Standing atop the sheer dolerite cliffs of Cape Hauy, braced hard against a strong updraught, I didn’t expect a line from our national anthem to pop into my head. Our home is girt by sea. I suppose the huge coastal vista here reminded me how fully girt Tasmania is in comparison with that vast, old, dry continent to our north. Here we feel so much closer to the sea, so much more surrounded by it. That, after all, is the definition of an island. 

There’s more to being an island than that. There’s the isolation, something we feel all the more at present, with the drawbridge over Bass Strait raised against the rest of Australia and the world. However, I sense a countervailing force, one that’s summed up by a lovely German word. It’s a long word, of course, German being the bolt-on, meccano-esque language that it is: meerumschlungen literally translates as “sea-embraced”, making it a close approximation to our “girt by sea”.

So which does being so girt makes us: isolated or embraced? Or is it not a binary choice? Perhaps the two are essential aspects of being an island: the poles that keep Tasmania the frustratingly, beautifully contradictory place that it is. Where some of us must leave before we realise what it was we had here. 

This Tasman Peninsula cliff coast reminds me that we haven’t always been girt. If we go back far enough, Tasmania was subsumed within the vast supercontinent of Gondwana. Still, even then, isolation and embrace squared off against each other. In fact it’s along this coast that part of that dispute may have played out. Some geologists think these cliffs may mark a torn edge of the former landmass of Gondwana. Indisputably, the huge dolerite cliffs here result from the igneous upwellings that occurred in the Jurassic (about 170 million years ago). Those ructions continued into and beyond the Cretaceous, as Gondwana gradually broke into separate land masses (between 140 and 35 million years ago).

I can scarcely imagine the slow, gargantuan wrestle that led to these dolerite capes staying here. They could just as easily have “sailed off” to Antarctica, where matching dolerite is found today. Had that happened, these capes would have known only the cold embrace of the icy continent. Instead they’re held in the (relatively) warmer embrace of the Tasman Sea.

As I crawl gingerly onto the final bluff of Cape Hauy, the wind and wuthering continue, like an echo of that Gondwanan break-up. My eyes travel down the mottled grey columns, dizzyingly downward, until they reach the ocean. There waves are carrying on the argument, pounding and foaming restlessly at the base of the vertiginous cliffs. 

Could such a forbidding place ever offer any sense of embrace? Perhaps the sea, and all that it holds, help provide an answer here. As I look out beyond the cliffs, I see some Australasian gannets, broad-winged and angel white, moving over the waters like peaceful spirits. Around them, and dwarfing them in numbers if not size, I see dark masses of short-tailed shearwaters, flying low and close to the sea. These migratory birds return to our coast every spring, a staggering round trip of more than 15,000 kilometres. Unlike in-coming human travellers, they require no permit or exemption. For them these waters hold welcome riches of krill, squid and fish. This diet allows them to breed, grow, and gain the strength to continue their massive migratory flights. 

I finally walk into the lee of a bluff, and the wind drops, allowing me a quiet ponder over a lunch with a priceless view. I begin to feel warmer, and it’s not just physically. Places like this, these rocks, this weather, the wildlife all around me – and yes, the ocean all about me – also enrich my life. And they are some of the reasons I am bound to this wonderfully wild, heart-shaped island.    

Peter Grant lives in the foothills of kunanyi with his wife. He worked with the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service for 24 years as manager of interpretation and education. His passion for the natural world led him to write Habitat Garden (ABC Books) and found the Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. More of his writing can be seen at naturescribe.com.