TASMANIA'S WILD WEST

The long strip of sand stretched away in a gentle arc into the haze of a sea mist, which hung thin and vapourish over both land and water. The sea was nearly as calm as the proverbial mill pond but a weak sliver of white water oozed its way along the shore where a wave, if you could call it that, washed over white sands.

The beach itself was backed for much of the way by thick verdant scrub but at its mid-point a series of tall sinuous dunes, a few hundred metres inland from the sea, broke the strip of green into two. At the beach’s farthest end a smudge of darkness indicated where sand ran into stone while a speck of white marked the whereabouts of the lighthouse that perches on distant rocks.

Above us the sky was a rich cobalt blue, even though the weather forecast had predicted rain all morning; we felt lucky the weather forecasters had got it completely wrong.

I was standing on a low, sandy, sometimes limestone ridge, called Lookout Point, that gave a splendid view