Daredevil's playground

Rob McFarland puts his life in the hands of a stranger and explores an untamed Tasmanian coastline.

My mother warned me about not getting into cars with strangers. But she never said anything about boats. Which is why I'm hurtling at 60kmh through some of the roughest seas in the world with a man named Mick. Right now, I'm wondering whether I'll ever see my mother again. I'm also concerned that a full English breakfast wasn't the smartest choice.

Mick seems to know what he's doing, though, and the boat is certainly up to the job. Custom-built specifically to take on these sorts of waters, the 12.5-metre inflatable RIB has a military SAS-style hull and is powered by three 300hp Mercury outboards. It's incredibly manoeuvrable and so fast it inadvertently set a record for crossing the Tasman while it was being delivered.

Tasman Island Cruises uses two of these aquatic missiles to run tours from Port Arthur around the southern tip of the Tasman Peninsula past Tasman Island and back up to Eaglehawk Neck on the east coast.

The Southern Ocean is a notoriously dangerous stretch of water and often so rough that the tour attempts to circumnavigate the peninsula only 50 per cent of the time. Today we're lucky. It's a paltry Force 5 with a 2.5-metre swell so we should be OK. I later find out that Mick has done the trip in seven-metre seas and has had the 43-seater boat airborne. I'm glad I didn't know this at the time.

Trips are tailored by the weather, so today because of the wind direction we're doing it in the opposite direction - starting from Eaglehawk Neck and finishing in Port Arthur. We assemble in the company's offices near the Port Arthur historic site and are fitted with fetching bright-red survival suits before being bussed up to Eaglehawk Neck.

Everything is calm and tranquil as we pootle out of the deep-sea fishing port but this soon changes when we lose the protection of the headland and the swell hits us. Suddenly, we're plunging into deep troughs and scaling mountainous watery peaks, the horizon see-sawing between the light grey of the sky and the inky blackness of the sea. The salt-infused wind tugs faces taut and drags tears from our eyes. It's wet, wild and breathtakingly exhilarating.

I look around to see everyone gripping tightly onto the handrails, seatbelts drawn tight around their waists. As we charge past the dramatic coastline of the Tasman Peninsula, you can clearly see the different geological elements at play. Angled layers of mudstone are offset by vast tracts of sandstone and slender dolerite stacks. We slow down momentarily to check out two particularly impressive spires known as The Candlestick and The Totem Pole.

On the way down the coast we skim past rocky outcrops and nose into cavernous deep-sea caves before reaching Cape Pillar and the highest cliffs in the southern hemisphere. Being here in the midst of an angry ocean at the base of a range of soaring 300-metre-high cliffs is genuinely humbling.