It looks cold doesn’t it? Well believe me, it was! We spent the long weekend at a B&B in Geeveston (Bears over the mountain). It was a great location in the wilderness of Southern Tasmania. The landscape was breath-taking. It really felt like frontier country. And it felt just a wee bit cold to us.
We travelled to the ‘end of the road’. We were at the southern most tip of Australia. We were now closer to Antartica than to Cairns. And that’s what it felt like. The water was crystal clear but looked positively freezing. The bays were protected and peaceful. Lots of (clearly very tough) families were having their last bit of the summer holidays camping down in this stunning countryside, gathered around roaring camp fires…and then we spotted…a little girl trotting across to the beach in her swimmers with a boogie board under her arm (??really!) and low and behold an ice-cream van! Even if we hadn’t just been sailing the Queensland coast I would still thought it was a tad chilly for swimmers and a dip in the waters of what is basically the southern ocean. That aside it was a magical place.
The whale sculpture is in recognition of the whaling history. During the 1830s there were 4 whaling stations at Cockle Creek. During the 1840s the Crown granted seven leases for the establishment of bay whaling stations in Recherche Bay. But whales had been hunted with pregnant cows and calves indiscriminately slaughtered. They apparently slaughtered the calves first so that the cows would wait around the bay and cry for their young, and then be slaughtered too. Tragic – but a beautiful sculpture.