For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

  The south-east coast of Van Diemen's Land, from the solitary Mewstone tothe basaltic cliffs of Tasman's Head, from Tasman's Head to Cape Pillar,and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates' Bay, resemblesa biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continualaction of the ocean which, pouring round by east and west, has dividedthe peninsula from the mainland of the Australasian continent--and donefor Van Diemen's Land what it has done for the Isle of Wight--the shoreline is broken and ragged. Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragmentsof island and promontory which lie scattered between the South-West Capeand the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms assumed by meltedlead spilt into water. If the supposition were not too extravagant, onemight imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a carelessgiant upset the crucible, and spilt Van Diemen's land in the ocean. Thecoast navigation is as dangerous as that of the Mediterranean. Passingfrom Cape Bougainville to the east of Maria Island, and between thenumerous rocks and shoals which lie beneath the triple height of theThree Thumbs, the mariner is suddenly checked by Tasman's Peninsula,hanging, like a huge double-dropped ear-ring, from the mainland. Gettinground under the Pillar rock through Storm Bay to Storing Island, wesight the Italy of this miniature Adriatic. Between Hobart Townand Sorrell, Pittwater and the Derwent, a strangely-shaped point ofland--the Italian boot with its toe bent upwards--projects into the bay,and, separated from this projection by a narrow channel, dotted withrocks, the long length of Bruny Island makes, between its westernside and the cliffs of Mount Royal, the dangerous passage known asD'Entrecasteaux Channel. At the southern entrance of D'EntrecasteauxChannel, a line of sunken rocks, known by the generic name of theActaeon reef, attests that Bruny Head was once joined with the shoresof Recherche Bay; while, from the South Cape to the jaws of MacquarieHarbour, the white water caused by sunken reefs, or the jagged peaks ofsingle rocks abruptly rising in mid sea, warn the mariner off shore.

  It would seem as though nature, jealous of the beauties of her silverDerwent, had made the approach to it as dangerous as possible; butonce through the archipelago of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, or the lessdangerous eastern passage of Storm Bay, the voyage up the river isdelightful. From the sentinel solitude of the Iron Pot to the smilingbanks of New Norfolk, the river winds in a succession of reaches,narrowing to a deep channel cleft between rugged and towering cliffs. Aline drawn due north from the source of the Derwent would strike anotherriver winding out from the northern part of the island, as the Derwentwinds out from the south. The force of the waves, expended, perhaps, indestroying the isthmus which, two thousand years ago, probably connectedVan Diemen's Land with the continent has been here less violent. Therounding currents of the Southern Ocean, meeting at the mouth of theTamar, have rushed upwards over the isthmus they have devoured, andpouring against the south coast of Victoria, have excavated there thatinland sea called Port Philip Bay. If the waves have gnawed the southcoast of Van Diemen's Land, they have bitten a mouthful out of the southcoast of Victoria. The Bay is a millpool, having an area of nine hundredsquare miles, with a race between the heads two miles across.

  About a hundred and seventy miles to the south of this mill-race liesVan Diemen's Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genialshowers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld'sCrag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pourdown upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parchinghot wind--the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent--blows uponher crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue watersof the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the citywhich nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot wind,born amid the burning sand of the interior of the vast Australiancontinent, sweeps over the scorched and cracking plains, to lick uptheir streams and wither the herbage in its path, until it meets thewaters of the great south bay; but in its passage across the straits itis reft of its fire, and sinks, exhausted with its journey, at the feetof the terraced slopes of Launceston.

  The climate of Van Diemen's Land is one of the loveliest in the world.Launceston is warm, sheltered, and moist; and Hobart Town, protected byBruny Island and its archipelago of D'Entrecasteaux Channel and StormBay from the violence of the southern breakers, preserves the meantemperature of Smyrna; whilst the district between these two townsspreads in a succession of beautiful valleys, through which glide clearand sparkling streams. But on the western coast, from the steeple-rocksof Cape Grim to the scrub-encircled barrenness of Sandy Cape, andthe frowning entrance to Macquarie Harbour, the nature of the countryentirely changes. Along that iron-bound shore, from Pyramid Island andthe forest-backed solitude of Rocky Point, to the great Ram Head, andthe straggling harbour of Port Davey, all is bleak and cheerless. Uponthat dreary beach the rollers of the southern sea complete their circuitof the globe, and the storm that has devastated the Cape, and united inits eastern course with the icy blasts which sweep northward from theunknown terrors of the southern pole, crashes unchecked upon the Huonpine forests, and lashes with rain the grim front of Mount Direction.Furious gales and sudden tempests affright the natives of the coast.Navigation is dangerous, and the entrance to the "Hell's Gates" ofMacquarie Harbour--at the time of which we are writing (1833), in theheight of its ill-fame as a convict settlement--is only to be attemptedin calm weather. The sea-line is marked with wrecks. The sunken rocksare dismally named after the vessels they have destroyed. The air ischill and moist, the soil prolific only in prickly undergrowth andnoxious weeds, while foetid exhalations from swamp and fen cling closeto the humid, spongy ground. All around breathes desolation; on the faceof nature is stamped a perpetual frown. The shipwrecked sailor, crawlingpainfully to the summit of basalt cliffs, or the ironed convict,dragging his tree trunk to the edge of some beetling plateau, looks downupon a sea of fog, through which rise mountain-tops like islands; orsees through the biting sleet a desert of scrub and crag rolling to thefeet of Mount Heemskirk and Mount Zeehan--crouched like two sentinellions keeping watch over the seaboard.

  CHAPTER II. THE SOLITARY OF "HELL'S GATES".