Deal Island, Five Times Over - Spud and Kim Murphy

A remote island can sound like a postcard until you’re the one carrying months of supplies, keeping tracks clear, and watching the weather decide whether you arrive by boat or plane. 

We’re joined by Spud and Kim Murphy, a Flinders Island couple whose lives are shaped by hard work, community, and a deep affection for wild places and they don’t just talk about Deal Island in Bass Strait, they’ve lived it, five separate times, as volunteer caretakers in the Kent Group.  

We follow their path from making a living in the Furneaux Group to stepping into a caretaker program that sits at the crossroads of conservation, heritage, and pure practicality. We chat about the 1848 lighthouse, the shift to national park and marine park, what happens when a jetty deteriorates, and how you plan food and essentials when resupply is limited. Yes, we also get the kind of bush ingenuity you only learn by doing, including the trick of keeping eggs for months by greasing them with Vaseline. 

The heart of the story is bigger than logistics. Deal Island holds shipwreck records, a WWII plane crash site, and quiet graves that still pull people up short, alongside migrating birds, sea eagles, dolphins, and the feeling of being utterly present. Spud and Kim share why they never felt lonely out there, how the island “engulfs you”, and why caring for a place can change how you see home.  

If you’re into Tasmania travel stories, Australian island history, remote living, lighthouses, or volunteer caretaker life, this one will stay with you. Subscribe to Latitude 40, share it with a mate who loves Bass Strait yarns, and leave a review so more people can find these island stories.

If you'd like to provide feedback on this podcast, we'd welcome your comments at crew@furneauxcollective.com

Transcript

Welcome To Latitude 40

Jacqui Cooper: 0:03

Welcome to Latitude 40, brought to you by the Furneaux Collective. This podcast celebrates the heart, soul, and history of the Furneaux group, told by the people who call these islands home. Here we share stories of island life, of resilience and connection, of land and sea, of old ways and new beginnings. From the windswept shores to the heart of our communities, each episode captures a piece of what makes this island life so unique. So islanders and visitors alike, settle in and join us as we explore the stories that shape the spirit of the Furneaux Islands. One voice at a time.

Jacqui Cooper: 0:48

Hello and welcome to Latitude 40. I'm Jackie Cooper. Thank you so much for joining me today. There's something about island life that draws people in, and sometimes it keeps them there. For some it's the work, for others, it's the people, and for many, it's the quiet of a place that feels just a little bit different from anywhere else. Today I'm sitting down with Spud and Kim Murphy, two people whose lives have been shaped by the Furneaux group of islands, by hard work, by community, and by a shared sense of adventure. But their story doesn't stop on these islands. About 60 kilometres north of Flinders Island, in the middle of Bass Strait, lies Deal Island, the largest of the Kent Group. These islands are the remnants of an ancient land bridge that once connected Tasmania to mainland Australia thousands of years ago. On a clear day when travelling north to Killiecrankie, you can see Craggy and sometimes Deal Island beyond Craggy. Today it's a remote national park, but for much of its history it has been a place shaped by Aboriginal heritage, marked by the isolation of its caretakers and lighthouse keepers, and remembered as a resting place for those lost at sea. And for Spud and Kim, it became more than just a place on the map. They didn't just visit Deal Island. They lived there, not once, not even twice, but five times as caretakers of one of Tasmania's most remote and remarkable places. This is their story.

Spud Finds Flinders Island

Jacqui Cooper: 2:20

Thank you for joining me today, Spud and Kim. Let's start with you, Spud. Take us back to how you ended up here on Flinders Island.

Spud 2:29

Well, my next door neighbour, an old Scotsman, used to visit Flinders. In them days used to fly from Welshpool to Flinders with Prom Air. He had a fishing trip coming over here for five days when I was about nineteen years old. I came with him for the five days and he was great friends of the Aitkens. We had the run of the place really. We stopped at the Interstate Hotel for a bit and we also stopped at North East River and fished and stopped at Palana. It was a terrific trip and I enjoyed the whole thing and after that trip I was going to come back and I did probably about three years later and just kept coming back.

Jacqui Cooper: 3:12

So what was it about the island that made you want to come back and eventually stay?

Spud 3:16

Well I'm mostly a pretty anti-social person, I think. And I liked isolated and probably wild places, and it was sort of everything I really liked in somewhere to live. I never really wanted to live in a city or a town. So I just kept coming back. I worked on the island and I'd leave again. Sometimes I go back to the mainland to work. I used to work in a milk factory in the spring. Sometimes I come back to Flinders the next year and work on the scallop boat. It just went on like that until eventually I met my other half and stayed.

Jacqui Cooper: 3:52

And got to experience the island full time. So, Kim, your move came through family. What do you remember about arriving and settling in?

Kim 4:01

I'd been here before a couple of times and found it very different to the mainland. It was just quiet and all the old cars on the island, everyone had an old bomb. And I was never a pub person, but everyone went to the pub, which was a community thing, which I found difficult to start with, but you settle into it. I was with my parents, so it sort of it was homey. That was my first experience of Flinders. I was landing on the island. It was just a bit of a shock, really.

