Full Circle – Bikepacking Bruny Island

It’s a mild mid-spring morning. I’m taking the short ferry trip from Kettering to North Bruny. As usual, the passengers appear to be tourists – like me you could say, but evidently tourists visiting Tasmania. The small car ferry takes about 20 minutes to cross the d’Entrecasteaux Channel (named after the French explorer who “discovered” this sound of water).

Bruny Island

Bruny Island is a funny place, for me personally – a place of contrast. One of natural wonder but also slightly overcrowded and overhyped. One of extreme beauty though also of extreme suffering (the story of Truganini tells us this). One of a north island and a south island both very different, connected by an isthmus. One where there seems to be an embrace of aboriginal culture while also holding onto the colonial past.

The route, the one I’m about to ride on Bruny Island, is one I’ve had in mind for a while, at least a year. Though I’m unsure why – I have a love/hate affair with Bruny, it just seems like the right place to literally get back on my bike. I haven’t been riding much over the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been unwell. And the thought of riding any sort of distance more than the commute to work has been off-putting. 

But I’m here, on this mid-spring day, on the ferry to Bruny, to put the past eighteen months or so behind – like the darkness of winter being pushed to the side by the warm sun of spring. I’m ready to get back on my bike.

Ferry Hill and Adventure Bay

The bike feels heavy and I unfit. After being off the bike for a long period, the thought of riding only 50km is slightly daunting, though I feel determined, ready to enjoy the sensation of freewheeling down a hill, or the rhythmic repetition of one pedal stoke following another.  

The riding on Bruny isn’t exceptional – I mean the landscape is scenic and the roads are generally quiet. But the riding here is pretty easy, with no big hills (not by Tasmanian standards). 

Ferry hill, the one straight off the ferry (who’d have guessed) is my first and only real hill for the day. It isn’t as hard as I recall, not as daunting. After that, most of the ride is gently undulating, like an old swell on the ocean, the hills come in waves. 

Riding south, down past the semi-famous Bruny Island Cheese Company I begin to feel at ease – like visiting an old friend who I’d had a disagreement with. I’m rebuilding that relationship with my bike, one that at times, I thought was beyond repair. 

Out over the “neck”, a spaghetti like strip of sand that connects the north and south portions of this island – an isthmus who’s future I often ponder, it’s only a matter of time before the ocean claims it and officially declares Bruny as two. 

The route I’m following takes me to Adventure Bay – my objective for the day. History tells us this is where the British landed in 1773, then it quickly became known as a safe anchorage. With place names like Captain Cook Creek and Endeavor Place in the settlement, the importance of this bay to the colonialists is apparent.

Camping at Adventure Bay

Stopping the night at Adventure Bay wasn’t my Plan A. I’d planned to ride over to Cloudy Bay on the western side of the island, however, the near gale southwesterly would have made that an unpleasant night. 

Waking reasonably early the next day I’m up and away before 8.00am. After riding 50km or thereabouts yesterday, today is the real test. I’m planning on heading up over the spine of South Bruny to the western side. A short but reasonably steep climb leads up out of Adventure Bay. Conversely this climb up through the eucalypt forest is the part of the ride I enjoy most, even though it’s a grind – no cars, no people. Just flowering waratah and a hill with a lumpy gravel road. 

This section didn’t last long enough, a short time later I’m at Lunawanna, being overtaken at an apparent needless speed by seemingly oversized 4×4 utes. Up through Alonnah where the prospect of coffee is gone with the store being closed, next hope is the Cheese Company (which also doesn’t do coffee). Past the bush baker and back on to the tarmac – the tourist route.

I retrace my steps from the day before to the ferry terminal. Slightly unadventurous, though that’s what I wanted, something where I largely knew what to expect and that I could control. I’ve had enough “type-b” fun in my time.

Before long, I’m waiting for the boat. Happy that this ride is over, that I committed to the ride and made it. But I’m also sad that it’s over. I finish my time on Bruny as I normally do when visiting – with a handmade wallaby sausage roll from the store. 

Waiting for the ferry gives me time to ponder, digest and reflect on the past 18 months. I always remember reading a surfing book that metaphorically likened surfing to life – the swells, the peaks and the troughs, the storms and the calm. Though we’re not always able to climb out of that trough and find the calm. Sitting there, waiting for the ferry & eating my sausage roll, I was happy to acknowledge that I’d survived the storm, I’d come full circle.