Somdatta Ganguly, One Hazardous Encounter (DOCO 2023)

So we went to The Hazards. To be more specific, we went past The Hazards to the Hazard beach in Freycinet National Park, Tasmania. Our goal was to take the apparently easy Isthmus track from Hazard Beach to Wineglass Bay (Around 2 km). This walk is supposed to take around 30 minutes under normal conditions. However, as we had an 8-year old kid and my elderly mum, we kept a buffer of 10 min. When we reached the beach, our aqua taxi driver gave us a warning about the conditions of the route. We are talking here about late December, 2022. Due to extensive rainfall caused by La Niña, the route was at its worst. Well, we didn’t take heed of the warning, nor did we pay attention to the name of the beach. In fact a thrill gripped us when we were left at the desolated beach with no one in sight. The scene reminded us of 10 strangers left at Soldier Island as depicted in the novel ‘And Then There Were None’ by the famous mystery novelist Dame Agatha Christie and the things that happened to them! This sent a chill down our spines. Anyway, we marched on like brave soldiers to fend off any hazards coming our way. To begin with, the path among the dense bush was dry. However, soon our taxi captain’s warnings became real. The path slowly became more and more muddy. We somehow balanced ourselves while walking on the very slippery surface to try not to fall into the knee deep mud - catching hold of some hanging branches at times and getting bruised by the prickly leaves. We even saw the vanishing black tail of a snake - possibly a tiger snake? And the chilling scream of a bird! But we survived all that to reach the mesmerising Wineglass Bay. The turquoise waters, the white sands, the pink granite boulders framing the bay - what a picturesque scenery it was! It was worth the risk. I will tell the story of the beauty of the place another time. But let me continue with the other story, where with the help of some adverse factors, an otherwise easy journey turned into an adventurous one, not that I regret it! The way back was equally difficult! Of course that was to be expected as it was the same path. You can not expect knee deep mud to dry up in an hour! But on our way back, we actually fell down twice and were covered with mud as were my phone, camera etc etc. Not that the path had become more slippery, but this time we were in a hurry. The last departure time for the aqua taxi was at 5PM and we had to reach Hazard Beach on time. We did not make it on time. An hour-and-a-half-long journey on that day took us almost 3 hours! When we reached the beach, we saw some other couples and learnt from them that the taxi had gone to another beach to pick up some travellers and it will definitely come here to pick us up after that. Thank goodness, we were not deserted after all. The boat came, we all climbed in. The motor started, the captain got down to push it from the sand into the water. To our horror (or rather dark excitement), the boat moved sideways and got stuck in the sand. We all got down to make the boat lighter. The captain with the help of some of the passengers spent the next half an hour trying to push it into the water, but without any success. Finally he gave up and called for help. After half an hour, while we were still pondering about the possibility of having to stay in that island without water or food, unless of course you wanted to walk for 6 kms to reach the nearest car park, the tow boat arrived. First attempt - A mooring line connected the two boats. All the passengers hopped in. The tow boat started to pull our boat and at the moment we were about to say ‘Hurrah’ the rope snapped into half! Second attempt - The rope was knotted again and the tow boat tried to pull our boat with us on board. Our captain pushed it into the water and as soon as he hopped on to join us and take on the motor, the baat got stuck again! Third attempt - By this time, our minds were slowly moving from ‘oh what an exciting adventure this is!’ To ‘we are doomed’ feeling. But we were third time lucky! This time, our captain remained on the boat starting the motor. All passengers got down. Once the boat could be moved from the sand a little, we all hopped in and the captain from the tow boat changed the boat’s direction and pushed it finally into the water as the helper boat kept on towing it. So with the help of two amazing captains we finally made it into the water. We were rescued at long last! Well, the Hazard Beach undeniably lived upto its name! Now I come to think of that extra-ordinary day, I realise that the idle time this hazardous incident gave us actually helped us being closer to our co-passengers. We didn’t realise, but we actually made such good memories and learned about so many interesting stories from others, be it about the garden pythons in Queensland or travel experiences of a school teacher from Sydney! I can only say - “If I had to do the same again, I would my friend…”

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.