Jacqui Cooper: 4:37

It's completely different to anywhere else.

Kim 4:39

Yeah.

Jacqui Cooper: 4:40

So, Spud, when we caught up to chat about your story, you mentioned something that stayed with me. You said you don't have to be qualified to get a job here. You just have to be able to do everything. Tell us what you mean by that.

Spud 4:54

Well, you've just about turn your hand to most anything. And in my time on the island I've had work on fishing boats, cray boats, scallop boats. I've also spent time building houses, working on farms. I've made rock walls and I've dug trenches and just about anything that come along, really. And as long as you're willing to have a go at anything, you'll get on on Flinders Island. And people appreciate your efforts and you keep getting work.

Jacqui Cooper: 5:28

So you've turned your hand to all sorts of work then over the years, and some of that work took you off this island for parts of the year. Yeah, what did a typical year look like for you at the very beginning?

Spud 5:40

At the very beginning. I came back to Flinders when I was about twenty two and I stayed for three months, and that was mostly doing odd jobs. I don't know whether I even went fishing that year, and then I left again and went back to Victoria and I for three years I'd go back and work in the milk factory there in the flush of the season, which ran from about September to about December, and then the work got a bit scarce and I'd get sick of it and I'd come back to Flinders a couple of times I went north, but generally ended up back here working in on fishing boats, cray fishing or scalloping or something. I did that for probably three or four years until I eventually bought a little place on Flinders, a little house in Gunter Street in Lady Barron, which was only a bit of a shack, I think cost me about 18 grand or something back then.

Jacqui Cooper: 6:38

It's a bargain.

Spud 6:40

I bought it off Ray Hughes, and before that it belonged to Keith Everett.

Jacqui Cooper: 6:46

So, Kim,

Kim’s Working Life On Flinders

Jacqui Cooper: 6:47

many islanders know you through your various work roles. Can you share with us, your work contribution to the Flinders Island community?

Kim 6:55

When I first came here, I worked down at the fish factory, split and scallops. Great job.

Jacqui Cooper: 7:02

Yeah not.

Kim 7:04

Then luckily they were looking for a cleaner at the tavern. So I took that job on and worked as a cleaner and as a waitress. You did a bit of everything at the tavern then. And I did that for twelve months. Was then with child. I worked up until about eight months, I think, and then I had to leave the island to have the baby, back then you went a month before, I think it was. I didn't work for a few years and then I got offered a job at the bank. Spud was fishing at the time and it was off season, and you do it pretty tough when you're cray fishing, or we did, we've got three children. I had two when I came to the island. So the bank manager knew me and knew us, and he asked me if I'd like to try at the bank. So I worked at the bank then for a few years.

Jacqui Cooper: 7:58

Isn't that great?

Kim 7:59

It was good. He saved our bacon really, because the off season was really hard. Spud had to look for work or so. I luckily got a job. I've worked for a couple of stints at FIAAI. I worked in the council offices for a few years, starting as reception, worked my way up to property and rates. I was there for a while. Then I think I worked at the hospital for a little while. I worked at the bank for quite a while, and then our youngest fella had to go away to school, and I went with him, but I went and worked at the Westpac away with him.

Jacqui Cooper: 8:34

Oh, that was good.

Kim 8:35

And then I came back after nearly 12 months and he stayed and boarded because he was only in year eight when I took him. So I for the first year I was with him and he did it in the next couple of years on his own. And I came back and worked at the bank and it closed on us. So it became a an agency. So I worked there for a while too. I've done it all. Now I'm casual at the moment at the doctor's surgery, but I've worked there for seven or eight years. And but when I retired, I stayed on as a casual. Yeah. And that was the best job. I started with June. That was really good. June and Barb, yeah.

Deal Island History And First Trip

Jacqui Cooper: 9:15

So life on Flinders has its own rhythm, but every now and then something comes along that takes you somewhere even more remote. Out in Bass Strait, Deal Island has long offered refuge to those navigating what can be wild seas. In 1848, a lighthouse was built high above the water, the highest lighthouse in the southern hemisphere, guiding ships through what could be a dangerous stretch of ocean. For generations, lighthouse keepers and their families lived there in isolation, maintaining the light and watching over the sea. These days the light's no longer active, but the responsibility of caring for the island continues through volunteer caretakers. And for you both, it all began with a trip in the late 1990s. Spud, take us back to your first trip to Deal. How did that come about?

