After a rather chill evening I awoke to bright sunshine and to this view over Strahan (STRAWN)
and Macquarie Harbour. The itinerary for the day included a cruise in this vast natural harbour that is twice the area of Sydney Harbour, a visit to the once notorious Penal Colony on Sarah Island and a cruise on the Gordon River before attending a lively performance of the 'Ship that Never Was' - the true story - performed with great gusto and lots of audience participation - of the last escape of convicts from Sarah Island.
Macquarie Harbour is located on the west coast of Tasmania (See Map) and the small town of
Strahan (At the 2021 census, Strahan had a population of 634) and Risby Cove form part of the north-east end of Long Bay on the northern end of Macquarie Harbour and is now a significant locality for tourism in the region. It started life as a tent store to supply the explorers and timber cutters who looked to the West Coast for the Huon Pine (See later posts for more about these astonishing trees) and for the possibility of a gold strike that would bring back the skilled labour which had abandoned Tasmania for the Victoria Gold Fields in the 1850s.
As the only workable port on the West Coast, Strahan boomed with the growth of the Mt Lyell copper mines, close to Queenstown, in the 1890s. The ore was brought down by rail and shipped from Regatta Point and several sawmills processed the Huon Pine for shipment all over the world (See 2nd Map). In the 1970s the port closed to larger ships - you will see why when I post about the Hells Gate entrance - the timber mills began to close up and Huon Pine was protected from logging, the Mt Lyell Company withdrew and Strahan became 'a bit sleepy', according to the cruise pamphlet until someone discovered it was the 'best little town in the world' and Tourism enabled the town to bustle again.
Macquarie Harbour is a shallow fjord, approximately 315 square kilometres (122 sq mi), and has an average depth of 15 metres (49 ft), with deeper places up to 50 metres (160 ft). It is navigable by shallow-draft vessels. The main channel is kept clear by the presence of a rock wall on the outside of the channel's curve (See photo). This man-made wall prevents erosion and keeps the channel deep and narrow, rather than allowing the channel to become wide and shallow. The harbour was named in honour of Scottish Major General Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth Colonial Governor of New South Wales.
Sarah Island was built for British convicts as a prison and a place of "extreme physical and mental torture". The narrow entrance to Macquarie Harbour has hazardous tidal currents and is called Hell's Gates and that is where we were making for first in our fast Catamaran, locally built, water jet driven and called the Harbour Master II.
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