INTO THE WILD

Former policeman and abalone diver Pieter van der Woude’s passion for sharing Tasmania’s South-West wilderness could serve as a model for future tourism ventures

Pieter van der Woude is setting the gold standard for sustainable tourism in Tasmania’s wild South West

The middens rise as high as a single-storey house above the white sands of Stephens Bay at the far southwest tip of Tasmania, and the excitement of Pieter van der Woude at seeing them is palpable.

He might have lost count of the times he has stood in the shadow of the middens, one crafted and honed by sea breezes over thousands of years into the shape of a pyramid, but he never grows tired of the sight of them.

What’s more, he is sharing the middens at the back of a curving beach with fellow travellers. Under the fierce sunny skies, the stacked shells of oyster and mussel are dazzling white, the bigger shells of abalone, glow silver.

The Aboriginal Needwonnee people inhabited the South West for 40,000 years and here is the evidence of their existence.

“Look for the seal bones,” 61-year-old van der Woude instructs his small party.

Sticking from the flat outlines of shellfish are the angled, twisted shapes of the bones. His daughter, Alice, who helps him run the family boat charter business, pitches in, pointing out that there are no fish bones in the most recent middens, if 4000 years can be considered recent. “It’s a mystery why the Aborigines stopped eating scale fish about four millennia ago,” she says. “We’ll never know, I suppose.”

Her dad might be the man behind a successful, high-end wilderness travel experience, but he never loses his own sense of wonder at what he describes as one of the most precious places on earth.

Van der Woude each year operates the luxury cruiser, the Odalisque, in the waters of Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour, and last summer I joined the vessel’s delivery voyage from its home base in Hobart to its main anchorage point in the South West, near Claytons Corner in Bathurst Harbour. A repositioning trip for van der Woude can mean more than a direct course on a chart between North East and South West, making allowances for weaving between Maatsuyker Island and the mainland, and rounding the South West Cape. Sometimes the outward and later inward journeys take in Maatsuyker itself, with a climb of the near-virtual cliff to the historic lighthouse atop the island.

On this occasion, however, the middens at Stephens Bay are on the itinerary. First the Odalisque leaves open ocean at the entrance to Port Davey, before seeking the sheltered Spain Bay. From there, a dinghy ferries van der Woude’s party of friends to shore, before a hike is undertaken over a low buttongrassclothed hill, back south to Stephens Bay. The excursion is typical of a standard Odalisque cruise, which follows the mood and interest of the punters, as the waters of Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour follow the tides and flow of the tannin-stained rivers that feed them.

Van der Woude regularly leaves the Battery Point home he shares with wife Jo to explore an environment linking sea, sand and forest. As he puts it, “No two days are ever the same in this wilderness.” The weather over the next few days proves his point. The day at Stephens Bay is the hottest of the year, demanding that midway on the hike, the party takes a dip in the ocean to cool off. Next day the weather has closed in. A southwesterly bringing rain has caused the cancellation of flights into the remote airstrip at Melaleuca, and grey clouds shroud the surrounding mountains. The previous day the bright sun had picked out the muted greens of mountain gullies, and the battleship grey contours of the mountains themselves. Now the peaks appear as if drawn in charcoal, without definition in the fine, swirling mist. It’s magical.

Approaching Port Davey the previous day, with seals loitering on the rocks of the Breaksea Islands at the entrance to the inland sea, I found it hard to fathom that Tasmania’s wilderness remains at the centre of political controversy.

There has been a great deal of commentary, much debate, and much opposition to development in the region in recent years since the Liberal Government announced its intention to open up Tasmania’s wilderness to business. It went further by seeking Expressions of Interest from operators to develop tourism projects. One of these was van der Woude’ s Tasmanian Boat Charters, which was lauded by Premier Will Hodgman as perfectly fitting the bill for such ventures, one which did not leave a “footprint” in largely pristine areas. The Premier said the whole EOI process represented an opportunity to attract up to $70 million worth of investment, creating at least 300 jobs.

Talking to van der Woude, it is clear to wants to avoid the controversy surrounding wilderness tourism, but all the same he believes there is scope for more visitors.

“As a Tasmanian and a long-time lover of Tasmania’s coastline, its waters and the treasure it holds, I established the business to be able to share the coastal wilderness with likeminded explorers,” he says. “I also have a great interest in wildlife and this is what I want to share on my cruises.”