Spud 10:05

I've had a few trips to Deal, working with abalone divers. That was probably in the 80s. We did a survey there on a boat called the Kathleen Delmar. Divers from Flinders. I was working with one at the time with an abalone diver. And we were supposed to do Deal, Hogan's and Curtis Group, just surveying the amount of stunted blacklip abalone that were there. Which we did, but we never got to Curtis because it was blowing a gale of northeast and we got stuck at Hogan's and we worked there and we worked at Deal. And then I went some years later when they opened it up to the Tassie divers, they allowed them a extra quoter of stunted abalone, and they could catch the black lip at Deal and Hogan's and Sisters Islands, some at North East River. And I did a trip on the Terra Linna with Peter Cosman. I think I was actually cooked that trip. I don't think I even worked in the dinghy. Yeah. And I just got to like the place and it's it's quite a different experience working in a dinghy at Deal. In that particular time we were working down along the south west side of the island, there's big caves and the divers would be swimming up into the foot of a cave and you're below an eight hundred foot cliff.

Jacqui Cooper: 11:30

Oh wow, spectacular.

Spud 11:32

Spectacular and the water was always an inky blue and quite deep. Deal Island being a very high island, there's a lot of steep uh cliffs drop into fairly deep water, or comparatively deep water. Yeah. And so I first went there then and got to like it. I actually met the lighthouse keeper and that on the first trip, and they were there up until the early nineties when they become redundant.

Jacqui Cooper: 12:02

And do you remember who they were?

Spud 12:04

Yeah, that was Stan and Shirley Gray. We actually met Shirley and got to know her fairly well. When she returned years after they finished as a lighthouse keeper, she returned to the island with Stan's ashes while we were there one trip.

Jacqui Cooper: 12:20

Oh, that's that's that's pretty special, isn't it?

Spud 12:23

Yeah.

Jacqui Cooper: 12:24

So Kim, can you describe your first impressions of Deal Island upon arrival?

Kim 12:29

It was heaven. I'd spent nine hours on a really slow boat and I had seasickness. So I was sick for nine hours, and just to get onto that jetty was beautiful, and it was it was stunning. Yeah, when I got there.

Spud 12:45

1999 we did that, didn't we?

Kim 12:48

99.

Spud 12:48

Yeah, we did a trip with Rob Holloway and Roger Watson to re-roof the old original lighthouse keeper's house, the superintendent's house, which has become a museum and still a museum today, but we had to re-roof it, and that was a reason for that trip. We went with Mike Nichols on his boat.

Jacqui Cooper: 13:11

I was just wondering that, because you'd have long, big, long lengths of roofing.

Spud 13:14

Yeah, which was loaded down with a couple of tonnes of roofing. Very slow trip.

Kim 13:19

And it went side to side, front to back, all the way, and it was like we weren't even moving. It was just I'd say to Spud, are we moving? Yes, we are moving.

Spud 13:33

When we when we turned into Murray Pass, Murray Pass, the tide runs particularly strong and on a flood tide which runs down to the south. So as you turn into Murray Pass, I looked at the GPS on Mike's boat and it was doing one knot.

Jacqui Cooper: 13:48

Oh, oh Kim, no wonder you're That's a long trip, isn't it, when you're sick?

Spud 13:54

So it took us quite a while to get around the cliff and into East Cove.

Kim 13:58

I was regretting putting my hand up saying that you fellas need a cook.

Jacqui Cooper: 14:03

Yes, I bet you were.

Why They Became Caretakers

Jacqui Cooper: 14:05

So it's pretty incredible to think people have been traversing the Kent Group for thousands of years, long before they were separated by the rising seas. Spud, what appealed to you about taking on the caretaker role?

Spud 14:17

Well, since that trip, Deal was in a bit of a quandary for a while between the time the lighthouse keepers left and when 2001 they declared it a national park. They had a varied sort of a history, I suppose you say, in that time. They had fire on the island which burnt the lighthouse, they had all sorts of things going on, but eventually the Tasmanian government declared a national park, and some years later it became a marine park as well. It's just a spectacular place. And once visited there you we're keen to go back. The Caretaker program started in 2001, and it was about then that I was working with the Aboriginal Association in Lady Barron, doing house maintenance. In 2011 I was due for long service leave. So when Kim was working casual at the time, we applied about two years before to the Ranger Wayne Dick in White mark to get a job there as a caretaker, which was a seasonal thing. So you went for three months, but you know, whatever season of the year, and the first time we went in 2011 was in the autumn, which is probably the best time in Bass Strait anyway, and it was a terrific trip. And we just kept wanting to go back. And we just kept getting the opportunity a couple of times, I think 2014 we did the summer stint, and then the people who were supposed to do the springtime pulled out for some reason, for health reasons, or their son was sick or something. So the Ranger invited us to go back again, so we did six months that year or five months.

Kim 15:57

He had trouble getting someone and we were handy.

Spud 15:59

Being on Flinders is very handy there has been a couple of times why we got to go back a bit more than probably somebody else would cause they would ring us up and say can you do this

Kim 16:12

We've actually done a caretaker for a couple of weeks when someone was injured. One of the caretakers went over to Erith and he got injured and they had to fly him and his family off. So there's people in the bay that had been caretakers before in a boat, so we had to organise ourselves and they looked after it till we got there for two weeks, till the next lot come. We've been extremely lucky.

