Exploring Flinders Island on a Tasmanian Expeditions hiking trip
At times you might want to inhale this place so deeply that you could smuggle some essence of it back home in your heart.
Who’d have guessed that among Australia’s first mineral exports was an obscure rock from Bass Strait, the Killiekrankie Diamond?
Perched on the 316m summit of Mount Killiekrankie on Flinders Island in the Strait, and with the Roaring Forties living lustily up to its name, I strain to hear as our guide, Kevin, tells the story. In 1810, a mineralogist identified these lustrous, quartz-like gems found on the mountain slopes as topaz, not billion-year-old carbon. Regardless, the gem hunters who flogged them still referred to “diamonds”.
There are no hidden gems where we stand atop Killiekrankie, with Bass Strait and its outlier islands spread before us. The prized topaz turns up in the alluvial streams below us, but we’re here to hike not fossick. Heading down the aptly named Diamond Gully Trail, weaving through giant granites and she-oak forests, we reach the coast, arriving at a sublime cove with an inelegant name, Stackys Bight.
The palette of its emerald shallows and ochre headlands seems so Mediterranean that it could be Sardinia’s dolce vita Costa Smeralda minus the socialites and deckchairs. But this is Oz, thank goodness, and other than we 10 trekkers there’s not a soul in sight. The only thing higher than the treeline is a white-bellied sea eagle patrolling for snacks.
We’re on a six-day Tasmanian Expeditions hiking trip on Flinders Island. At 1330sqkm, it’s the largest in the Furneaux Group. Also known as Tayaritja, these are the 2.5 million-year-old stepping stones that joined Wilsons Promontory on the mainland with ancient Lutruwita, aka Van Diemen’s Land, aka Tasmania. Until about 12,000 years ago, flora, fauna and people crossed this land bridge, which periodically disappeared beneath rising sea levels.
Despite their reputation, the Roaring Forties mostly whisper. Each morning we drive from our base camp on the northwest coast to a trail selected by Gracie and Kevin, two of our extraordinary guides, according to the conditions.
On one day it’s a hike around the northern tip of the island where the Palana Dunes sweep into the distance and small, dark Bennetts wallabies watch our progress. On another, it is rock-hopping for an hour or so across a coastal boulder field, a challenge for knees and ankles. A few slips, no snaps, and we’ve all made it.
On most days our lunch stop happens at a rock arch, stone castle or tea tree forest that, hardly by accident, faces a wild and empty beach. With the sea colours running from deep teal to turquoise and emerald, I see why these islands have been called “the cold Whitsundays”. Even so, the Bass Strait waters in autumn are still warm enough for a plunge.
At other times, inland and higher up, the hiking involves a game of “spot the rock”, where huge anthropomorphic boulders with nicknames such as Old Mans Head, the White-Eyed Man and Wombat Rock loom above us. The skyline of long, low Flinders Island juts dramatically with two major peaks, Killiekrankie and Strzelecki, both on our list to climb. Our trekking itinerary isn’t too demanding, with the exception of Strzelecki, the island’s highest point.
“Dryazell” – as in “dry as hell” – is how Walter Lyall, the island’s first government schoolmaster, named his cottage back in 1908, acknowledging its unconscionable distance from the closest pub. His thirst notwithstanding, Lyall was an admired teacher. We find his story, along with two centuries of Flinders lore in the Furneaux Museum at Emita, one of the best curated local collections anywhere. Its tales of shipwrecks (at least 65), rough-house sealers, mutton-birders and soldier-settler farmers, plus a grim period of Aboriginal “relocation”, set the context for where we walk.
“Be bold, start cold!” It’s an old hiking exhortation: up at sparrow’s, get cracking, go stoic, and all that. Except that our early starts begin with fresh coffee and a good hot breakfast as prepared by Morgan, the third of our guides, who’s on chef duties this week. The large dining-kitchen-hangout dome is the centre of base camp action, while our pod-style safari tents on platforms are scattered away among the trees.
Each tent has a high, transparent roof. I fall asleep gazing up through my cathedral-like dome to where the branches of a silver banksia are hung with the night’s stars. Beat that, Vatican, I muse, gazing at my antipodean Sistine. Plus, there are hot showers, great meals and a warm bed.
