The Tarkine coastline. I've been lazy and not written about it, but that isn't because I wasn't absolutely blown away by it.
In my travels around the world, I've always had to bite down a feeling of guilt when I've visited some "amazing" beach. The iridescent blue of the Greek islands? Try Rottnest. The Cinque Terre? Try Mosman Park when the wind is blowing in the direction that makes it kind of smelly. Spain? Try Scarbs. Wineglass Bay? Try Injidup.
But the Tarkine coast? Nothing I've ever seen compares.
On the second part of our Tarkine Trails tour, we spent two nights in the lovely village of Corinna. It has been almost entirely reconstructed in the style of a miner's village, but the cottages are large and salubrious (Lonely Planet uses that word a lot and now I'm using it too!). We took the ferry, skippered by the lovely Dale, to the mouth of the Pieman River. There we were taken in a tender to a rocky beach, from where our walk began. We walked north, to a place that I have forgotten the name of, but will hopefully remember to look up before I post this (if you're reading this, I either forgot or was too lazy).
We took a 4WD track (bless the rednecks - they have scarred the landscape but they left us a nice path) through several large, slippery, muddy, leech-infested puddles. It was great fun! I very nearly slipped over twice but managed to save myself in time thanks to the hiking pole kindly lent to me by David (yes mum, we laughed at the people using hiking poles on the concreted pathways of the Cinque Terre, but in Tarkine's mud puddles they are nothing less than essential!)
Finally we were through the puddles, and we rounded a corner to the coast. And oh! What a coastline! We were treated to the otherworldy experience of watching huge waves pound the rocks without making a sound, due to an offshore wind. It was like a silent movie and had an incredibly strange, goosebumps-inspiring surreality about it. It was like turning the volume down on the world.
The Tarkine coast is full of movement, both present and past. The waves are constant, rising in white bursts as they batter themselves to spray on the rocks, the ocean in complete turmoil as rips and currents tear each other to pieces over the sand. But it's the stillness that makes you feel as though you are caught in a freeze-frame of time, a moment away from the next earthquake. Even if you don't spend half your time with geologists like I do, the rock formations still speak of centuries of upheaval. The rocks are folded in on themselves in ways that defy logic, twisting and turning in unfathomable complexity. They spike into the air, jutting out of the ground in different directions, as though they were freeze-framed moments after the Big Bang. And in the foreground there is grass, bright purple flowers, orange-lichened rocks, many ancient shell middens left behind by the Tarkineer - the indigenous people who once lived here.
So it's not just the physical attributes of the land that make time seem frozen still, it's the history too. The shell middens are thousands of years old. Many are buried underwater now, but those that remain are dotted all along the coastline. They are made up of empty shells that once housed the food the Tarkineer ate. They were heaped into piles to ensure that empty shells were not confused with edible creatures. They are the last remnants of a people who were entirely massacred. The Tarkineer were rounded up by the army and moved to a small island prison, where they died slowly of starvation of disease. The reason? To make way for white settlement in the area.... take a look at a map of the area to gain an idea of the extent to which that is disgusting.
After our walk and the tour ended, I found myself drawn back to the coast. I drove to Arthur River to visit the "Edge of the World". If there is anywhere on this planet a place that could make you believe the earth is indeed flat, and we are all in danger of falling off if we venture too far, the Edge of the World is it.
The waves rush across each other to clash at the mouth of the Arthur River, black tannin-stained water meeting blue ocean waves in a constant struggle for supremacy. I have been told in a storm, the tannins in the water create a huge, engulfing foam that can smother the beach right up to the dunes. It looks peaceful from the surface, but the currents rage underneath so that if you ventured in there, you would never return.
I chased birds, photographed lizards, ran from a big black snake that blocked my path to Church Rock, and returned to the decptive stillness of the river that turns into raging turmoil just past the bridge where it meets the ocean.
I have sought wildness like this all over the world; I should have known I'd find it in Australia.