Jacqui Cooper: 16:39

Pretty short

Planning Food And Getting There

Jacqui Cooper: 16:40

notice to get all your supplies. And then how do you prepare all your supplies, Kim, for you know, that sort of thing.

Kim 16:47

You ask people. We had actually met some caretakers before. So we asked around, got a list off somebody, but they were a vegetarian, so we just which was fine. We just had to work out we had to take protein in a different way. So not every time it worked out. The four month stint that was hard. Because you had to carry all your food and all your beverages and all that sort of stuff for four months. It it's hard, but we did.

Spud 17:17

That was in 2021 and that was after the COVID thing, and they actually rang us up and asked us where we'd go. And that was our last time we went. But the people who were there in the autumn that year were only there for two months. So they said, Will we do May and then the winter? But in the winter you can't grow anything in the garden there. By that time they'd abandoned the jetty. They'd been working on the airstrip, so they started to fly in again. They used to fly in back in the nineties. Huey Sinclair used to fly in there, but then they let the airstrip get overgrown. But when the jetty was virtually condemned, the Strait Lady couldn't take us there anymore. And they started to fly in with Frank Willebrand.

Kim 18:07

Therein laid another problem because if you went with James in the boat, you could take enough provision, but on the plane you could take just enough. But we did discover you can keep eggs in the fridge for four months.

Jacqui Cooper: 18:22

That's incredible.

Kim 18:22

Oh, I think so. But they were they were fine. We grease half of them up, so and the other half leave without grease.

Jacqui Cooper: 18:29

And so what do you grease them with?

Spud 18:30

Vaseline.

Jacqui Cooper: 18:31

Right. So you grease each egg, pop it back in the carton and back in the fridge, and it stops the oxygen. Yeah, yeah.

Kim 18:39

And the last egg we opened, I've got a photo somewhere of the egg and it had a nice round yolk.

Spud 18:46

Yeah, you take some dry foods.

Jacqui Cooper: 18:49

I guess you can fish at certain spots.

Spud 18:53

Yeah, the the fishing's not great there. And also being the marine park, Murray Pass is part of the section you're not allowed to fish at all. So you're restricted to either fishing off the rocks, Little Squally Cove or Squally Cove, or you've got to go over on the north east and east side and fish.

Jacqui Cooper: 19:11

Is that quite a trek?

Spud 19:12

Well, I used to go to Winter Cove fishing if it's blown hard westerly, and that's four kilometre walk down a steep hill.

Kim 19:20

But it's worth it when he catches fish.

Spud 19:22

And we used to catch mullet and small salmon there, which are always good for a feed at one stage there on the first year, If I didn't get any fish, I'd get a feed of mushrooms on the way home.

Jacqui Cooper: 19:34

Oh great.

Spud 19:35

Fishing on deal's not great, unless you like rockfish.

Wildlife, Fishing Limits And Simple Meals

Jacqui Cooper: 19:39

So, Kim, can you describe the wildlife, the sea, and the bird life that you discovered while you were there?

Kim 19:44

On their migration, you'll have flocks come through of birds that you don't see here. We did see the orange bellied parrot. Right. We did see them come through. There's lovely birds. There's the the cuckoo who does lay her eggs in the goldfinch's nest and the swallows. You'll see swallows feeding this great big chick.

Spud 20:08

Fantail cuckoos are very common. They're like flame robins on Deal.

Jacqui Cooper: 20:13

Is that right?

Spud 20:14

There's a lot of them.

Jacqui Cooper: 20:15

We don't have those here, do we?

Spud 20:17

Yes.

Jacqui Cooper: 20:17

We do. Oh.

Kim 20:19

And wallabies. We did see a possum once. I do have possums there, but they're not anywhere near in shape of our possums. They're all sort of scrawny and they're just a scruffy looking little possum. You don't see a lot of them. You've seen seals resting on the beach, dolphins playing in the bay. It's just amazing. Dolphins come in, sea eagles, wedge tails, they're all there. And it's just it's heaven.

Jacqui Cooper: 20:47

Beautiful. And did you tell me that there was rabbits there the first year that you went?

Spud 20:51

Yeah, rabbits were introduced to Deal in 1830s. There was no kangaroos or wallabies. Bennett's wallabies were introduced some years later, I don't know when exactly. But when we first went in in 1999, there was a lot of rabbits there then. But over the years they're fluctuated in numbers. They never burrowed on Deal. They scratched and, did the same things as rabbits normally do. But their numbers fluctuated. If you read some of the old stories of the original lighthouse keepers, they lived on rabbits, they had their own sheep, but rabbit was very common there then. But in probably from 2000 onwards they started to thin out a little bit. In some years there was quite a few. But our last trip in 2021 we had no sign of a rabbit anywhere. So after probably 120, 130 years they'd disappeared.

Jacqui Cooper: 21:47

So why do you think they took rabbits out there in the first place?

