Forbidden love at Cockle Creek
Late in 1792, French explorer Joseph-Antoine D’Entrecasteaux was cruising past the southeast Tasmanian coastline, looking for his lost seafaring pal, Jean-François La Pérouse. He didn’t find La Perouse, who had carelessly wrecked his vessel on a Pacific island. But he did find Cockle Creek.
Sail forward a little over 200 years and I was riding into Cockle Creek, not in search of a lost travelling companion, but to visit what is now the most southerly point reachable by road in the whole of the Australian continent. Yes, Cockle Creek truly is the end of the road, Oz-style.
The place has always been remote even by Tasmanian standards. Brutal British prison guards escorting convicts to their final hell on Tasmania’s infamous prisons often stopped there to replenish food and water. But as with many seaside resorts in Australia, some convicts apparently enjoyed “reprehensible nightly associations”, and the “filthiest acquired habits” that I can only wonder at while they were there. This is according to John Stephen Hampton, then-governor of Tasmania, back in the 1840s. Of course that kind of thing doesn’t happen there any more — or so I thought.
Luckily, when I arrived at Cockle Creek there were no musket-toting redcaps, knife-wielding whalers or reprehensible associators hanging around on the foreshore. I found a secluded spot amongst the ti-tree bushes for my bike and tent, shrugged off my dust-encrusted riding gear and wandered down a tiny overgrown path onto the beach.
It was a delight, with chalk-fine, gleaming white and butter-soft sand lapped by (you guessed it) glass-clear, pale blue sea of the utmost beauty. I was alone — apart that is from a couple of very young teenagers on a plastic mat, obviously jolted by my sudden emergence into what had until then been an idyllically romantic and observer-free spot. The male teenager glowered at me in a pioneer kind of way; the very young female went red.
Aware of my disturbing effect, I returned to my tent, then strolled off down some lovely bush paths nearby. Savouring the tranquility, I ate tuna out of a tin, rinsed my hands in rainwater, ate cheese off my pocketknife under weeping gum trees, and lay down to sleep as a million stars crept out from the surrounding silent horizons. A couple of hours later I was startled awake by the sounds of a full-on suburban domestic. A man was roaring. Not roaring dunk, but definitely roaring mad.
“You fucken idiot! You a fucken pisshead!! Can’t you see what they were fucken doing? You’re fucken useless!”
It appeared, over the course of an hour or so’s ranting, that the young almost-pubescents on the beach were the property of the not-necessarily-married couple in the next tent up the beach. And although almost brother and sister (maybe even legal siblings), the urges of raw physicality had propelled the young people into what can only be called unseemly proximity– in their parents’ tent!
“You are just lying there fucken passed out while the fucker is trying to have her! Can’t you see he is so desperate he’ll do anything — he was lyin on her and lickin her and everything!”
Car headlights flashed on and off, doors slammed, then a Female Response cut accusingly through the almost-still night air. “Well I’m gonna fuck off home then, it’s pointless talking to you. He’s just a boy! He doesn’t mean it.”
It appeared the young glowerer on the beach was the apple of his mother’s eye and could do no wrong — even when he was trying to do his (half) sister. The accusations increased in volume, intensity, and overlap. It was like a wall of fucken Tasmanian sound.
Somebody in another tent further up the beach hurled genitalia-themed curses at the abusive abusers and they quietened down for a short time, but after half an hour or so, things got ripe again. Maybe the lusty youth, who had been conspicuous by his silence, had crept across the flysheet, intent on more reprehensible behaviour. Whatever, shouting and swearing and “your fault”-ing kicked vigorously back into high-volume gear but this time with an extension from the ti-tree zone out onto the nearby beach.
By now I was very tired and quite acclimatised to a background of fuckens, basturds and car door-slams, so can’t be 100 percent sure what happened. I do remember hearing more abusive outbursts, an outboard motor start up down on the beach, and the noise of a dinghy ripping out across the bay away from the camping area.
Maybe the woman was fucking off home at last. Maybe the man was just going fishing. Maybe the amorous youngsters were escaping to a new life in New Zealand. Whichever, things went silent. The car lights snapped off, wind sighed in the bushes and the gentle thump of passing pademelons lulled me back into a wavering sleep.
Rain was predicted to start mid morning tomorrow so I’d set my alarm to 5.30am; no way did I want to be riding 35kms of slimy rain-soaked gravel track on road bike tyres. I woke, eyed the next door tent site replete with dead beer cans, empty pizza trays and marks of generally reprehensible behaviour, and packed up my gear under a cloudy sky.
Once ready I started the faithful Shiver, backed up against their tent awning, and gave a few hearty tugs on the throttle. In the quiet of the campsite, the noise was pleasingly directional and staccato. I like to imagine I heard the sound of hangovers clashing against each other, but maybe it was just the young fellah trying to unzip his sleeping bag again. Nobody emerged. I rode off with a smug look inside my helmet having, I felt, redressed the balance slightly.
I’d done Cockle Creek. I didn’t eat any cockles, but the trip was a memorable one. I’d experienced the farthest point South, the deepest remote bushland tranquility, and even been treated to an expression of the finest traditional, early-settler style Tasmanian love. As d’Entrecasteaux so presciently noted back in 1792, “… it will be difficult to describe my feelings at the sight of this solitary harbour. Situated at the extremities of the world, so perfectly enclosed, one feels separated from the rest of the universe.” Quite so.
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