While hiking or back in camp, we get to know each other. Our group comprises seven women, three men, predominantly Australians, ages ranging from 40s to 70s. I’m impressed by their achievements. Several have run the Boston Marathon; others are Sydney City2Surf veterans. The one who sits outside our boomer-ish bracket is a lanky, polite mid-teen – call him Tom – brought along by his mother for a “phone fast” from TikTok and co. Hashtag: good luck?
Our formidable hosts put themselves – heart, back and brains – into every minute of the job. They are always on; hiking, driving, humping huge daypacks, wildlife spotting, cooking, cautioning – “watch out for jack-jumpers” (ants), “slippery rocks ahead”, and so on. Rotating weekly through guiding and culinary duties, this indefatigable trio is the backbone of our trip. They’re all professional guides but 26-year-old Gracie has a unique ticket. She first “did” Tasmania’s challenging Overland Track propped in her mother’s backpack at just five months old. She was born to trek.
Flinders is an austere beauty, with its mix of wilderness, pasture, lagoons, heath and honeycombed shorelines. It’s the last remaining habitat of the common wombat. They’re easy to spot, much blonder than their mainland cousins and shuffling along like slo-mo rocks. We see few of their fellow terrestrials such as pademelons and possums but the birdlife is prolific. I spot mutton birds, wedgetails, currawongs, Cape Barren geese and sadly, dead on a rock, a wandering-no-more albatross. Haven that the island is today for bird and marine life, it was once the opposite for the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
“God protect us from protectors,” says a character in a John le Carre novel. Peel back time by two centuries to the era of George Augustus Robinson, a so-called chief protector of Aborigines, and the quote fits like a glove. We visit historic Wybalenna (“Black Men’s Houses”) on the west coast, an infamous place of exile established in 1834 and later overseen, albeit negligently, by Robinson. The restored brick chapel still stands like an accusation. In its bleak graveyard are the unmarked resting places of some 100 “protected” souls. A list of names records that few of them survived beyond age 40.
The day of our big climb arrives. The Strzelecki granite massif blocks the sky. It’s posted as a Grade 4, 6km, 4-5-hour round trip, ascending through gullies, wooded slopes and steep climbs to the 756m summit. The top third in particular is noted as “challenging”. Up we go, following a rough track through dry sclerophyll forest and small watercourses. Kevin strides ahead making light of his bulging, 25kg pack (first-aid gear, lunches, even a Thermos for hot tea). My daypack weighs very little. The personal 75kg are more than enough.
I’m also carrying a recent foot injury and don’t plan to go to the top. Along with Gloria, a Melbourne lawyer, I call it quits at the 400m level, beyond which the ascent becomes much tougher. After leisurely taking in the view we start our descent, accompanied by Gracie. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is on the track and so too is a 2m-long copperhead snake, basking like a Costa Smeralda socialite. We’re on a steep slope and there’s no way around this entitled local roadblock.
Wisely, Gracie does nothing to agitate it. The vibrations from her foot-tapping (at a safe distance) don’t stir it to movement. Copperhead is going nowhere and nor are we. Which is when Gloria, noting the way our shadows fall across the track – the sun is behind us – displays the sort of commando skills learned only in the cutthroat jungles of Collins Street.
Keeping a safe distance, she raises her arm and allows its shadow to fall across the head and upper body of the snoozing viper. It slides to a new sunny spot a metre down the slope. Gloria repositions her arm, again casting its shadow over the snake. Our heliotropic friend responds, once more seeking a warm position further away. And so it goes, until the snake glides calmly away and our track is clear. Legal eagle throws shade on demon copperhead: case dismissed. Who’d have guessed?
Flinders Island is dunes, gaunt crags and shoreline granites encrusted with orange lichen, all framed by a sapphire sky. At times you might want to inhale the place so deeply that you could smuggle some essence of it back home in your heart and lungs.
In the know
Tasmanian Expeditions’ six-day guided hike, Flinders Island Walking Adventure – In Comfort, operates from October to April; from $3885 a person, twin-share; solo travellers are upgraded to a single tent at no extra fee. The price, ex-Launceston, includes accommodation and meals at the private Eco-Comfort Camp, along with return scenic flights to the island.
John Borthwick was a guest of Tasmanian Expeditions.
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