Spud 21:51

They did that on a lot of islands, because if someone was shipwrecked there, they could live off the rabbits if they had nothing else to eat.

Jacqui Cooper: 22:00

Right.

Spud 22:01

Other islands around the Pacific and that they'd eat the bird life like Providence petrels and you know, some islands they'd come extinct. Yeah. But if you were shipwrecked on the island you'd eat most anything.

Jacqui Cooper: 22:13

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Spud 22:15

Deal Island had a few shipwrecks, yeah.

Caretaker Jobs And Keeping Tracks Open

Jacqui Cooper: 22:18

So Spud, what were the tasks that you had to attend to on a a day-to-day basis?

Spud 22:23

Mostly we kept the compound area, which is about eight acres around three existing houses there. There's a the old original lighthouse keeper's house, which is a museum now. There's a another house which had a lot of asbestos in it. And there's in recent years they've removed a lot of that. They've done a lot of work. We used to stay in the caretakers house, which was one that was originally moved there from Macquarie Island, and then they brick veneered it. The compound and all that, we'd have to look after that, any painting that needed doing. We do other jobs like making seats or down the jetty we made chairs and tables and the same up at the houses out of driftwood. Most come from what we call Bunnings, which is which is Little Squally Cove where all the salvage and stuff off the ships used to wash up in there, mostly pine timber, and we cart it up and make stuff out of it. Sometimes you find some good stuff. But a lot of us to do with keeping the tracks open. One year we started on clearing the airstrip again, which was removing a lot of silver tussocks from it, which had overgrown.

Jacqui Cooper: 23:37

So how did you do that?

Spud 23:38

With a mattock. Yeah.

Jacqui Cooper: 23:41

That's hard work, isn't it?

Spud 23:42

Yeah, in later years uh last little bit of the airstrip was finished when they had some machinery there. They had a bobcat, and they cleaned up a lot of tussocks on what you call probably the sour west end of the strip. So knock a lot of them out, but they also left a lot of divots in the ground by using that and we spent a bit of time filling them in. And they eventually got it fairly clear and wide enough. I think Ronald Wise from Flinders went and fenced it. The last time we went back, it was the only way to go to the island, because you weren't allowed to tie up the jetty and the concrete roadway which runs from the jetty seven hundred metres up to the houses was starting to deteriorate. We'd had a lot of westerly weather and they'd eaten into the sand dunes below the track, and that was starting to collapse, so it wasn't really safe to drive a vehicle onto the jetty anymore.

Jacqui Cooper: 24:35

So things are changing, aren't they?

Spud 24:37

Yeah, so it's I don't know exactly what it's like now, but it was getting quite overgrown and in a poor state. The big retaining wall that protected the roadway all the way down to the jetty. They'd put a fence on top of that and that was gathering a lot of rubbish and sand and stuff was building up on the track and yeah, it really is a shame, but it's all deteriorated. It was there for a lot of years. But now flying in is quite an easy way to do it. It's only half an hour from White mark to land on a strip of deal.

Jacqui Cooper: 25:13

You don't have to get seasick on the way, Kim.

Kim 25:15

No. I did get over it over the years, though.

Spud 25:19

Loading, unloading was a lot easier out of a plane than it is standing on the side of the boat at low tide throwing bins of stuff up onto the jetty. We kind of missed that original trip, even though it was a bit longer, and we used to always go with James Lundington on the Strait Lady. We had some ordinary trips and we had some good trips, but we always got there safely and returned safely.

Jacqui Cooper: 25:47

It's a real adventure, isn't it?

Spud 25:50

Well it is an adventure and and we met a lot of good people and quite often in the changeovers we become friends with people. We got friends in Queensland and America from meeting them on Deal. There's other visitors from yachts and kayakers, even paddleboarders come across Bass Strait and you meet them.

Jacqui Cooper: 26:11

Seems like a long way to go on a paddleboard. And did they ever stay the night?

Spud 26:16

Yeah, quite often. Yeah, sometimes kayak people that get stuck. They quite often like to go around to Winter Cove and camp there. There's a bit of a campground in amongst the Sheoaks I used to stop. We had three fellows from Sydney one year. They got stuck there for a week and run out of food.

Jacqui Cooper: 26:34

So you had to share your food with them?

Kim 26:36

Well, we didn't have to, but we did.

Spud 26:38

Back in them days the Ranger used to always keep emergency supply in the other house. So if someone got stuck there for some reason or other.

Kim 26:50

We didn't feed them,

Spud 26:51

But we had food for them.

Jacqui Cooper: 26:53

Yeah, that's really good to know, isn't it?

Spud 26:55

Kim cooked a cake for these three fellas.

Kim 26:57

It's Christmas time.

Jacqui Cooper: 26:58

Oh, that's lovely.

Kim 27:00

Give them a Christmas cake, yeah. They thought it was nice. They carried it all the way down to West Cove.

