a kayak with young Newfie couple Alex and Becky O’Keefe, founders of adventure company Wild Gros Morne. This coast was once dominated by cod canneries; an industry that shaped Newfie communities for generations. But overfishing forced a moratorium, and lately, Becky O’Keefe says, locals are seeing more value in showing off wildlife, not killing it.

“There are 18 UNESCO sites in Canada and almost a quarter of them are here in Newfoundland,” she says. “There are 22 species of whales and dolphins that come into the bay here alone. There’s so much here people know nothing about.”

And all of them have loved cod tongue ... Credit:

I follow a winding road through forest to a new luxury eco-lodge built high above the valley floor. Gros Morne Inn has a Gold Sustainable Tourism Certification and runs almost entirely on solar and hydroelectricity while its managers – both born-and-bred Newfies – committed years towards protecting the island’s marine environment. Co-manager Rebecca Brushett has a degree in marine biology and environmental policy and founded an organisation that promotes ways to grow sustainable communities in Newfoundland while protecting the ocean.

The fjords of Gros Morne are as pristine as Norway’s.Credit:

I eat dinner in the inn’s restaurant, Taste. Its produce is sourced direct from local farmers and from Ocean Wise-certified seafood partners. “We get the same amount of visitors in Gros Morne National Park in a year that Banff gets in a weekend,” co-manager Ian Stone tells me. “So younger people from Newfoundland used to all go away for work, but they’re starting to come home, for tourism, some of them to farm organically. Newfoundland could be one of Canada’s best sustainable tourism destinations. Like Norway really, without the cruise boats.”

The road’s a lonely place to be as I drive north next morning, weaving along the coast, past deserted beaches and into rich green meadows, fringed by the continuous Long Range Mountains. I stop at a national historic site in the fishing village of Port au Choix, where I hike along trails used up to 6000 years ago by ancient Palaeo-Eskimo people, to limestone barrens where depressions left by long-ago houses are part of one of North America’s most significant archaeological finds (117 skeletons were found here).

Like Queenstown without the crowds … the Woody Point area is untapped.Credit:

I walk for hours among just a few people, locals mostly. In these tiny seaside villages, you can’t stop a Newfie talking. If only I knew what they were saying; most sound like pirates, and they speak in riddles, with constant quips about their weather. As I drive further north, the ocean’s as calm as a lake, with barely a puff of breeze.

Newfoundland offers a lot of odd animal delicacies – from cod tongue to moose burgers.Credit:

I reach L’Anse aux Meadows World Heritage site near the northern tip of Newfoundland, bathed in the gentlest afternoon sunshine. The first and only site established by Vikings in North America – there are buildings here from 1000AD, the earliest evidence of Europeans in the New World, predating Christopher Columbus by almost half a millennium. This is the only undisputed site of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic discovery within the Americas, yet I wander past 1000-year-old village relics beside a stunning rocky coastline with no one around (fewer than 30,000 people visit each year). I stay nearby, and am told to listen for humpback whales breathing during the night. I don’t hear any, but next morning the sea’s full of them. “This isn’t the end of the world,” a local tells me when our paths cross on a dawn walk. “But you can see it from here.”

Travelling across north-west Newfoundland is a mix of new-age, eco-tourism and old-fashioned quaintness. Some of my rooms share the same carpet scheme as RSL clubs. Fish and chips (and cod tongue) often comes served with vast helpings of batter, but for every over-oiled chip there’s a farm-to-table meal option.

Western Brook Pond, a fjord within Gros Morne National Park surrounded by billion-year-old, 600-metre-high sheer rock walls.

At Upper Humble Settlement (near Deer Lake), I take a foraging tour to learn how to live off the land as the indigenous peoples did for thousands of years, before I settle for a four-course meal served within a sustainable farm. At the region’s top tourism attraction – Western Brook Pond, a fjord within Gros Morne National Park surrounded by billion-year-old, 600-metre-high sheer rock walls – I travel aboard the first tourist boats in North America to receive the industry’s highest environmental rating.

I also walk with indigenous guides through parts of this north-western region as they share the history of their local Mi’kmaq people. “The tourism we’re seeing now is reconciliation in action,” Qalipu First Nations Chief Jenny Brake tells me. “Nothing else allows us to tell our story.” I’m in the midst of a transition; overseas travellers would come here on coach tours, now the international tourists who come prefer to slip off into the wilderness, barely leaving a footstep.

“You can tell your people this,” a local advises me. “Should we all make it to heaven, Newfoundlanders are the only folk who prefer it at home.”

THE DETAILS

FLY
Air Canada offers daily flights to Deer Lake via Vancouver from Australia’s east coast from $3100 return. See aircanada.com. All major car rental companies operate out of Deer Lake Airport.

STAY
Stay in one of 15 luxury rooms from $CAD395 ($460) a night at Gros Morne Inn, grosmorneinn.com. Motel rooms overlooking the ocean from $CAD130 ($152) a night at Shallow Bay Motel & Cabins, shallowbaymotel.com Enjoy sunset views over the water in fishing village Rocky Harbour from $CAD190 ($221) a night, theoceanview.ca

EAT
Take a forage tour and a four-course farm-to-table meal within an historic farming community, see upperhumbersettlement.ca Dine beside the sand at a family-run seafood restaurant in Trout River, seasiderestaurant.ca Chef Jason Lynch prepares some of the island’s best sustainably harvested ingredients overlooking a fjord, theinn.ca/pages/the-black-spruce

MORE
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The writer travelled courtesy of Destination Canada.