photographer Graeme Bourke
I arrived at Wynyard Airport at 10am. It was a clear, sunny day with the wind blowing quite strongly from the south-west. I was flying to Trefoil Island, which is off the north-west tip of Tasmania near Cape Grim. It is part of the Trefoil Island Group and is owned by the Trefoil Island Aboriginal Cooperative. Access is by plane or, on the eastern shore, at a pebbly beach. Most of the island has sheer cliffs.
The reason for my trip to the island was to hook up a new reserve generator for the processing and freezing of mutton birds and associated amenity buildings. The short-tailed shearwater, or Tasmanian mutton bird, breeds in the tens of millions on the islands stretching from Recherche Arch in Western Australia, through South Australia, Victoria and the Bass Strait islands. It returns to Australia from its summer feeding waters near Japan about October to lay its single egg in burrows underneath the stringy tussocks and on the sloping banks.
During breeding season, it is estimated there are three million birds on Trefoil alone, so burrows are always at a premium. Many birds lay their eggs on the ground where they are quickly taken by snakes, seagulls and the other birds of prey that frequent the area. It is a time of plenty for nature.
Mutton birds are smoky brown, with a paler throat and a silky gloss on the underwings. They travel in immense flocks, passing in undulating streams and becoming churning masses on the sea when feeding. They rest on the surface of the water in dark rafts. I was lucky enough to witness this sight one evening to the west of Trefoil.
The plane soared into the air and as it reached about 750 metres I began taking photographs. One of them later won a prize in a Tasmanian calendar competition. I have never failed to be surprised at the beauty of this island.
Flying past Robbins Island, just off Smithton, brings back memories from long ago when I used to collect the mutton bird myself as a young man. Every March we would make the journey by plane, usually flown by local identity Bill Vincent from Smithton. Robbins is an indistinct, mostly flat, low-lying island. The only real area of height is on the western tip where the mutton bird rookery is situated.
We used to camp under the lee of the hill, although little good it did us when the storms came through, as strong winds are notorious in Bass Strait. One time we spent the night in an old dairy huddling in the corners and pulling anything we could over the top of us. As I recall, we used plastic sheeting and old galvanised iron as the wind whipped the heavy rain through every crack and joint in the building. Our windblown, wet and soggy tents were forgotten as we listened to the ferocious whistling of the wind. The wind gods were in a foul mood that night.
Flying over Woolnorth Point, which is the true north-west corner of Tasmania, I could see Trefoil Island ahead. Its light brown surface indicated a layer of button grass atop a rocky formation of dark grey cliffs that dominated the southern, eastern and the northern sides of the island. A sloping bank with a winding track could be clearly seen on the eastern side, leading to a hut not far from the shore. This was the bottom camp.
The pilot banked the plane as he circled for the approach. The Doughboy Islands, looking like two loaves of bread, and Cape Grim were visible to the south. Cape Grim has a weather station that monitors the purest air in the world. Straightening up, the pilot steered the Cessna down onto the strip with a couple subtle bumps before taxying the plane towards the main buildings.
The first thing I had to do was check out the generator and make sure that it would still run as it had hit the ground when being carried onto the island by helicopter. Some of the wiring had been jarred loose, the radiator was bent and damaged, and the fan was split. The battery was damaged beyond repair. Still, we were able to test run the generator and make sure that it was still working; we would have to order some new parts and make some repairs later.
I settled down to some dinner with the other workers, some of whom I already knew. For lunch we had saveloys and mashed potatoes; there was plenty to go around. I even went back for seconds having not had anything to eat since early morning. In the afternoon I concentrated on getting the new mains to the generator through the conduits from one building to the other, and reburied into the ground.
At five o’clock we stopped work and had a few cold beers. It had been a very hot and windy day; you had to hold onto your hat if you didn’t want to lose it. Having been introduced to the other workers during the day, I enjoyed these few moments after work to relax.
I was billeted in what they called the top camp, a low-lying shack with a combined dining room and kitchen. It had three bedrooms and I was lucky enough to have a room to myself. I was sharing the hut with Paul and Danny. The bathroom was basic – the shower was a bucket on a rope and a concrete lintel the floor. After warming some water on the gas stove, I filled the bucket up and enjoyed a short sharp shower. Dinner was in the main camp that night.
That evening I sat out in front of the shack, sheltered from the Roaring Forties, and marvelled at the view. Despite the wind, there was a deep peace. The sun, the land and the sea took on a golden hue. The dry grass in front of me rippled and swayed.
The waves were capped with white and the wind plucked their tops into the air, creating white streams that looked like a giant spider web as the water thundered over the reefs and small islands in the bay. In the distance I could see the low silhouette of Hunter Island, looking rustic in the evening light. The horizon seemed to blend with the sea, making it hard to distinguish between land and sky.