Jacqui Cooper: 27:05

So

Shipwrecks, A Plane Crash And Graves

Jacqui Cooper: 27:06

you mentioned you must have read the lighthouse keepers' records while you were there. Was there anything that stood out? Any records or stories that stand out in your mind?

Spud 27:18

Yes. There was all sorts of things that did happen on deal, shipwrecks. There was a plane crash during the Second World War, a training flight crashed into the hill below the lighthouse, and some of the wreckage is still there. There was four people, I think, perished in that. And the lighthouse keepers had to go down into the bush to find them. There is a track actually it's marked now, and there's a track down from the lighthouse to where the crash happened. There's still a few bits there, but quite a few of the pieces have been brought back to museum, bits of engine and pieces of wing and that.

Jacqui Cooper: 27:52

So the lighthouse keepers would have to go and find those people and

Spud 27:56

They did.

Jacqui Cooper: 27:56

And bury them, I guess. Yeah.

Spud 27:59

Yeah. I think they buried them and then they exhumed them and took them back to Victoria. Yeah.

Jacqui Cooper: 28:05

And so what about some of the shipwrecks that they recorded? Do you remember the any stories

Spud 28:10

Well, there was a Karatane which is in Big Squally Cove down below the lighthouse. It ran into the cliff in the fog and it was loaded down with copper ignits. They run that aground on the rocks in in Squally Cove, or Big Squally. Then they salvaged it all some time later.

Jacqui Cooper: 28:27

Wow, so they got all that copper back.

Spud 28:30

There's one a boat called St. Nicholas, which is still visible on the beach at West Cove at Erith. They went aground there and never got off. There's quite a few shipwrecks there. There's one they dive on, I can't think of the name.

Jacqui Cooper: 28:43

They're pretty amazing stories, aren't they?

Jacqui Cooper: 28:45

So many islands hold small cemeteries or quiet reminders of the past. Is there something like that on any of the Kent Group?

Spud 28:53

Yes, there's on Deal there's a few graves around the place. There's one grave of a seaman who was buried in the sand dunes at Garden Cove. There's another young girl that died. She's buried just down below the houses, down towards Squally Cove. It's got a plaque on there. And she came off a ship, only about eleven years old, died at sea, and they buried her on deal.

Jacqui Cooper: 29:19

Oh goodness.

Spud 29:20

There used to be houses up at the lighthouse, and there's a grave there where it just says baby. There's a baby buried.

Kim 29:27

And people tend to look after it. There's one down towards the whim below the house, and it was a lighthouse keeper. He died. He had a wife and two children, three children ?, and he died. And of course she was on her own. There was always two lighthouse keepers. And so they contacted the authorities and they were told to keep his body in the bath or something until someone got there. So he's buried there. And then they packed the wife and the children up and took her back to Hobart and put her and her belongings and the children on the wharf at Hobart. And went.

Jacqui Cooper: 30:16

Just left them there.

Kim 30:17

Just left them there. But interestingly, our last trip up, there's a rocking chair there, this beautiful rocking chair. And it's a little they're not very wide. The chair's only about two foot wide, if that. It's got tapestry, I suppose. And this rocking chair was found, by someone in a op shop in Hobart, and then traced the history of it, and it actually belonged to this caretaker, this Thomas Haig. And they donated it then to Friends of Deal. And they've brought it back and it's in a glass case or persepex case, sitting in the museum now.

Jacqui Cooper: 30:59

So it's come home.

Kim 31:00

It's come back to there, yeah. So this probably sat on the jetty with this poor woman.

Jacqui Cooper: 31:05

That's amazing. I guess you don't know what happened to the lady and her children.

Kim 31:08

No.

Erith Visits And Unexpected Generosity

Jacqui Cooper: 31:10

And did you ever get the opportunity to explore any other islands in the camp group?

Spud 31:14

We went to Erith. One trip, the Erith mob, there's a group of people related to Stephen Murray Smith, who was a historian in Bass Strait, and they used to always have a camp on Erith Island, and there's still a hut there, and they've got a campground up above the hut in the bush. And all the family used to go there usually in the summer, and I was still doing that when we were visiting the island. We got to know the Murray Smiths a bit, even though their parents had passed away. We were actually there one trip when they scattered her ashes on the hill, the mother's ashes. We spoke to her the first time that we went there, but she died in recent years and and we went over for that with on the Strait Lady and another trip we put the signs up when they declared it a marine park, and a couple of ladies from Hobart come up who had designed the signs. So we put a sign up there with Wayne the Ranger, and then a couple of signs on Deal itself, one at the Jetty at East Cove and another one at Garden Cove, just so people could know there was a marine park, even though you'd have to go down and yell at some people to say you're not supposed to be fishing in the in the bay.

Kim 32:26

We went another time just over to visit the Eirth Mob, they come and got us. Probably weren't supposed to. But we went over there and had a few drinks. We learnt all about industrial strength gin. Do you like a gin? And no, no, no. But they said you have to be careful because it's industrial strength.

