En route to a long-planned Cradle Mountain hiking adventure in February we detoured 200 km west from the Devonport ferry and camped for three nights at Green Point Beach in Marrawah, surely one of the most glorious stretches of coastline on earth. The free campground, popular with surfers, van-lifers and grey nomads, is a hop, skip and a jump south of Cape Grim on Tasmania’s north-western tip, where a weather station (which has relished the roaring 40s for over 50 years) can still boast annually that it measures some of the world’s freshest (i.e. least-polluted) air. Simultaneously it has borne primary scientific witness to the alarming, exponential growth of the planet’s CO₂ levels.
With an eye to a future trip to Tarkanya (the Tarkine), one morning we did a recce a little further down the coast to the small settlement of Arthur River, where we met a most-welcoming First Nations woman at the Parks and Wildlife Field Centre, a generous font of knowledge who plied us with brochures about local indigenous custom, together with camping options and maps. As somewhat under-researched mainland blow-ins, we were interested to learn of the 12 Tribes of Northwest Tasmania, and about temma (the bee-hive-shaped huts dug well into the ground on dunes and low rises to enable better shelter from the formidable coastal weather). Aboriginal people have lived on this land for at least 35,000 years and were the southernmost people in the world at the time of the last ice-age.
On the afternoon of our third windy but wonderful day at Marrawah (having just survived the brutal UV of a longish beach walk and lost my trusty Canon G10’s lens function to fine-sand bombardment), a gargantuan rig and its suitably huge occupants pulled into the campground, casting an ominous (and voluble) shadow as they made a bee-line for a patch of unoccupied grass next to our petite tent. Two massive dogs leapt from the RAM monster-ute’s brightly-painted crew-cab as, guided by his wife, an amply-inked and bearded 60-something bull-patriot adeptly reversed his long black ‘Kokoda’ van in beside us. Soon enough it was wine time and out came the big chairs, the rum & cokes, and (as we listened mice-like from our tent – to which we’d retreated early after some initial pleasantries) … a fulsome introduction to One Nation’s politics of grievance. ‘Fuck’n Bowen’ (Chris Bowen, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change & Energy) was singled out for derision.
Pic Denise Corrigan
The national ensign is displayed widely (and flaps often quite wildly) on respectful flagpoles in front of homes and on fences across this exposed corner of the island. And yet, in a municipal viewing rotunda down by the beach a series of ‘signs’ laminated and nailed to the wall – an initiative of students and teachers from the local high school – spoke volumes … alongside the free public barbecue, the picnic seating and the swings.
