The magic isle
Author: Michael Gebicki

Bruny Island is a nature lover's paradise, Michael Gebicki discovers.

IF you go down to the woods at the Adventure Bay Holiday Village on Tasmania's Bruny Island, you're sure of a big surprise. At dusk, the joint is jumping with snow-white Bennett's Wallabies grazing on the lawns, cavorting among the shrubbery and gamboling among the parked caravans.
If you happen to be a wallaby, white is not a happy hair colour. A white wallaby is an open invitation to predators, yet here on Bruny Island, in the absence of natural enemies, there are more than a hundred of these marsupials flourishing in the wild. Not only are they exceptional and beautiful to behold, but at a single stroke these white wallabies sum up something of the other-worldliness of Bruny Island.
To a sea eagle on the wing, it's less than 20 kilometres from the centre of Hobart to the northern tip of Bruny Island. Yet from the moment your wheels rumble on to the steel deck plates of the Mirambeena, the vehicle ferry that links Bruny with the rest of Tasmania, you're in another reality.
Stretching some 55 kilometres from top to bottom, Bruny consists of two lumpish halves, north and south, bridged by a narrow spit of sand. The north is predominantly pasture, the south is wilder and more rugged, and freshened by a wind that comes all the way from Antarctica.
Bruny Island is in many ways a microcosm of Tasmania, says Dr Tonia Cochran, a passionate advocate for the island's native flora and fauna and long-time resident. Many of the major Tasmanian ecosystems are represented on the island, and this combined with its isolation from the Tasmanian mainland has resulted in a rich diversity of animal and plant life.
Cochran says the island is a stronghold for threatened species such as the Mount Mangana stag beetle, the forty-spotted pardalote and the seastar Smilasterias tasmaniae.
Even if you know that the forty-spotted pardalote is a smallish bird, Bruny does not reveal its secrets readily. It takes an expert such as Cochran to point it out.
As well as being a scientist, environmentalist and farmer, she is a tour guide. From her farm at Lunawanna, deep in the island's south, she operates Inala Tours, and there is no better person to introduce you to the island, show you the oldest operating lighthouse in the country, tell you whether the native currants at the Mavista picnic area are in season and give you a close-up look at those pardalotes, which happen to live on her property.
Cochran also operates Inala Cottage, a spick-and-span, three-bedroom cottage surrounded by cattle pastures. The name Inala means place of peace, and it is apt.
For most visitors, the centre of the action on Bruny Island is Adventure Bay, which lies about a third of the way along the east coast of Bruny's southern half. Bracketed by a golden sweep of sand, Adventure Bay consists of a couple of caravan parks, the Penguin Cafe and a raffish collection of houses.
Adventure Bay is also home to the Bligh Museum of Pacific Exploration, which sketches the salty tale of the island's place in maritime history.
Practically anyone who was anyone in Australia's early maritime history stopped off at Bruny Island. Abel Tasman sighted it in 1642, Captain Tobias Furneaux called at the island in 1773, and Rear Admiral Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, who gave his name both to the island and to the channel that separates it from the rest of Tasmania, charted much of this region in 1792. Captain William Bligh planted Australia's first apple trees and grape vines at East Cove en route to Tahiti.
Adventure Bay was Captain James Cook's last Australian port of call before he sailed off to his death in the Hawaiian Islands.
Adventure Bay is also the departure point for the cruise aboard the Albatross, a 13-metre catamaran operated by Rob Pennicott of Bruny Island Charters.
Pennicott is a former commercial fisherman with a quirky sense of humour. “Don't know what we're going to see today”, he says with a grin as he hands out waterproof capes to boarding passengers. And while they might not be fashion items, the reason for the capes becomes obvious soon after he revs the powerful twin diesels and heads south across the bay.
The coastline here is astonishing. The black dolerite cliffs along the island's south-east coast heave themselves sheer from the sea for almost 200 metres a perch for cormorants, sea eagles and ospreys that stand high on the cliffs, gazing meditatively out to sea.
Some of the more resilient columns of rock have been left standing while the sea has gnawed away the cliff behind them.
On the day I went a dark band was moving across the horizon, wheeling and dipping in a solid mass. They were shearwaters, or muttonbirds. About 10 square metres of the surface of the sea was a solid mass of baitfish that had been forced to the surface by predator fish below. The shearwaters were in a feeding frenzy, swooping down into the sea and emerging with silver bodies wriggling in their beaks. There were more than a thousand, and soaring among them on majestic white wings were a dozen or so albatross.
Just off Bruny's southern extremity, The Friars is a small group of islands home to up to a thousand fur seals, huddled together on the rocks, and turning a sleepy eye in our direction as the Albatross glides past.
Another strange feature of these cliffs is soakers, small chambers that the sea has gnawed in the rock with a hole just above the waterline.
An incoming wave will fill the chamber with a rush of water, which is compressed until finally it escapes through the hole in a furious geyser of spray.
Pennicott's favourite ploy is to edge the boat close to the rock and wait for a largish wave. This is highly amusing if you happen to be anywhere but in the firing line. Exposed in the bow of the boat, busily taking pictures, blocked in by the press of bodies around me, I realised what was coming but there was no escape. A blast of spray swept the bow of the boat, and all the way back to Hobart I could taste salt on my lips.

* IF YOU GO: The ferry to Bruny Island departs from Kettering, about a 40-minute drive south of Hobart. For information on Inala Tours, phone (03) 6293 1217, or see www.inalabruny.com.au. For Bruny Island Charters, phone (03) 6293 1465, or see www.brunycharters.com.au.