Prelude

Our home is girt by sea; well, maybe your home. Mine is a floating cacoon of lines and sails and a sweeter than honey voice singing Oh Canada as it slips, slops and slithers through aqua-blue waters.

That Tasmania is surrounded by water everyone knows, but in reality few people know much about it. We are country people and suburban landlubbers through and through. We are corralled by all sorts of seas and oceans: Bass Strait, the Tasman Sea and the Southern and Indian Oceans all coddle us. There are more than 10,000 kilometres of unbroken water between Hobart and South Africa. Most of us know about a beach-width of the water that shapes our identity.

But the waters are there for us all to discover. Over the past few years, through a good friend, I’ve had a chance to discover a taste of what surrounds us and it has given me a whole new perspective on our island home.

First Movement: Woodbridge to Bruny Island

We sailed out of Kettering with kd lang singing from the Hymns of the 49th Parallel echoing into the stern’s wake and across the placid harbour, from quadraphonic stereo to the sea. Reg says his boat is just a vehicle to hear music in amazing places. As kd sings Joni’s songs, she may as well be singing about the roaring ’40s here and our own champagne effervescence. 

Oh Tasmania, I could drink a case of you,
And still be on my feet …

I was certainly on my feet, but was standing somewhat unsteadily in the listing boat as we hit open water, heading east towards Bruny. The water below was as blue as the sky above – and both were crystal clear and full of flying things. Silver streaks of fish darted below as a white-bellied sea eagle flew majestically above, checking us out and ignoring our irrelevance, as only an eagle can do. 

A gust of wind suddenly struck the boat and I was momentarily off my feet as Reg tightened the sails and steered us south-east. Steady on boy, find your sea legs, you are not walking in the bush today.

We headed into the bright morning and the sea shone silver, blue, green and creamy white. Lang sang about being a lonely painter in a box of paints. I too was in a box of paints, on a brush skimming the sea’s palate. The boat splayed colour as the day drew a fine picture to the accompaniment of familiar old songs.

“You know what BOAT stands for?” asked Reg as I was dreaming off into the colour mix (and he was, again, reminding me to duck my head as we tacked). “Bring Out Another Thousand. You are always dipping your hand into your pocket to keep a boat afloat.” I laughed and tried to stop dreaming off with the music and fresh air, but it was too intoxicating not to. Not to dream would be a sin.

The weather changed quickly and as I gazed at the clouds I thought they indeed looked indeed like bows and flows of angel hair draping around singing wombats and echidnas. Had Joni Mitchell ever been to Tasmania, I wondered, as I stared up into a sky full of feather canyons everywhere. And just when I was off with the musical paintbrush fairies again, Reg brought me back to life. “DUCK!” he yelled as we tacked around suddenly and then briefly chopped west before releasing the spinnaker to head south with the north westerlies. 

The boat tore through the waves, sure of itself, empowered, doing what it is meant to do, at last free of the slavery of harbour and dock. I felt the same freedom as Reg said, “Here, take the helm and aim for that area on the horizon.” 

I could feel the strength of the wind and the sureness of the boat energise me as I steered a course southward, turning the wheel slightly port or starboard to maintain the wind’s full breath so as to fill the spinnaker. I tried not to dream off with the music, but I heard kd singing Cohen and I was soon doing what I do best, daydreaming, listening to the wind’s chorus and Leonard’s secret chord …

We sailed all day. Along the way cormorants, seagulls and oystercatchers escorted and ignored us. We were in their territory and they were quietly checking us out while going about their wild lives. It became obvious to me that we were just tame technology-dependent creatures passing through, and they were the ones who were at home, natural, wild and free. 

The sea is another type of wilderness which we take for granted. This wilderness is not full of tall trees or snow-capped peaks, but is a place of other wild things – steep foaming waves and untamed winds, flapping wings, darting fins and flitting metallic scales. I can’t get enough of it. 

The ocean is like an old-growth forest – largely unchanged since we have been here (if we ignore things like pesky plastics and diminished fish and kelp populations). The waters around Tasmania would not have looked much different when Tasman, Cook and Baudin sailed here hundreds of years ago, or when the locals plied its waves thousands of years ago in bark and reed canoes, crossing these very waters to lunawanna-allonah. We call it Bruny Island, named after the French explorer Bruni d’Entrecasteaux who visited it in the late 1700s.
 
