Please wait. Contacting image service... loading

Article text

EAST BAY NECK.
FIRST EXCURSION TRIP THROUGH
THE CANAL.
Few people except those immediately
interested, could tell the whereabouts of
East Bay Neck, and fewer still could
describe the canal which cuts through it
to the East Coast. Yet this bids fair to
be the favourite place for excursions
during the coming season, and promises
to vie in popularity with Port Cygnet
and Eagle Hawk Neck. The canal,
which is only a few hundred yards in
length, cuts through Forestier's Peninsula,
which it transforms into an island,
and saves a good 30 miles of dangerous
sea way. The work has only been completed
a few months, at an expense
roughly speaking, of about £20,000, and
will doubtless be largely availed of by
the voyagers to the East Coast. The
members of the Derwent Yacht Club
have long had their eye on this particular
work, as, when finished, it would
open out new fields for their exploits on
the further side of the canal. Last year
they inaugurated the season with a
couple of excursions to Dunalley, where
the canal begins ; Norfolk Bay, which is
close by, being one of their favourite
haunts. This year they decided to lead
off with the first of a series of excursions
through the canal itself. The s.s.
Nubeena was chartered for the occasion.
By a stroke of luck, which almost compensated
them for the bad fortune of
last year, when the weather was extremely
wet, the day turned out to be
absolutely perfect, and over a hundred
availed themselves of the opportunity
of paying a visit to the new canal.
At Bruni Island we loft the usual
track, and headed for Cape Deliverance,
with its patches of emerald green, its
border of she-oaks, its sandy beach, and
its reef of cruel rocks, jutting out towards
the Iron Pot, where the light-
house warns the passing voyager of the
dangers that lie around. Then came
Watson's Bluff, a yellow-ribbed promontory
fronting the sea, carpeted above
with varying shades of green, with here
and there a stunted hush, and a long
sandy beach, curving round and terminating
in another formidable-looking
bluff at the further end, half-concealing
on the way an overhanging grotto, with
glittering sand, like that at Lourdes,
where the fancy of a Bernadette conjured
up the Madonna's face. A tiny white
cloudlet rested ahove the grotte, like an
angel on the wing. To the windward a
long line of cloud appeared over the
tops of the hills, like the columns of an
advancing host.
Storm Bay and Norfolk Bay were seccessfully
passed, and then we came in
sight of Garden Island, opposite
Dunalley, which thoroughly deserves its
name, and the long jetty, doomed to
disappear, where hitherto passengers
have been discharged. Here we took
on board an old fisherman, who has been
30 years in these parts, and knows the
depth of every inch of the way.
Dunalley itself can be taken in at a
glance—a vision of tufts of grass, trees
with tufts of leaves, hills with forms and
orchards nestling in their folds, timber
galore in the gullies, and in the water
any amount of fish. The canal is just
large enough to lot the Nubeena
through. A few hundred yards of steep,
clayey sides, shelving inwards; a few
settlers' houses scattered here and
there; and, turning round a bend, a
sudden burst into Blackman's Bay !
Encircled by hills, with here and there
meadows of a dazzling green, a colour
which predominates even in the water,
which in parts is extremely shallow, the
bay is extremely picturesque. At last
we reach the spit, which stretches almost
right across the bay, leaving only
a narrow passage for vessels to pass. On
the other side are masses of kelp, like a
miniature Saragossa sea. Here is the
favourite haunt of trumpeter and
perch, while right opposite is Maria
Island, and on the mainland the rich
chocolate soil of many an orchard and
farm. This formed the extreme limit ef
the trip, and after an hour's rest at
Dunalley, the vessel was homeward turned,
and the wharf regained by half-past
7 o'clock. Mr. J. Philp, hon. secretary
of the Club, and the committee of
management may be congratulated on
the success which attended their inaugural
trip. Captain Mason also deserves
more than a word of praise for
the way in which he handled his ship.
=
$