If you want to kick-start a robust conversation among Tasmanians, ask them to nominate the nicest beach town on the island. I think every resident has their own take on the topic. Even getting a group to agree on the necessary elements won’t be easy. Are conditions better for sailing or surfing? Which coast should it be on? Is it pumping in summer or is it a secret spot? Are there turquoise rockpools or dark, wild waves? Should it have an old-school pub or a schmoozy wine bar? Is the highest elevation known as a head, a knob or a nut? Granite or dolerite? Scallop pies or cray rolls?

I have absolutely no intention of claiming to have a definitive answer. I simply present to you, as a case study, Bicheno.

writer BERT SPINKS

photographer PEN TAYLER
 

You’ll sometimes find surfers loitering at Redbill Beach, watching the waves with mystical concentration; underwater, divers find a delightful array of marine life, from schools of butterfly perch to handfish and weedy seadragons. A glass-bottom boat also tours the waters. Dolphins, seals and whales are often spotted off Bicheno’s beaches. There’s a penguin tour that’s been in operation for more than 30 years – aside from introducing visitors to their resident shorebirds, the business has also worked on creating more habitat for little penguins on that stretch of coast.

There are plenty of great places to swim – on road trips I’ve often been revived by dip at one or another beach in town. For a long time, too, the town has been well-known for its seafood, and freshly caught fish is still easily found. These days it’s also popular for a tipple: it has its own microbrewery, and the Farm Shed there has become something of a hub for the east coast vineyards that have proliferated in recent years. More than 20 of these are featured in their wine centre. A spring-time festival further showcases local food and drink.

Another of Bicheno’s obvious drawcards is its proximity to the famous Freycinet Peninsula. Although you can’t see The Hazards – the sizeable mountains on the peninsula – it’s close enough to make day trips to some of the famous short walks there. Freycinet National Park extends to within a couple of kilometres of the town, although the more popular area (around Wineglass Bay) is a little further south. You can get a taste of the peninsula on short walks around Bicheno. On the track up Whalers Lookout, for instance, you’ll see impressive globular boulders of granite, reminiscent of geological features at Freycinet, and the same plant species as on the peninsula.

Although it may seem related to the French nomenclature that clings to the shoreline, James Ebenezer Bicheno was in fact the British Colonial Secretary for Van Diemen’s Land from 1843 to 1851. I’ve heard that one of Mr Bicheno’s claims to fame is that he could fit three bags of wheat into his breeches, but it seems to me that a more laudable achievement is that his book collection formed the basis of the Tasmanian library collection, or that he had a finch on the mainland named after him. The wheat bags trick must have gone down well at parties, though.

Before the township was declared, this area was simply known as Waub’s Boat Harbour. It honoured Wauba Debar, whose life story is one of the most intriguing on the coast.

Wauba’s biography isn’t entirely clear. Linked to the Oyster Bay mob, she seems to have been one of the many Aboriginal women who ended up with white sealers and whalers in the early 1800s. These women, for the most part, were largely kidnapped or coerced into attaching themselves to parties of seafarers. One of the reasons Aboriginal women were sought after is that they were skilful swimmers and divers. A second-hand story informs us that Wauba was forcibly taken on a whaleboat headed north to the Furneaux Islands.

Wauba Debar is remembered for an act of altruism towards two white men. She was working on a small sealing vessel just off the coast of Bicheno. Hit by a squall, the boat went under. The two men with Wauba were poor swimmers. They seemed to have little hope of extricating themselves from beneath the churning grey mountains of the surf. It’s said that Wauba, strong swimmer that she was, dragged each of the sailors to the harbour, one at a time, bringing them from hundreds of metres offshore.

She is said to have died later, in a storm off the coast of Flinders Island. Her grave was erected on Paredarerme country at Bicheno. It was paid for by public subscription. It’s still there, just off Burgess Street, in a protected historic site. The epitaph reads: “Here lies Wauba Debar. A Female Aborigine of Van Diemen’s Land. Died June 1832. Aged 40 Years. This Stone is Erected by a few of her white friends.”

