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An ancient mariner feeds between the tides

May 2, 2022 Don Knowler

A pied oystercatcher waded through a shallow surf, tip-toeing on spindly legs around sheets of wrack washing ashore. The oystercatcher probed the wet sand under foot, searching for the tiny sea life that lives between the tides.
I spied the oystercatcher from Two Tree Point which sits above Adventure Bay on Bruny Island, the blue gums framing a stunning panorama stretching across an azure sea, from golden sands to the hazy outline of Tasman Island on the horizon.
This very location was chosen by Royal Navy artist George Tobin to paint the tangled but statuesque outline of the pair of blue gums in 1792.
A reproduction of the painting stands at Two Tree Point, as do what are believed to be the original trees, now at least 260 years of age.
I go to the spot every time I visit Bruny Island for a trip back in time, to envision the moment when in the late 1700s a succession of mariners weighed anchor off this shore to collect water from the Resolution River.
The sights and sounds are just the same, if the modern viewer looks straight ahead across Storm Bay to the Tasman Peninsular and does not let their sight stray towards the east of Adventure Bay where white-washed homes protrude through the coastal bush.
Yellow-throated honeyeaters, yellow wattlebirds and swift parrots still call from the scattered trees overlooking the ocean and, below, pied oystercatchers negotiate waves spilling onto the beach.
The smaller birds might have escaped the mariners’ attention but the lanky oystercatchers, with knitting-needle-long orange beaks, would most certainly have been seen by the advance parties rowing and then wading ashore. Black oystercatchers and hooded plovers, too, in a soundscape of crashing waves and coastal winds murmuring in the dunes beyond the beach, and rustling the leaves of the gums.
Resolution River was at first marked as a “watering place” on the charts of Captain Tobias Furneaux when he arrived in the Adventure, in 1773. Then Captain James Cook sailed the Resolution into Adventure Bay in 1777 before the river was named after Cook’s ship during William Bligh’s visit on the Bounty in 1788. Bligh had been sailing master on the Resolution.
The trees on the point were painted by Captain Tobin on Bligh’s next visit four years later, on the Providence.
Tobin’s inspiration is easy to understand. The autumnal day I visited during a timeout from the Bruny Island Bird Festival at the end of March proved more beautiful than most. A shimmering sea spread before me, a low sun giving the wet sand a golden sheen. Just as the ancient mariners would have viewed it, except for an addition from more modern times. A ribbon of green plastic swirled in the surf and the oystercatcher dodged this and the wrack as it hunted food between the tides.

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