Bruny Island Wilderness Cruise and Bus Transfer From Hobart

Bruny Island is not one island but two, joined by a sand isthmus barely a hundred metres wide, and the strip is known simply as the Neck. The Nuenonne people of the Lunawanna-Alonnah lived here for millennia before European charts existed. Their names survive in the island's two southern settlements. Abel Tasman sighted the coast in 1642. Tobias Furneaux anchored in Adventure Bay in 1773, naming it for his ship. James Cook watered there in 1777 on the third voyage. William Bligh followed in 1788 and again in 1792, planting apple stock that gave Tasmania its later orchard reputation. Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin both used the bay. The island itself carries the name of Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, the French admiral who charted the channel in 1792. Few stretches of Australian coast were visited so early, so often, by so many flags. Geology explains the drama that a bruny island wilderness cruise and bus transfer from hobart is built around. The southern cliffs are Jurassic dolerite, intruded roughly 175 million years ago as molten rock cooled into vertical columns. Sea and Southern Ocean swell have since cut them into caves, arches and stacks. The Monument stands offshore as a detached column. Fluted Cape rises above 270 metres. Beyond the cliffs, the next landfall southward is Antarctica, and the swell arriving at Cape Bruny has crossed unbroken water to get there. The wildlife follows the water. Cold subantarctic current meets a narrow continental shelf here, forcing nutrient upward. Australian and New Zealand fur seals haul out on the rock platforms in the hundreds. Albatross, shy and black-browed, shear the troughs. Humpback and southern right whales pass on migration; bottlenose and common dolphins work the bays year-round. Ashore, the island holds all twelve of Tasmania's endemic bird species and a small population of white wallabies, a recessive-gene morph found almost nowhere else. Cape Bruny Lighthouse, completed in 1838 by convict labour, is the longest continuously staffed light in Australia until its decommissioning in 1996. It stands 114 metres above sea level. Today Bruny Island day tours from Hobart carry visitors across the D'Entrecasteaux Channel by vehicular ferry from Kettering, a crossing of some twenty minutes. Whether travellers choose the wilderness coast eco cruise, the gourmet route or the exclusive lighthouse itinerary, bruny island wilderness cruise and bus transfer from hobart tours all converge on the same essential proposition: a landscape that has been photographed, charted and painted for two and a half centuries and still reads as remote.