Spud 32:46

Yeah, sometimes they call us on the radio. We had a radio in the house. One time they called us, they said we're leaving in a few days' time. They used to come and go with a fellow Wynne Hobson in a catamaran from Welshpool. Used to come and pick them up and deliver them. And they used to always have more food than what they really needed. And this particular time they said, Oh, they're gonna send the grandson Tom over with some veggies for us. Could you use them? And we said, Oh, yeah, we could use a few things, but we're going home shortly ourselves. So we met him down the jetty, we took the little Ute down the jetty. Well, there was half a box of apples, about forty pumpkins and enough stuff to feed us for a month.

Jacqui Cooper: 33:32

Plant the pumpkin seeds. They come up every year.

Kim 33:36

But they were good fun.

Spud 33:38

Yeah, we had good time, but then they'd come and they go up to Lighthouse and have a look.

Kim 33:43

Every time.

Spud 33:43

Yeah, every time they come over. But nice people.

Jacqui Cooper: 33:47

It's pretty amazing out there isolated like that, and you've made all these connections and friends.

Seal Counters On Judgment Rocks

Jacqui Cooper: 33:54

I do recall you talking about there was lots of seals.

Spud 33:58

That was that's on Judgment Rocks.

Kim 34:01

Ah, that's another story.

Spud 34:03

James Ludington and the Strait Lady used to take around Bass Strait to all these sites of where the seals haul out and Judgment Rocks, which is out near South West Island, probably three or four nautical miles from Deal, it's not that far. And they put them ashore there and they actually stay on the rock. There's the main rock Judgment Rocks is about sixty foot high with a big flat rock where the seals haul out. When you go there's about two thousand seals in the water, all with their nose sticking out.

Jacqui Cooper: 34:33

That's amazing.

Spud 34:34

The seal counters they camp on the rock.

Jacqui Cooper: 34:38

How do they get on the rock without slipping off the rock? Because wouldn't there be a lot of like seal poop?

Spud 34:42

Ferry them in in the dinghy. And one trip James and Wayne, the Ranger, grabbed me to go with them, just to go out to get them off. And when we got there they all seemed to be taking their sweet time about getting around to get their gear down, 'cause they had a heap of gear. I wonder what was keeping them making them so slow, but then realised that we'd had this bit of easterly weather and it was real damp, and of course all the all the seal shit on the rock becomes like a skating rig. So just to keep on your feet, let alone cart all your stuff down to the rock near the water's edge so you can load it back on the boat.

Jacqui Cooper: 35:23

It would be a pretty smelly too, wouldn't it?

Spud 35:25

Well, James went back and forth with a dinghy and we just held the Strait Lady in the bay and grabbed the gear off him as he brought it into us. Anyway, as soon as all the seal counters and all their gears back on board, one tried to walk in the wheelhouse, so James give him the run quick smart back on the back deck because everything all their gear, all their clothes, everything just smells like seal shit. So when we get back to deal, we just threw it up on the jetty, cart it up to the house and put the hose on it.

Jacqui Cooper: 35:57

Oh, that'd be smelly spending the night there. And you wouldn't want to slip off the rock into the water either, would you?

Spud 36:03

Well, the last fella that got into the dinghy, he he slipped and went in to drink.

Jacqui Cooper: 36:08

Oh.

Spud 36:08

But it was like a porpoise came straight out back out again. Because where there's two thousand seals, there's always a chance there's one of them big things with fins and big teeth.

How Deal Island Changes You

Jacqui Cooper: 36:20

So you two have been a part of a long line of people who've cared for Deal Island. How does it feel being part of that story?

Kim 36:28

It's pretty special. The island it engulfs you. The island just takes over. Even when I think of Deal Island, I feel happy, you know, like it was a really great part of our life. It actually made me appreciate Flinders Island more. I never felt lonely on Deal. I do, I still have moments on Flinders where that happens. But on Deal, even though it was only two of us, I don't know what it was. You just felt part of the place. I didn't feel lonely the whole time I was there. I missed my family or my friends, but it just felt like home.

Jacqui Cooper: 37:04

That's incredible, isn't it?

Kim 37:06

It's an amazing place, yeah.

Jacqui Cooper: 37:08

Because you really are on on the edge of Bass Strait out there. Yeah.

Kim 37:11

Yeah.

Spud 37:11

It's the most spectacular scenery, no matter where you walk. We walked all over Deal, found some beautiful spots. Just up through the the creek running up from Winter Cove. So most of the island is Sheoak, there's parts of it uh peppermint gum. And where you go up Winter Cove Creek, it's just beautiful straight peppermint gums with ferns underneath. There's just beautiful.

Jacqui Cooper: 37:38

That's pretty unusual.

Spud 37:40

Not not many tree ferns on Deal. There's only ever been recorded one or two tree ferns. But there's all sorts of interesting things. We come across an orchid that was supposed to be on Deal, but no one had actually taken a photo or recorded it.

Jacqui Cooper: 37:54

Oh, so you got to do that? You got to take the photo.