As darkness crept over the land, mutton birds began to appear. Their wings beat rapidly as they climbed into the air above the cliffs, and then they settled in to a gentle glide across the wavering button grass as they searched for their burrows. It never ceases to amaze me how the birds find their own burrow amid the thousands upon thousands on the island. There are no streets, no numbers here; just a basic homing instinct that has seen these birds breed and multiply over thousands of years.
The chicks in the burrows will move towards the entrance and begin their shrieking cry to attract the adult birds that have been at sea all day gathering food. One of the things that I notice almost immediately is the strong and distinctive smell of the mutton bird as more and more gather in the sky. It is hard to describe the smell to someone who has never been on a mutton bird rookery. The scent of feathers comes to mind; a pungent, stale and tangy odour.
On finding its burrow, the adult bird will be greeted by even more shrieks as the chick makes its demand for food. The meal regurgitated from the adult bird is an evil-smelling green, oily mixture that the chick devours eagerly.
The number of birds in the air becomes thicker and thicker, until the sky is almost blotted out. How they manage to avoid each other and the buildings on the island also amazes me. Even so, during the night I occasionally hear the thud of a bird hitting the tin roof, then a scurry and scratching of flapping wings as they try to get to their feet on the slippery surface.
By this time all the workers have returned to their respective huts, reducing the danger of vehicles running over the many mutton birds that are now congregating on the ground and blocking the tracks. In the darkness the island takes on a whole new dimension, the ground beneath your very feet seems to come alive. You can sense the vibration, the pulsing and throbbing of life itself.
By the time I rise the next morning there isn’t a mutton bird in sight and it is eerily quiet. Breakfast consisted of some tinned fruit. The wind is not as strong today; even so it is still warm. I concentrated on getting the cables through the roof of the main building using a couple of lengths of conduit. Lunch consisted of salad and ham, of which I went back for seconds again. This island life was making me hungry. I completed the cable run to the switchboard and to the generator and began wiring up the generator light and power.
Finishing work at five, and after a few cans of beer, we had some cottage pie for dinner. After, we went down to the bottom camp to meet some other workers who were coming over in a boat from Woolnorth Point with more supplies.
On Trefoil there is no jetty, no beach to bring the boats in on, and no natural harbour. The boats need to be towed up onto black rubble-strewn embankment with a strong rope attached to a tractor. To launch the boats, it is all hands-on deck as the boats are turned on the rubble and pushed down in the sea.
As we made our way back up the dusty track on the four-wheel motorbike in the dark, thousands of birds were flying around, missing us by mere feet. Many were landing and now posed a threat on the trail. We managed to negotiate our way through the chaos without running over any birds.
The next day I had a bit of time to myself as I was waiting for some lining to go on in the building, so I took a stroll down to a cairn on the edge of the airstrip. Trefoil is not without its tragedy – in March 2003 a Cessna crashed on take-off, killing the pilot and three passengers. Also, in 1895, Albert Kay ran sheep on the island and on returning from the island in a small flat-bottom boat, Albert and two of his children, Walter, who was 16, and Sara, four, were drowned.
His wife Maria had watched the tragedy from the shore with Robert, of 22 months, in her arms. He had narrowly escaped drowning as well when Maria took him from the boat. Under the guidance of Belinda, the eldest girl, her mother and five siblings survived unassisted on the island for six weeks before they were rescued.
I had completed all my work as far as I could go. I was still waiting for some of the plaster sheet to go on, so I had a leisurely day, although with some excitement. A snake catcher had flown in and was scouring the area for specimens. After an hour or two he returned with a couple large tiger snakes. The snakes here survive by eating their fill when the mutton birds arrive; they eat the young and the eggs. Then they have to wait for a year before they can feed again.
That evening dinner was in the top camp with roast beef, pork and chicken on the menu along with pumpkin, peas and gravy – a sumptuous meal of huge proportions. The visitors from Friday were returning to Woolnorth Point with the boat and some gear. I was to go back with them after agreeing to drive two of them home to Burnie – after a beer.
We loaded up the boat and headed out across the bay into a stiff north-westerly that had the waves crashing over the bow. As I sat in the boat looking back at the island, I could not help but think about Albert Kay rowing out into this dangerous stretch of water in a small flat-bottom boat with his two children and his wife standing on the shore with six of their children. It reminded me of my own family tragedy, when six of my grandmother’s siblings drowned in the 1929 floods.
Graeme Bourke is a Tasmanian writer. Over the past 30 years he has written articles for The Tasmanian Sportsfisher, On the Road, Sporting Shooter and Forty South. His historical fiction work Hawkins’ Grove, set in the 1850s in the Tasmanian highlands, was published by Forty South Publishing in 2010.