Ginger and Ed's Excellent Adventures

From Corinna we drove through Zeehan to the town of Strahan, the port on Macquarie Harbor. The area was home to the Toogee aboriginal people for about 35,000 years.

James Kelly discovered the entrance to the harbor for Europeans in 1815. The British soon established a penal settlement in 1822 at Sarah Island. The convicts sent there had previously escaped and were captured. It was thought that the remote location, accessible only by sailing around Tasmania and entering the harbor through hells gate. The gate was a narrow entrance subject to high seas from the roaring 40s and strong tidal influence.

We took a cruise out through the gates on a beautiful day. The seas were calm, one of only a few days a year. Our stop at Sarah Island was educational .

The penal colony was hell on earth for prisoners. One in five tried to escape. Those captured were subject to 100 lashes. One escapee, James Goodwin, a former surveyor, managed to escape in a stolen canoe and over six weeks tmadw his way across the island . When he was recaptured, they assigned him to a survey team instead of sending him back.

Over a thousand convicts were at the tiny island at a time. When a new commander was put in charge of the island to try to reduce escapes. There were a number of boat builders and they soon began to train convicts in ship building. Punishments were also reduced. In short order the settlement was producing high quality ships and the morale of prisoners improved.

After we left the island we sailed up the Gordon Ruver to Heritage Landing, and a walk through forest that has large old growth trees of Huon pines.

Following the convicts settlement days, piners came to mine the trees. Huon pine was highly sought after for shipbuilding due to its resistance to rot.

Although protected today, there are logs that sank in the harbor over 100 years ago that have been salvaged and are fresh as the day they were cut.

A highlight of our trip was a massive solar storm that provided viewing of the Aurora australis…

We spent a couple nights out at Macquarie Head, near hells gate, to relax and enjoy walking and exploring the beach.

From here we drove back through Zeehan and Queenstown to Lake St. Clair National Park…