Naturally gifted
It is not the day to go bushwalking. There have been no gale warnings or sheep grazier’s alerts, but the cliffs on this wave-carved island are gauzed in sea mist. Rain sweeps across the boulder-strewn ridges and pelts into the dense glacial valleys that have remained almost untouched since the last ice age.
The Southern Ocean is a ferment along Tasmania’s South Cape Bay. Words spoken are raked away in the Antarctic wind. Water streams down rain jackets and fills shoes. These are characteristic conditions on the tempestuous South Coast Track.
Intrepid walkers are savouring a few squares of chocolate in a sheltering brace of trees when one hiker steps forward and straight into the low-hanging branch of a twisted tree. She collapses onto her knees, clasps her skull, silent in agony. It will soon be dark on the pathway that’s fast disappearing under a stream of muddied water and there’s a way to go before reaching the duckboard that winds for kilometres through golden button grass moorlands back to Cockle Creek at the
