Strahan, Tasmania, 16 October 2023
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This was the day we went for a boat cruise in Macquarie Harbour and up the Gordon River..

It might have been a fine day but it was not so we were in luck.

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First we went through Macquarie Heads and this is Entrance Island, just past the heads.

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I think this is on the south-western side of Macquarie Heads.

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The wall behind the island is clearly man-made, as you can see on Google Earth.

Not sure of the purpose, but perhaps to keep the sandbars out of the channel, especially in the nineteenth century when navigation there was both more precarious and more significant.

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Bonnet Island.

This is very close to the small island and rockwall above and is at the mouth of Macquarie Harbour at the north-west.  The passage is known as Hells’ Gate.  This is said to be the convicts’ name, the passage to their Hell at Sarah Island, the convict settlement within the harbour. It’s also where many vessels came to grief in the nineteenth century.

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Further on, possibly Backagain Point.

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Salmon and trout farming

There are eleven salmon leases with many pens in the northern part of the harbour, and there is controversy over environmental effects.  Federal Environment Minister Tanya Pilbersek may pause salmon farming which is causing low oxygen levels below the salmon farms and threatening the endangered Maugean Skate, endemic to the harbour.  Other factors affecting the skate are hydro operations and climate change.

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Maybe people even live out there for periods.

The sustainability of the farming has also been questioned on other grounds.  For example, a Four Corners program exposed overstocking there in 2016 and 1.35 million salmon and trout died there during the 2017/18 summer.  The three companies which own the farms were originally Tasmanian but now all foreign owned.  There is significant local opposition to the farming. Issues include fish waste, cruelty to seals, destruction of the marine environment and a lack of regulation (ABC News).

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A small ferry with a tanker on board and large amounts of water being discharged out the back.

The tanker has a walkway and hatches on the top.  I can read the name of the transport company that owns  the tanker and on its website it lists one of its operations as “bulk smolt and harvest fish”.  Smolt are young salmon or trout.  One of the fish farm companies that operates here, for example,  breeds smolt in a small lake in central north-west Tasmania and transfers them to Macquarie Harbour when they are 18 to 24 months old.  So the tanker must have a load of smolt that it is transferring to the farms on the harbour.

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On the other hand, I think this is a crayfish pot being raised or lowered.

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As we proceed south on the harbour, the weather is starting to clear.

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And now, the sun is out.

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But it doesn’t last for long.

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And the rain has set in, giving us some wonderful foggy landscapes.

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The top of the boat was open and I was able to go up there to take these images.

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It was blowing a gale though and most of the time I was by myself.

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There was a small Captain’s cabin up there, which I was able to shelter behind, though I had to be careful moving round when exposed to the wind.

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We’re at the south end of the harbour and the entrance to Gordon River is ahead.

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Depth and mystery out to the sides.

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Here we are, briefly, inside the Captain’s cabin and out of the weather.

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Clearing a bit now it seems.

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…on and off….

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We are now entering the Gordon River.

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I think this is a Huon Pine that was particularly pointed out to us.

Huon pines are endemic to West and South-West Tasmania.  They can grow for 3,000 years and are now protected.  Part of the reason for founding a convict settlement on Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour was to get the convicts to log Huon Pine in the Gordon River.  Loggers took the straightest ones so the big ones that survived beside the river were deemed imperfect by the loggers.

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This one has a waterfall coming down behind it.

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We are  on the Gordon River and also in the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and World Heritage Area., an area that saw probably the most significant environmental actions in Australia’s history.

“In 1982 protesters and environmental activists led a campaign to stop the damming of the Franklin River in Tasmania. This action saved a key wilderness area and raised awareness of environmental issues. The political success of the environmental groups involved eventually led to the formation of the Greens, now Australia’s third most popular political party.”  (National Museum of Australia – for more detail see here)

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1400 protesters were sent to prison during the protests (including Bob Brown and Federal Government MPs) and protesters also endured violence from loggers.  Public pressure ultimately caused the wilderness to be protected and an element of that was the iconic photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend by Peter Dombrovskis, which was used during the campaign.

Some of you may have noticed that notwithstanding the success of the Wild Rivers campaign, erosion of the environment by commercial exploitation has not been eliminated.  Many Australian States have also implemented repressive laws that allow far more punitive responses to peaceful demonstrations than occurred then.  And yet we live in a largely oblivious world where excessive population and unchecked greed is bringing on a mass extiinction event with unprecedented speed.

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Raining again, very hard.  Rain is not unheard of in South Western Tasmania.

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Leaving the Gordon River.

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Last glimpse near Gordon River.

(We also called in on the former convict settlement Maria Island on the way back.  Those images are part of the next post).

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Heading back to Strahan into the early afternoon sun.

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Woodland close to Strahan.

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A point very close to Strahan.

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Addendum:  Flashback:  Tasman Island from Cape Pillar

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You may recall this image from the recent post Tasman Island Cruise.

It is taken from beside Tasman Island and just behind the “Flying Fox Rock”.  On the right we are looking at Cape Pillar.  The vertical rock structure at the top is The Blade.  I come back to this because I just realised it has an extra significance.

Thirty six years ago, I was just below the top of The Blade, (look where that is), when I took…

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…this image of Tasman Island.

I had carefully slid down from the path on a short loose slope to a tiny platform with sheer drops on both sides and The Blade is 230 metres high.  I was able to set up my tripod and large format camera there and take the image.  It became the frontispiece of the Australian lighthouse history From Dusk Till Dawn.  You can find information on the significance of this picture and the technical detail for the exposure in this Blog post.

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