Spud 37:56

We found that. Then a few years later, some other friends of ours found another one. And then there's a particular orchid that grows on Deal that doesn't grow in Tassie. And they'd found it in one particular spot and hadn't seen it for years, and we were taking a shortcut through the scrub and come across it in a different place. So the botanist type of people that were that do a lot of work on Deal were really excited to see that. Yeah. So there's all sorts of things just turn up.

Kim 38:29

We did some walks in the most atrocious places. It was safe. I mean, nothing unsafe, but we just did some things you'd think, why do we come here? And I'd be following my guide or my pack horse, he was at the time. He carried the pack.

Spud 38:48

We did have a bright idea to Big Squally Cove on the southeast end of the island, very hard to get to. You've got to go at low tide or climb over the hills. I got bright idea that I'd go up went to Cave Creek and we'll go up over the saddle there, and it all looked pretty good, all gum trees. But underneath the gum trees was tea tree as thick that you couldn't push through it. But when we eventually got down into the bay there, I said to Kim, you know, if a dinosaur run down off the hill, you wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Jacqui Cooper: 39:19

It just felt like that could happen.

Kim 39:20

His wife did growl the whole way. Yeah. It was a shocking walk. We've got a map at home of Deal Island, and we've marked our trips on it. And well I reckon we've just about traversed the whole thing, just going for a walk, not do anything particular, like our afternoons, we'd work in the morning, and then we'd have lunch and we'd set off and we'd go somewhere. Except Sundays, that was fishing day. Yeah.

Kim 39:48

Weather depending on it.

Jacqui Cooper: 39:49

You got your own little routine happening. That's really how we should all be living, isn't it?

Kim 39:54

Yeah. We often say we should go back to how it was on deal, but you don't.

Spud 39:58

Yes, we'd often work the first part of the day. Some days if we were doing a lot of mowing or had tracks to mow or that, we'd spend the whole day doing that. Some of the tracks are quite steep, you can only get on them with a brush cutter, so you spend the whole day doing that, but then the next day you might only work in the morning, might have a bit of painting to do, or a bit of something to do, and then after lunch we go walking somewhere.

Kim 40:23

It was good life.

Jacqui Cooper: 40:25

I guess places like that stay with you, and so do the stories that come from them.

Spud 40:30

It's changed quite a bit on Deal since the jetties closed. There is alot of things happened in the time we where there and I just like to thank those parks people that were involved in particular Wayne Dick Some of the things he achieved there, like with the solar system they put on, and it was quite amazing, really, that the amount of work he got done there. And a lot of those old Rangers have sort of gone by the by now.

Kim 40:57

They were hands-on.

Spud 40:58

They were hands-on people and they've got to be.

Jacqui Cooper: 41:00

They left a bit of a legacy for you to continue with.

Spud 41:02

Yeah. It's a shame that it's changed a bit there now. It's I suppose it's time, everything changes in time.

Jacqui Cooper: 41:10

It seems too, doesn't it?

Spud 41:12

But it is a beautiful place to visit and a lot of boat people, yacht people still visit it. They like to go up to the museum and look at the visitors' book to see when they were there last time. And yeah, there's all sorts, you know, we used to get the young Endeavour come in there and some of the tall ships. Yeah, that was terrific. Yeah.

Kim 41:33

We we will miss it, and I would like my ashes spread there. Although having been a Catholic, I'm not supposed to get burnt, so that could pose a problem.

Spud 41:45

That's a place anybody should really visit.

Kim 41:48

Yes.

Spud 41:49

While Flinders is very beautiful and a lot of places on Flinders are spectacular. Nearly anywhere you go on deal, on a walk on the cliffs or

Kim 42:00

Just looking out the kitchen window.

Spud 42:02

Yes, yeah, the kitchen window is just spectacular.

Kim 42:05

I highly recommend it to any Flinders Island couple that want to go and do it, and you've got the time, do it.

Jacqui Cooper: 42:12

Take the opportunity.

Kim 42:14

It'll only come once these days.

Closing Thanks And Country Acknowledgement

Jacqui Cooper: 42:18

So places like Deal Island and the islands of the Kent Group carry layers of history from ancient land bridges and early travellers to lighthouse keepers and now the volunteer caretakers who continue to look after what remains. Spud and Kim, you are part of that amazing story. You didn't just pass through, but you helped care for a place that asks something of everyone who spends time there. From Flinders Island to the remote edges of Bass Strait, your journey is a reminder that our history isn't just something we read about. It's something we create and live. Thank you both for sharing your island adventures with me today.

Spud and Kim 42:54

Thanks, Jackie.

Jamie West: 42:58

We acknowledge the ancient history of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the first people of Lutruita, Tasmania. This episode is recorded on the lands and waters of the Furneaux Islands. We recognise the continuing spiritual and ancestral connections of Tasmanian Aboriginal people to these islands. And we honour the strength, resilience, and living culture of Aboriginal people today.