LOCALS CALL IT THE King Island wave. It’s a quick lift of the forefinger as you pass another car on the wide dirt roads and gravel tracks that crisscross the island. “It doesn’t matter if you know each other or not, that’s what happens,” says Ian Johnson, head chef at Wild Harvest restaurant and owner of King Island Tours. He’s notched up nearly 50 years on the island – and he knows it’s that wave (or rather, what it represents) that’s so central to life here. “It’s a very friendly island,” he explains. “Most visitors are blown away by just how friendly it is.”
You might assume this rocky speck of land stranded in the middle of the Bass Strait needs this kind of selling point. It could be seen as geographically challenged, set as it is in the treacherous waters between the north-west tip of Tasmania and the southernmost point of the Great Ocean Road, and right in the path of the Roaring Forties. In fact, the celebrated friendliness of the locals is just one entry in the long
