After fixing my credit card issues I went to Bruny Island end of February 2021. Will, Jon and a few others already stayed about a week at Cloudy Bay to do some rock climbing. The day I got the ferry to Bruny island they were supposed to pitch down camp. So at around early afternoon, I was on the road to Cloudy Bay, when all of a sudden Jon cycled towards me. We caught up briefly on the road, and then decided to wait for Will in Lunawanna at a cafe…well, we were way finished with our coffees, and the cafe wanted already to close…when Will finally arrived (any surprises here 🥲). As it was already late (I mean obviously), we decided to stay at The Neck campsite. Where we would setup camp again, which again could take a bit of time. Will prepared dinner that night, and he even had some beef tongue in his fridge from a local market, which he shared with all of us.
The next day Will, I, and another friend went to Fluted Cape from Adventure Bay. Well, it was sought to be a short approach. In the end we tried to find the crag for about 5h. We even abseiled a very steep cliff. but couldn’t find any of those described lines. But we found an anchor and some bolts from another route, but not the one we were looking for. So, in the end we had a “nice” walk around Fluted Cape for several hours, with heavy backpacks and all the gear inside, but not any success to do some climbing. The weather was fine though. In the evening Will went back to Hobart and I stayed for another night.
The next morning I drove from Adventure bay to Lunawanna via Coolangatta Road (how aptly) and got a flat tyre there, as the road was quite rough. I visited Cape Bruny Lighthouse (only from the outside), and had luck as the weather cleared a bit.
Then I went to Jetty beach to do the Luggaboine Circuit walk, where I realised that my tyre has not much air. The people from the next car, had a manual pump. So I gave it a go, and pumped the tyre up before I started the walk, but not with much success. When I came back, the air was gone again. So I thought, alright no problem, just another tyre change. That was when I realised that also my spare tyre didn’t have enough air. So anyway, I changed it, and then with the help of another car, I pumped that tyre up. Lucky me, it only was slowly leaking, and needed a refill once a week or so. But it’s not a good feeling, when your spare tyre is also flat in remote places.
On my way back to the ferry, I made a quick stop at The Neck lookout. There is a memorial statue for Truganini. She was from Bruny island and one of the last living Aboriginal Tasmanians after the genocide by the British empire. She was displaced to Flinders island in the 1830s. However, only 44 Aborigines of the 220 who arrived on Flinders island survived, and were transferred to Oyster Cove in 1847. In 1876 Truganini died as the last full-blood and tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal. Most Tasmanians with Aboriginal heritage are descendants of e.g. Fanny Cochrane Smith and other woman, who had children with white settlers. Anyway, don’t care about too much about this tiny statue, just enjoy the amazing view of the Neck from the Lookout.
Afterwards, in the late afternoon my last walk was to Cape Queen Elizabeth. Along the way there are some interesting rock formations, called the Arch directly on the beach, where I did some boulder moves (that’s all I did in terms of climbing on Bruny island). From the cape I could look back all the way to Fluted Cape, where we had been the day before stumbling around in the hope to find a crag. In the evening I went back to Michaela in Hobart. I needed to go to the workshop to get some small repairs done on the suspension of my car and get a new spare tyre from the wreckers obviously (I just had my fingers crossed that the air would stay inside all the way back).
B' on Tour 