Plain as it may seem, it’s quite an astonishing monument. No other Aboriginal person in the 1800s was given such a grave. The story has an equally telling postscript: decades later, Wauba Debar’s grave was dug up and her bones disinterred in the name of medical science. It wasn’t until 1985 that her remains were handed back to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.

There was obviously something special about Wauba Debar, although I must add that there are many perplexing elements to the story – and several variations. But significantly, the yarn lives on, and I suspect that the more we learn more about this chapter of the east coast’s past, the more thoroughly we’ll be able to understand ourselves going into the future.

Among others who have kept the story alive over the years is the former Olympic athlete Shane Gould, who has hosted a fundraising swim in honour of Wauba Debar off a beach at Bicheno. (Which must be a point in favour of Bicheno in the quest for deciding Tassie’s best beach town – it’s where a champion swimmer chooses to hang out.)

Although the township name changed, Waubs Bay is still there. The name is also marked on whisky bottles, released by a distillery which is perched right on the edge of the bay. The owners, Tim and Rob Polmear, have made an effort to learn more about the history of this intriguing woman whose name remains on the map. “You can go pretty deep in the story,” Tim told me. “We want to recognise it and pay tribute to her.”

It’s also fitting that Waubs Bay Distillery is in what used to be an old oyster hatchery. It’s an impressive set-up. The distillers have repurposed a salt-water pump – which originally was used to keep oysters alive – and now use it to cool their vats, in place of conventional chiller machines. It runs through what’s essentially a radiator made of titanium (a metal that salt can’t corrode) and is sent back out into the sea. It’s a cluey adaptation: a closed loop system that noticeably reduces the amount of energy that the distillery draws from the grid.

Turning away from the sea, I also find myself inordinately fond of Douglas-Apsley National Park, which stands in the near hinterland just north of town. Part of a private property that was donated to the public in the 1980s, the bush here – which follows the sharp valleys of the sea-bound Douglas and Apsley rivers – are home to a wide range of critters and plants. A number of eucalyptus species (including a couple of uncommon varieties) subsequently play host to diverse birdlife, including all but one of Tasmania’s endemic species. Not a lot of this kind of forest exists on the island, which makes it all the more important. The endangered swift parrot, for example, requires large swathes of dry sclerophyll like this to make its journey to breeding grounds further south.

Aboriginal walking tracks passed through here, perhaps heading all the way to the Midlands. Today a pathway will get you down to the Apsley Waterhole, a beautiful picnic spot. You can also hoof it a little bit further into the Apsley Gorge or beyond that, even, to traverse the national park.

In the 1800s, there was also an interlude in which this country was mined for coal. It didn’t last very long, but a horse-drawn tramway, five kilometres in length, was constructed to haul the coal down from the Denison River to the bay. The name Old Mines Lagoon is still on the map, just north of the township. Some of the infrastructure can be seen on a tour of the current business on that premises, East Coast Natureworld – a wildlife sanctuary that guarantees sightings of Tassie devils.

When it comes to assessing the best beach town, that might also prove to be a point in Bicheno’s favour.

Bert Spinks grew up in Beaconsfield and is now, mostly, a resident of Launceston. He is a writer, storyteller and bushwalking guide, each of which feed and reflect his interest in the way human communities interact with place and landscape. He focuses especially on journeys and movement, language and literature. Although based in Launceston, Bert spends much of his time without a home because he is in one of the world's wild or interesting places pursing local lore.

Pen Tayler is a Tasmanian writer and photographer. She photographed 12 towns for Towns of Tasmania, written by Bert Spinks, and has written and provided images for Hop Kilns of Tasmania (both Forty South Publishing). She has also written a book about Prospect House and Belmont House in the Coal River Valley.