The dolerite columns along Bruny Island's southeastern coast were formed roughly 180 million years ago, when magma intruded into sandstone during the fracturing of Gondwana. Wind and Southern Ocean swell did the rest. What remains is a coastline of sea caves, blowholes, breached arches and stacks that stand vertically out of deep water. European charts named the island for Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, the French admiral who surveyed the channel in 1792. Cook had anchored in Adventure Bay in 1777; Bligh followed, planting apple trees. The palawa people knew the place as lunawanna-alonnah long before either, and the two settlement names on the island still carry that word. Whaling stations worked these waters through the nineteenth century. Timber and apples followed. The bay that now receives visitors on a bruny island wilderness cruise 3 hours once received square-rigged ships taking on wood and water for the long run south. The waters matter as much as the rock. The vessel route crosses the boundary of the Storm Bay and D'Entrecasteaux Channel systems, where nutrient-rich upwelling supports Australian fur seals at their haul-out ledges near the Friars, along with albatross, shy albatross, sea eagles and, seasonally, migrating humpback and southern right whales. Little penguins and short-tailed shearwaters nest on the headlands. The Friars themselves sit at the island's southern tip, a scatter of rocks marking the meeting of the Tasman Sea and the Southern Ocean — the next landfall due south is Antarctica. Much of the coast falls within South Bruny National Park, gazetted to protect exactly this seam of cliff and sea. The Cape Bruny Lighthouse, completed in 1838 and among the oldest continuously staffed lights in Australia, stands above it. Access from the water is the only way to read the scale of these formations properly; the road ends well short of them, and the cliffs turn their faces seaward. This is why a Bruny Island boat tour has become the defining way to see the southern coastline, and why bruny island wilderness cruise 3 hours tours depart from the sheltered beach at Adventure Bay rather than a deepwater port. The operation runs from 1005 Adventure Bay Road, Adventure Bay, Bruny Island, TAS 7150, Australia. The self-drive adult ticket is 190 AUD. Purpose-built open vessels carry visitors close to the rock — close enough to see the ochre lichen, the water swilling through the arches, and the seals watching from the ledges above.