Tuesday morning we were able to have a bit of a sleep in as the boat trip didn’t leave until 8.30
am. Unfortunately the day didn’t dawn bright and sunny so we packed our raincoats and headed for the boat. The cruise first took us out of the harbour through the heads (known as Hells Gate) into the Southern Ocean. As we were travelling out to the heads we noticed a line parallel to our direction of travel – at first Dad thought it was a dolphin swimming along – but then the Captain explained that it was the “Training Wall”. Evidently it was built in 1900 a straight line of rocks starting some 4 metres below the floor of the harbour with a width of 10 metres and finishing just below high watermark with a top width of 4 metres. It is about 3 km long and was constructed to deepen the harbour by channelling the water running out to sea through a narrow channel thus carting away any silt or debris. It worked very well and would have been a wonderful engineering feat in its day – very early 1900’s. The work was not done by convict labour as many surmise. We were told that the job cost more than the total economy of Tasmania that year. Outside the heads, a breakwater, about a kilometre long was also constructed. This helped to make the trip into the harbour a little less hazardous as quite a few ships were wrecked prior to its construction.
After turning around and motoring back into the Harbour the next point of interest was the Fish Farms. These consist of round circular mesh ponds with high mesh sides which prevent birds, swans etc from stealing the fish, not to stop the fish jumping out! The fish are fed by spraying the food pellets into the pens by means of a water cannon. We continued on up the harbour and for much of the time we were able to ride out on the front deck, but occasionally we we’re chased inside by rain squalls. Continuing on, we entered into the Gordon River. It is truly a magnificent river wide and deep but the water is almost the colour of weak tea as it is stained with tannin from the button grass plains.
About 15 kilometres up the Gordon River we pulled into the World Heritage Walk jetty and everyone disembarked and took a tour around the boardwalk. The walk winds through a temperate rainforest with moss growing on almost everything, bushes flowering profusely and past the remains of a Huon Pine which is reputed to be several thousand years, old still alive with shoots emerging from parts of the tree’s stump.
Back on board and we headed downstream as far as Sarah Island. Sarah Island was the home of the infamous Macquarie Harbour Penal Settlement. We did a guided tour of the ruins, it was quite interesting. The Island which was completely cleared, now has trees of quite considerable girth along with shrubs, Fern Trees, Grasses etc. We landed back at the harbour and then went for a stroll around the shops and town before having a reasonably early night.
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