Van der Woude traces his love of the marine environment to a childhood spent at Penguin. His parents had settled in Tasmania after emigrating to Australia from Holland in the early 1950s. Of their nine children, four were born in what is now known as the Netherlands, and five – including van der Woude – in Tasmania. “We were right next to the sea and I started snorkelling and spearfishing when I was 12 or 13,” he says. “I loved the ocean and was never out of the water.”

After completing his education at Ulverstone High School van der Woude joined the Tasmania Police in Hobart as a cadet, drawn to the possibility of service with the marine division.

“That was the big attraction,” he says. “During 12 years with the police I was involved with all sorts of marine activities including diving and search and rescue. But first I did the beat in Hobart for a number of years, and was a motorbike cop for a time.”

When an opportunity arose to be posted to Flinders Island, the young policeman seized it.“This posting was wonderful, just what I dreamt of,” he says. “I was my own boss, my sergeant was 25km away and I got my own boat and four-wheel-drive.”

After a time, though, van der Woude decided to look to new horizons, realising he could make a living from work more closely related to the sea. He obtained an abalone diver’s licence for Flinders Island waters.

“It was a good life. I’d fly back and forth to Hobart, stay a month on Flinders depending on the weather patterns, and a month down south,” he says.

He later sold his Flinders licence to take up a bigger one and when the success of this venture allowed him to buy a mother boat for his operation, he found himself spending more and more time on the remote west and southwest coasts.

“I realised then that this was a region people wanted to see,” he says. “I was being chartered to take out film crews from the BBC and from TV stations in Japan, and it occurred to me that I could make a living out of tourism. And this, of course, fitted in with my own lifestyle and interest, my love of the ocean.”

After 24 years as an abalone fisherman, he devoted his business interests full time to tourism. He still finds time, however, to offer his experience of the wild oceans surrounding Tasmanian shores for the greater public good.

During the off-season, van der Woude employs his boating skills with the Australian Antarctic Division, where he helps unload and load the Aurora Australis icebreaker during resupply operations of the various Antarctic bases and Southern Ocean islands, including Macquarie Island.

The design of the Odalisque is based on van der Woude’s old abalone mother boat, extended to accommodate small parties of tourists. And the name also traces its roots to his abalone days. “Abalone divers traditionally give their boats names with a sexual connotation, for a bit of fun. They’re risque if you like. I named my vessel the Odalisque in that tradition. An odalisque is, of course, a concubine in a harem.”

The visit to Stephens Bay on the repositioning voyage, and activities within Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour, fit in with van der Woude’s overall vision for tourism in remote areas.

“I wanted to create an experience that would allow people to experience Tasmania’s remote and pristine South West, an area inaccessible to many,’’ he says. “We take great pride in sharing what we see as a unique and special place on earth.’’

Van der Woude stresses the Odalisque takes out everything it brings in from Hobart at the start of the tourist season. Passengers are also largely ferried to shore by dinghy, reducing the need for unsightly jetties. Within Bathurst Harbour, the vessel itself rests at its own sunken mooring, its establishment being negotiated during the EOI process. This ensures there is no disturbance of the fragile sea bed by the dragging of anchors.

Those in government promoting an increased level of commercial activity in the wilderness point out that the region has never been totally free of the influence of humans, from the ochre mining of the first Aboriginal residents, to the tin mining carried out by the famous Melaleuca pioneer, Deny King.

It is the white quartzite runway, built by King, that provides for the flights that bring in tourists for van der Woude’s operation, or for canoers, hikers and bird-watchers. Among unease about the Government’s plans for the area have been the possibility of increased flights, and especially helicopter operations. But amid all the controversy over the area, van der Woude hopes his family business will become a role model for how the state’s South West could be opened up for tourism.

The sun is out again on our last morning on Bathurst Harbour and, aware of my interest in birds, van der Woude is taking one of the Odalisque’s dinghies up the Old River off the harbour itself, and then along a tributary. We are searching for the fabled azure kingfisher, a bird I have never seen.

We have already ticked off the orange-bellied parrot – one of the rarest birds in the world – but van der Woude has not been able to find for me two other rare species he has seen in the past, the eastern ground parrot and the southern emu-wren.

He hopes to have more success with the elusive kingfisher. We cruise the harbour margin and the wide Old River for hours and finally take to foot along a trail framed by Huon and celerytop pine. Crossing a stream, pushing back the branches of native laurel, a squeaky “pee-pee-pee” rings through the forest and an azure kingfisher flashes by, iridescent blue on the back and orange underneath.

The tiny bird, at only 17cm, has a loud, shimmering beauty to belie its size, a jewel in the crown of the magnificent South West, and a fitting symbol for those trying to save this world heritage experience from over-exploitation.