The road from Devonport to Marrawah is three hours long but quiet compared to the mainland roads, especially early in the morning. After an hour it's basically dairy country - cleared hills and farmhouses. A rainbow leads me in, failing to warn me of the board atop the van loosening it's moorings and flying into a ditch somewhere. It's gone forever, now.

I feel tremendous flutters seeing the ocean on the west side of Tasmania coming into view - this wild west is the stuff of legends and there's a whisper of freedom to be so far from big towns and to know I am untethered for a while. It's a good hour and a half to the closest big town, and Marrawah only has a pub and a general store so there's not a lot around - just the way I like it. It's the gateway the rest of the west coast and things get even more remote but that's a few days away and I'm still making a decision about where to go. Kinda spoilt for choice around here!

Yes, always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. There's much to explore beyond faded signs that are yet to talk about indigenous place over colonialism, but it's there. A whole other history beyond logging and fishing.

We stay at a free camp, getting rarer these days. I meet my girlfriend and her husband who have come up from Hobart. It's windy but we are sheltered here. The days are warm but the wind chill bites and in the mornings I already have my Tassie woolies on.

The first morning there's a huge swell. On the charts it says six to eight foot but as we learn from the locals, Green Point, the southern end of Mawsons Bay, doesn't pick up what the buoys read where they are stationed at the next headland. Still it's four foot plus and too big for me. There's a beautiful left hander people are on. It's a crowd of eight, laughable next to the crowds of dozens at home. I stand and watch the old boys chug down the heavy lines. My girlfriend, who does paddle out (she's always been more hardcore in the water than me), meets the guy who's family home is enviably on the side of the cliff that looks out over the break.

The locals are nice and they talk to us, despite gruff localism. Apparently they tried to put a surf cam here once but, in the spirit of mainland surfers of thirty years ago, they threatened to simply tear it down, so they didn't. One day they will have no choice. The young ones will come through and money will talk and this wild and beautiful place will be as developed and known as the best coastal spots on the mainland. Fuck.

The mornings are freezing. On the second day the swell drops considerably and so does the wind, so I'm able to go out for a paddle. I find it frustrating that I don't have the confidence to surf the big left hander but it's harder with a paddleboard, even if it's a small one! But I get a few waves on a tiny right. It's nice to get wet - the water temperature is still 18degrees even if the wind is cold! And apparently there's no sharks around here - no seal colonies - so that makes me happy!

Days are spent reading, chatting, sitting by the fire and eating. Sadly, the 12v fridge lead stuffed up so all that work we put into the solar system was for nought - Jamie'll bring one over when he comes. We made a few little side trips here and there, but they'll be for another post.

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With Love,

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