at Ocean Beach (see all the happy campers poring over the archives of their glory days) before heading off on a free cruise down the Gordon River. 
There was a dozen old blockaders quite ecstatic to be there again and me quite ecstatic to be there for the first time.
Strahan is so beautiful - peaceful old town now depending on the tourist
flow for their jobs and the tourists are flowing in.The Ocean Beach is so wild and beautiful, beyond Hell's Gates is the wild Southern Ocean and while we were blessed with sunshine and mild winds I can imagine how forbidding and cruel the sea could be to those sent here against their will.
The isolation and hopelessness of the convicts was embedded in the ruins of Sarah Island which we visited on the cruise - a tiny island in Macquarie Harbour where all the trees were chopped down to make room for 500 people to suffer such extreme cruelty that many preferred the almost certain death of trying to escape. Made to suffer for their poverty, petty thieves and soldiers alike endured and died here. The swans of the harbour (source fo eggs for the local people) also suffered and died as victims fo the soldiers need for even more sport than tormenting convicts. This is our history past and present - the frontier is a cruel place and there was lots that reminded me of Papunya, including the fact that the adminisitrators rarely stayed more than a year or two. 
I found it a very sombre and depressing place even tho it is now treed and touristed and I found and ate heaps of delicious native red currants.
There are magnificent mountains rising to the sky, salmon farms and lighthouses...
And then the huge still peace of the river as we slowed down to an effortless glide in this mammoth cruise boat built to the specifications of the owners so that it makes no wash.
The Morrisons have made their living from the river for generations, love it and wanted to see it preserved so much that they went against their fellow Strahanites in 1983 - and of course now their business has boomed and they wanted to honour the greenies who helped them. As Alice said, they thought we were helping them and we thought they were helping us .
So here is the free Gordon River and the World Heritage Wilderness. We met Sebastien up there with his teensy rubber ducky that he'd just
been rafting down the river for fifteen days...I am now at Bridport staying with my bro Tim and his partner Gaby in a pise house. There is a magnificent view out over the bay and on a clear day you can see Flinders Island.
Life is very laidback, they have an excellent vege garden but don't seem to do too much else - Gaby is an artist and Tim is studying and works part of the year but right now it feels like I've joined in on an endless holiday. We're going off camping at Waterhouse today.I am also on the edge of Kenn-country here. I am visiting some of Kenn’s family, feels strange after so long but good to make contact. I went to Scottsdale yesterday which brought back lots of memories.
Took photos of the honour board at the North Eastern Soldiers Memorial Hospital – and remembered how when I came here all those 22 long years ago I suddenly began to understand why Kenn felt so compelled to join the army. There seems to be a new tradition of carving soldiers out of heritage trees that have to be cut down but prior to that there were, and still are, memorials to war everywhere.Tasmania has progressed in lots of ways since I was last here - and it still has the charm and beauty I remember.
It's also much better to be here at this time of year, raiding apple and plum trees and gathering blackberries in the summer sun... here's Penguin meals-on-wheels...
Here's Alice and her daughter Rinchen, bundled up like Babushkas - and there really is a little one inside Rinchen (as there was for me last time I was here!)
I'll be home next Sunday, and so will Hannah - yippeeeeeeeee!!!!!