The natives beat Bruni by about 6,000 years, but the French got the fame and the name. Oh so French of them.

When the indigenous people of Tasmania first saw Europeans, they thought we were ghosts. Would they have supposed that our boat was a ghost ship, crewed by phantoms, should we have sailed around Bruny Island 200 years ago? Who are the ghosts now I wondered? Sacre bleu. 

“Come around,” Reg said, “stop dreaming!” And just for a moment, as I was gazing off into the past and falling in love with Tasmania all over again, I thought I felt a ghost touch my soul. “Love is touching souls,” kd sang. Why stop dreaming?

We moored in what is known as the Duck Pond, just off the bucolic shores south of Barnes Bay. After just a wee drop of whisky, I slept serenely, dreaming of the island’s white wallabies while rocking quietly to the wooing of a masked owl and the songs of Joni and Leonard streaming through my head. 

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift …

Second Movement: Triabunna to Maria

We were searching for a heart of gold by moonlight. 

We didn’t leave Triabunna until ten and by then the moon was shining bright on Spring Bay. As we sluiced through the shimmering black and blue waters, dolphins playfully escorted the boat through the moonlight. The dolphins danced on both sides of the boat, darting through the wake, leaping up, seemingly trying to hear the music. Neil sang like an old friend as we crossed the ocean on our quest. 

Of course, the heart of gold was Tasmania itself, our heart-shaped jewelled castaway home, somewhere far away from the dominant world of fire and fray.

Reg has music queued up for when he sails in different areas of Tasmania. He has Dvořák’s New World Symphony prepared for the serenity and beauty of Binalong Bay and the Bay of Fires coastline. Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries is set up for sailing through Hells Gate at Macquarie Head. Tonight he was into 70s songs. Hearing them in these settings brings songs to life like never before. I nearly leapt into the air to sing along with Neil, floating on the breeze …

As we approached Encampment Cove and Chinamans Bay off Maria, near midnight and with a full moon above us, kd was again singing Leonard’s hymn, asking if we cared for music. We slowly slipped into the velvet bay and dropped anchor into the millpond calm night. Clang, clang, clang went the anchor, down to the sandy sea floor, and then all was quiet again. 

I stood on the boat, seduced by the serenity of it all, quietly singing hallelujah. We had found our heart of gold. 

. . .

After a morning row to the shore, we hiked across the narrow isthmus and then swam at Riedle Bay, which links the northern and southern sections of Maria. 

I stared out across the Tasman Sea. There was nothing but wild water between us and the fjords of New Zealand – how satisfying this felt – to be surrounded by wildness. Too often we believe humans are the centre of the world, but we are mere visitors to most of it. Remember your primary school geography: the ocean covers more than 70 per cent of the earth’s surface and contains 97 per cent of the planet’s water. Wow. We are minnows in this immensity of fluid.

Later in the day we sailed up the west coast of Maria towards Darlington where we walked around the historic convict ruins and learned about the island’s rich history. Maria was first seen by Europeans in 1642 and named by the Dutchman Abel Tasman after Maria Van Diemen, wife of the Governor-General of Batavia. Nicolas Baudin didn’t get here until 1802, when he documented the Aboriginal inhabitants, the puthikwilayti people of the Oyster Bay tribe. 

These locals had been sailing to Maria long before Baudin described them or Tasman named their island. They were the first true sailors of these waters. They would have been tacking across to Maria for tens of thousands of years. Tens of thousands … 

But the name Maria has stuck. History belongs to the conquerors and those who write history … perhaps. Someday I think this will change; finder’s keepers may yet prevail. A reconciling is in the air.

Happiness is overrated, but the happiness of sailing on a sunny day with the wind at your back, circling Tasmania, this cannot be overrated – it is bliss. Until of course the wind changes, then bliss turns to dread as the boat tilts wildly, sheets crack, the boom bangs around and the captain bellows orders how to steady the ship. 

Sailing is all about pushing the boundary and seeing how far one can go. That’s what the ocean is all about – getting the most out of life. Why else sail? Why else live?

Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 30 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare Tasmania for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian.