96 Australian GeographicI
T’S EASY TO SPOT a born-and-bred Furneaux Islander.
In 30-knot winds locals will walk upright. Visitors, on the
other hand, will be bent over, says Aboriginal ranger Cindy
Pitchford. “Thirty knots is a breeze on the islands.”
The Furneaux Group comprises more than 60 islands
and rocky islets scattered across eastern Bass Strait that
are routinely blasted by wild winds. They lie in the path of the
Roaring Forties – westerly gales that rip around the Earth between
the latitudes of 40o and 50o south.
It was windy even by Cindy’s reckoning when 69-knot
(128km/h) cyclone-force winds tore across the islands in 2011.
But wild storms have always lashed these waters between
Victoria and Tasmania. In 1797 Captain Gavin ‘Guy’ Hamilton
encountered what he described as “a perfect hurricane”, as he
guided his leaky vessel the Sydney Cove from the raging Tasman
Sea towards the shallower waters of the islands, where his crew
might have a chance of survival. Here, on 9 February, it was
grounded at the southern end of Preservation Island.
No-one could have known it at the time, but this ship’s sink-
ing would set a colony’s commercial wheels in motion, starting
a wave of migration that led to the settlement of Tasmania.I
T’S DIFFICULT TO imagine such tempests when, after a two-
hour boat journey from Flinders Island, I arrive at the same
spot some 217 years later. It’s a flawless April day: the sky is
cloudless, the ocean glass-like. Here on Preservation Island
I hope to learn more about one of the most intriguing yet
little-known sagas of Australia’s early maritime history.
There’s just a whisper of a breeze as Cindy, 36, a trainee
Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service ranger, navigates Panamuna,
a 6.5m aluminium cruiser towards the island. Covering just 207ha
Preservation lies 133km north-east of Launceston. The Furneaux
Group ranges in size from this, to 65km-long Flinders Island,
interspersed by several tiny backyard-sized islets.
Cindy and ranger-in-charge Wayne Dick, 58, launch a tender
to take us to the island’s shore where a white sand beach is lapped
by gin-clear waters, granite boulders are daubed with vivid orange
Caloplaca lichen and tussock-covered hills rise behind. The scene
was different here in February 1797, when 46 exhausted Sydney
Cove crew staggered ashore from a longboat pitching in freezing
waters. Their ship was sinking fast 350m offshore – about where
Panamuna was anchored.
The Sydney Cove sailed from India, on 10 November 1796,
bound for Port Jackson. Captain Hamilton was accompanied by
chief mate Hugh Thompson, second mate ‘Mr Leisham’, super-
cargo William Clark, at least four British sailors, including John
Bennett, and 44 unnamed Indian ‘lascar’ seamen. The ship carried
a cargo of tea, ceramics, rice, tobacco, textiles, a pedal organ, a
horsedrawn buggy, a horse, cattle and more than 7000 gallons
(31,500 litres) of alcohol, including Madeira wine and rum.David Thurrowgood (above),
objects conservator at the
Queen Victoria Museum in
Launceston, holds alcohol
recovered intact during the
excavation of the Sydney Cove.
Securely corked more than
200 years ago, it is among the
world’s oldest bottled
alcohol from a shipwreck.Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife
Service ranger Wayne Dick
(right) looks for safe anchorage
for the cruiser Panamuna. He
is approaching the Sydney
Cove shipwreck site, just off
Preservation Island, TAS.CAM COPE; 2002 IMAGE: TASMANIAN PARKS AND WILDLIFE
SERVICE; PAINTING: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA