This was published 1 year ago
Tasmania's Three Capes Track hike: Now you can be dropped by chopper to Tasman Island
By Andrew Bain
Tasman Island rises like a Southern Ocean Alcatraz. Credit: Tourism Tasmania
Along the most dramatic sections of Tasmania's Three Capes Track, Australia's tallest sea cliffs plunge away beneath your feet and a fortress-like island rises from the Southern Ocean a few hundred metres offshore.
By the time you stand atop the track's crowning feature, the sharp-edged Blade at the tip of Cape Pillar, this island dominates the view. For almost every hiker, this is as close as they'll ever get to Tasman Island – a look-but-don't-touch encounter with one of Tasmania's most dramatic and imposing islands.
For a few hikers, however, Tasman Island has moved within reach, with one walk operator now offering helicopter flights with landings on the lighthouse-topped island as part of its Three Capes trips. Four guests on every Life's an Adventure guided hike, which takes the non-traditional path of pack-free day walks along sections of the track, including Cape Raoul (the third cape that was belatedly cut from the official Three Capes route), can choose the option of the island landing.
Previously this was as close as you could get to Tasman Island.
It's in a grassy clearing above Port Arthur-based McHenry Distillery that I stand as a Rotorlift helicopter descends from a blue sky like an Uber ride with blades. In moments, as we rise over the ridgeline of Mount Arthur, there's a stunning reveal as the Port Arthur penitentiary comes into view on one side, with Crescent Bay – backed by some of Tasmania's highest dunes – on the other.
A cruise ship is squeezed into Port Arthur's narrow bay, and the helicopter dips low to skim beside the 300-metre-high cliffs that form the scalloped edge of Cape Pillar.
On the Three Capes Track, this cliff section makes for a few elevated hours of walking. From the helicopter, it's a cinematic spectacular, revealing the depths of the drop from the peninsula to the sea.
Port Arthur-based McHenry Distillery.Credit: Tourism Tasmania
Ahead, ringed by its own cliffs, Tasman Island rises like a Southern Ocean Alcatraz. We circle the island to the south – its most dramatic angle, where the island's plateau is at its narrowest, emerging from the sea like a columned tower. It's an aspect only visible from the air.
An indication of the impressive height of these cliffs is the fact that Tasman Island's cast-iron lighthouse is just a 29-metre-high structure and yet it tops out at more than 270 metres above sea level, making it Australia's highest operating lighthouse.
The helicopter settles onto a concrete pad beside the lighthouse, which was first lit in 1906. Beside it were built three red-brick lighthouse keeper cottages. These were occupied until the lighthouse was automated in 1976, and for those 70 years, the island and cottages were stocked by a cable tramway that plunged 250 metres down the cliffs to a precarious sea-level landing.
The top of this tramway, at Tasman Island's northern end, is our goal as we set out walking across the island with pilot Andy, who doubles as our island guide. In the second of the cottages, there's a makeshift museum, with two rooms featuring the likes of signal flag canisters, a phone that connected the cottages to the landing, and the skull of Creamy the cow who lived on the island for 25 years but never gave a day of milk.
A path of sorts exists, though we step through knee-high grass – blessedly, the island is snake-free – arriving in a few minutes at the northern line of cliffs. The rusted winch and a pair of carts lie abandoned in the grass, and as we stare across the narrow sea passage to Cape Pillar, it's like the signature Three Capes view in reverse – looking from the island to the sharp-tipped Blade. Below us, a seal plays in the sea, and a whale surfaces on its journey south towards Antarctic waters.
Our return flight traces the Tasman Peninsula's ocean coast, where the line of the Three Capes Track is readily visible through the scrub. Hikers trudge towards its huts, returning from the Blade, while we're just minutes from returning to McHenry Distillery, where this walk takes a different step again as owner William McHenry leads a tour through the distillery and its new craft brewery – a range of McHenry beers will be released this summer. There's also a tasting and lunch, which in the colder months is held in an underground vault, dining among the barrels and the angel's share.
WALK
Life's an Adventure runs three-day guided Three Capes Track walks from September to May, starting and finishing in Hobart.
Andrew Bain travelled courtesy of Life's an Adventure.
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