BRUNY I SLAND BOUNTY
Margaret Wallace Bruny Island Books $69.85
As almost every visitor will attest, Bruny Island is a strangely transfixing place. Margaret Wallace’s new book, Bruny Island Bounty, takes readers on a history, food and nature tour from the famous ferry departing Kettering and all around the island’s bays and coves via its main road.
“Islands are special,” writes Wallace, “and Bruny Island is special among islands [because] it has a unique sense of place … Unlike other parts of Australia, much of Bruny’s original vegetation remains.”
Joining the community on Bruny has allowed the author to truly “understand what it is to belong to a place, rather than it belonging to you”.
Visually rich and scrapbook style, the book includes history, personal anecdotes, recipes, poems, lists of native flora and fauna, observations and contributions from prominent locals about their work and lives on the island.
Readers will learn of the continual Aboriginal connection with the island from 35,000 years ago through to today (the Aboriginal Land Corporation’s Murrayfield Station occupies much of North Bruny Island), the early visits of the French and British, seafaring and shipwrecks, whaling stations, the island’s flora and fauna, its farms and shacks and many tourist enterprises.
There are images of the famous white wallabies, auroras and sunsets, sea vistas both serene and stormy, and a handy grid of Tasmania’s 12 endemic bird species – all of which can be spotted there.
Most interesting, though, are the recollections of old-timers who remember the days before electricity, before the road through The Neck, of passenger steamers from almost everywhere but Kettering.
Liz and Stuart Bennett encountered the island’s enduring community spirit when they bought Stan Petersen’s farm in 1981. Petersen told them they wouldn’t have to bring anything because it was walk-in-walk-out, so they only packed the children, some food and a frying pan.
Petersen left behind huge sheds full of stuff including dynamite, and all his gardening and workshop tools. He had also set the fire; put out flowers, cheese and biscuits; and left a leg of lamb in the fridge. He told them later that he wanted to sell to them because, in those days, there were very few young families on the island.
This book makes an excellent keepsake for locals and visitors, who might also use it on return visits as they discover, inevitably, that there’s more to Bruny Island than can be encountered on a single trip.