In my travels around the world, I've always had to bite down a feeling of guilt when I've visited some "amazing" beach. The iridescent blue of the Greek islands? Try Rottnest. The Cinque Terre? Try Mosman Park when the wind is blowing in the direction that makes it kind of smelly. Spain? Try Scarbs. Wineglass Bay? Try Injidup.
But the Tarkine coast? Nothing I've ever seen compares.
On the second part of our Tarkine Trails tour, we spent two nights in the lovely village of Corinna. It has been almost entirely reconstructed in the style of a miner's village, but the cottages are large and salubrious (Lonely Planet uses that word a lot and now I'm using it too!). We took the ferry, skippered by the lovely Dale, to the mouth of the Pieman River. There we were taken in a tender to a rocky beach, from where our walk began. We walked north, to a place that I have forgotten the name of, but will hopefully remember to look up before I post this (if you're reading this, I either forgot or was too lazy).
We took a 4WD track (bless the rednecks - they have scarred the landscape but they left us a nice path) through several large, slippery, muddy, leech-infested puddles. It was great fun! I very nearly slipped over twice but managed to save myself in time thanks to the hiking pole kindly lent to me by David (yes mum, we laughed at the people using hiking poles on the concreted pathways of the Cinque Terre, but in Tarkine's mud puddles they are nothing less than essential!)
Finally we were through the puddles, and we rounded a corner to the coast. And oh! What a coastline! We were treated to the otherworldy experience of watching huge waves pound the rocks without making a sound, due to an offshore wind. It was like a silent movie and had an incredibly strange, goosebumps-inspiring surreality about it. It was like turning the volume down on the world.
The Tarkine coast is full of movement, both present and past. The waves are constant, rising in white bursts as they batter themselves to spray on the rocks, the ocean in complete turmoil as rips and currents tear each other to pieces over the sand. But it's the stillness that makes you feel as though you are caught in a freeze-frame of time, a moment away from the next earthquake. Even if you don't spend half your time with geologists like I do, the rock formations still speak of centuries of upheaval. The rocks are folded in on themselves in ways that defy logic, twisting and turning in unfathomable complexity. They spike into the air, jutting out of the ground in different directions, as though they were freeze-framed moments after the Big Bang. And in the foreground there is grass, bright purple flowers, orange-lichened rocks, many ancient shell middens left behind by the Tarkineer - the indigenous people who once lived here.
So it's not just the physical attributes of the land that make time seem frozen still, it's the history too. The shell middens are thousands of years old. Many are buried underwater now, but those that remain are dotted all along the coastline. They are made up of empty shells that once housed the food the Tarkineer ate. They were heaped into piles to ensure that empty shells were not confused with edible creatures. They are the last remnants of a people who were entirely massacred. The Tarkineer were rounded up by the army and moved to a small island prison, where they died slowly of starvation of disease. The reason? To make way for white settlement in the area.... take a look at a map of the area to gain an idea of the extent to which that is disgusting.
After our walk and the tour ended, I found myself drawn back to the coast. I drove to Arthur River to visit the "Edge of the World". If there is anywhere on this planet a place that could make you believe the earth is indeed flat, and we are all in danger of falling off if we venture too far, the Edge of the World is it.
The waves rush across each other to clash at the mouth of the Arthur River, black tannin-stained water meeting blue ocean waves in a constant struggle for supremacy. I have been told in a storm, the tannins in the water create a huge, engulfing foam that can smother the beach right up to the dunes. It looks peaceful from the surface, but the currents rage underneath so that if you ventured in there, you would never return.
I chased birds, photographed lizards, ran from a big black snake that blocked my path to Church Rock, and returned to the decptive stillness of the river that turns into raging turmoil just past the bridge where it meets the ocean.
I have sought wildness like this all over the world; I should have known I'd find it in Australia.
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| Birds braving the wind and waves at the Edge of the World |
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| Colours of the Tarkine Coastline |
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| Silica Mine in the Tarkine - looks healthy, no? |
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| At the Edge of the World |
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