FLINDERS ISLAND
Jo Youl’s arms are full of Flinders Island bounty. She slips off her boots with the type of haste that whispers three toddlers are in tow. Generations go way back here; the 1200-hectare Quoin Farm was bought by her great-grandfather in 1932.
“Chef Mikey has prepared your dinner – grilled asparagus with truffled eggs, smoked fish croquettes, line-caught trevally with lemon and olive oil. Just fire up the barbie.
For your picnic, there’s wallaby and venison salamis, crusty bread, and these breakfast sausages from our farm,” Youl adds, popping supplies in the Wombat Lodge fridge. “We’re moving cattle across to Cape Grim today so I must run.”
Then she is gone; lunch and dinner sorted. That’s not how the morning of a bushwalk normally begins – with delivery of lunch and dinner by esteemed chef Mikey Yeo. We had our sights set on Mount Killiecrankie after a morning yoga session and swim overlooking its glowing granite peak. All we had to do was pick up our hamper and go.
Like our morning visit from Youl, Flinders Island is full of the unexpected. Just off the north-east tip of Tasmania, Flinders is part of the Furneaux Group, a sprinkling of 52 Bass Strait islands. With just a tick over one thousand residents, this understated destination is now gaining serious traction as Australians turn their heads homeward for “overseas” travel.
But it turns out it’s not the Flinders of old. These days, places like The Flinders Wharf mean the foodie experience now matches the mighty crays plucked from its waters. This is where Yeo spends his time, and just next door head distiller Tom Ambroz turns out spirits with Flinders’ notes of locally smoked peat at the Furneaux Distillery Co.
As we climb Mount Killiecrankie, it takes just 20 minutes before we’re left speechless. A coastline of secret coves, separated by outcrops topped with fire-orange lichen, come into view. We climb a little higher and rock formations, some 350 million years in the making, stop us in our tracks. Hollowed boulders towering four times our height sit precariously on pointed corners, like giant molars eroded across millennia. It’s like nature’s sculpture park.
We continue to climb, quickly running out of words to describe nature’s spectacle. For Wineglass Bay lovers, exploring Flinders Island is like Tasmania’s east coast with the volume and variety turned up. From the 278 metre-high peak, we can see Youl’s farm sprawled below. I wave; it’s only polite. In these parts, every driver lifts a hand to passing traffic.
What was supposed to be a two-hour hike takes three. We’re officially on island time. Too full from our farm eggs and bacon, we set off for Stacky’s Bight for a late lunch. We follow Youl’s self-drawn “pirate map” down a grassy highway, dotted with wallabies and surprisingly speedy wombats until we trust the rental car to go no further, continuing by foot until we reach paradise. Stacky’s Bight Beach compels us to kick off our shoes and venture beneath this limestone arch like film extras from The Beach. That is, until our toes meet the water.
So swept up, we don’t realise it’s just struck 5.15pm and we’ve yet to have lunch. This island time business really is a thing. Still, we make time to search for Killiecrankie Diamonds (a semi-precious topaz) at the far end of Killiecrankie Beach. I pop three miniscule specimens in my pocket to take back to a jeweller friend who I suspect will laugh at my diamond hopefuls. Then again, Flinders is full of surprises. Like sitting atop Mount Strzelecki with locals who have just launched the Walk Flinders Island outfit, savouring energy bites of dried peach, pear and apple from the Trousers Point orchard below.
Days later, somewhere between the most flavoursome beef pie on the planet at Condimental and a foraging excursion discovering the joys of ice plant, beach mustard and noon flower with Yeo, I realise my tiny stones are still in my pocket.
“Take them into Sandro,” suggests Yeo, pointing metres from our ice plant. I push open the door of his seaside workshop and the goldsmith looks closely at my tiny pebble. He’s quiet and squints through his magnifying glass.
Silence follows.
“Yep, you have yourself a diamond,” he announces.
For a moment I feel drenched in wealth. Turns out it’s nothing to declare through customs at the Lady Barron airstrip, and may not cover my next island latte, but it’s an experience so rich I tuck it into my pocket, a precious treasure never to be forgotten.