| By Linda Cuttriss ON THE south coast of Phillip Island there is a lovely long beach rich with stories spanning millennia. Like elsewhere along Bass Coast, the beach at Forrest Caves was formed around six thousand years ago as a rising sea carried sand from the floor of Bass Strait to the raw edge of the land. Wind winnowed sand from these beaches building dunes that became covered with grasses and hardy shrubs. Parts of the land fringe became submerged as rocky reefs and those that remained close to the surface created habitats for abalone, limpets and other shellfish. Aboriginal family groups lived across the coastal lowlands that once connected the mainland to the island now known as Tasmania, before the sea flooded Bass Strait. It is hard to grasp the magnitude of change that generations of First People faced as the sea swallowed their lands and they were forced to retreat to higher ground. |  Historical postcard: black and white postcard 1940s A.J. Murray, Phillip Island and District Historical Society Accessed 24 Aug 2022 |
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By Linda Cuttriss
WINTER has a bad reputation but I love the way it swings smoothly through all its moods. Wild and windy. Crisp, still and sunny. Calm, grey and drizzly. And back again. On some winter days swell from storms in the Southern Ocean crashes violently upon the rocks. At other times the sea is calm and serene. Sometimes there are days of heavy rain changing paddocks into wetlands. On clear days sunshine illuminates green pastures and shimmers across the bay. Some mornings fog settles in the hollows.  By Linda Cuttriss
ONE of the best things for me about summer is plunging into the ocean. The temperature is just right. Not too warm like the tropics, cool enough to be invigorating and not too cold like in winter. Apparently, cold water swimming boosts the immune system, improves circulation and reduces stress, but it’s not for me. Most years I take my first plunge around late November and stretch it through until early April.  Linda Cuttriss joins a woodlands walk and finds a new kind of magic in the hills above Grantville and The Gurdies. By Linda Cuttriss
OVER the ages, in countries around the world, woodlands and forests have evoked stories of magic, mystery and mystical beings. Britain and Europe have fairies and elves. Indigenous Australians have Little People and the Yowie or Big Foot. When I was little, travelling with my parents and brothers along the Bass Highway from Inverloch to Melbourne and back, I would get a spooky feeling along that thickly wooded stretch of road around Grantville and The Gurdies. There were stories of strange things seen by the roadside at night. I am no longer spooked as I drive along that stretch of road but what lies behind those trees has remained a mystery. So, when Save Western Port Woodlands sent out word of guided woodland walks I jumped at the chance to discover what is hiding in there.  Magpie parent with a worm for the babies. All photos: Linda Cuttriss By Linda Cuttriss
IT WAS late afternoon in early spring and the paddocks across the bay were gleaming green. ‘Whales!’ I heard my partner call. Dozens of seabirds, probably terns, were dive-bombing the water a few hundred metres offshore, but as usual I could see no whales. ‘Where?’ I cried out. Then I spotted them. A blow of spray, then another further away. The pair of whales must have been feeding too, for they stayed for ages, barely breaching the surface for a sip of air before disappearing then reappearing a short while later with another blow of spray. As I watched the whales, a pair of magpies charged back and forth from their nest high up in a she-oak tree, sailing over the edge of the bluff and returning with bugs and worms in their beaks. Mama magpie had been on the nest for almost three weeks so the babies must have hatched.  Like the walls of an ancient fort, the Colonnades on Woolamai Beach look impregnable. The Colonnades to Forrest Bluff
By Linda Cuttriss THE Colonnades are vertical basalt columns that stand like walls of an ancient fort at the western end of Woolamai Beach on the south coast of Phillip Island. I turn off Cape Woolamai Road and drive to the end of Tampa Road where a boardwalk leads over a short-tailed shearwater rookery to a lookout and steps down to the beach. I arrive at low tide so I have plenty of time to take a close look at The Colonnades and explore westward to Forrest Bluff before the incoming tide swallows up the beach. From the lookout, breaking waves roll in from Bass Strait. Cape Woolamai lies to the east and Pyramid Rock sits offshore in the west.  Words and photos by Linda Cuttriss
IT IS low tide on a crisp, clear winter’s morning in the small fishing village of Rhyll. Blinding sunlight fills the space between French Island and this quiet, sheltered shore on the north-east tip of Phillip Island. The Bass Hills are still smudged with morning mist on the other side of the bay. The receding tide has left behind a patchwork of green seagrass meadows, expanses of deep blue water, luminous sheets of pale blue and a myriad of puddles and pools.  Linda Cuttriss visits Ventnor, where Phillip Island’s first European family once hosted members of Melbourne’s social elite.
 Behind the scenes of the Summerland peninsula lies a unique history of tourism, development and wildlife conservation. Linda Cuttriss reports.
 Ellen Cuttriss A family gathering at Inverloch Pioneer Cemetery marked the end of a quest to find the long-lost grave of a young mother and son, buried 125 years ago. Linda Cuttriss reports
 By Linda Cuttriss
THE Woolamai dunes rise behind lines of rolling surf on the south-east coast of Phillip Island. These massive hills of sand stand up to 30 metres high. They sprawl from Woolamai Surf Beach to Cleeland Bight and stretch from The Colonnades to the granite upland of Cape Woolamai.  “I scarcely know a place I would rather call mine than this little island,” Lieutenant James Grant wrote of Churchill Island in 1801.
 The sight of a beach freshly eroded by a storm can shock, but the sand will return in the natural order of things. At least it has till now.
 The Blowhole By Linda Cuttriss
I CAN hear the ocean rumbling, telling me there’s a big swell running. The sky is blue, the wind is light. It’s a perfect day to visit The Blowhole at the south-west tip of Phillip Island.  Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak By Linda Cuttriss
THERE’S something very comforting about the “bing” of an incoming email on a Saturday morning, the sound that announces your arrival again. I love those few moments of anticipation, wondering who you’ll bring into my world this weekend.  By Linda Cuttriss
CAPE Woolamai is the great-great grandmother of this coast. She sits at the south-east tip of Phillip Island and is seen from far and wide. She is always there, watching over her coastal waters, keeping an eye on the cliffs and dunes and beaches, guarding the eastern entrance to Western Port Bay.  By Linda Cuttriss
I HEAR no roar of the ocean, no sound of waves pounding the coast. I am standing on the sheltered side of Phillip Island, on the bluff above Rhyll Inlet, listening to the north-westerly wind whispering through the she-oaks.  The wreck of the Speke By Linda Cuttriss
I AM standing at the top of the steps overlooking an empty Kitty Miller Bay. At high tide waves lap the back of the beach but now the bay is drained. Low tide is when hooded plovers scamper along the shore and oystercatchers wander among the shallow pools that remain on the rocky floor.  Swan Lake, Phillip Island By Linda Cuttriss
IT IS a wild and windy winter’s day and I am on my way to Swan Lake. Nestled behind high dunes at the western end of Phillip Island, Swan Lake is a sheltered place to go when the cold winds blow.  Pyramid Rock to Berry’s Beach By Linda Cuttriss
A SLIGHTLY corrugated dirt road takes me past big old sheoaks and on through open farmland to Pyramid Rock, where the two gentle arcs of Phillip Island’s south coast meet.  Phillip Island Nature Parks’ Ecoboat Tour By Linda Cuttriss
THE brand-new 47-seat ‘sea sprinter’ pushes back from Cowes Jetty and is soon speeding westward towards Australia’s largest seal colony. I’m on board Phillip Island Nature Parks’ Ecoboat Tour. The monitor at the front of the boat shows we’re travelling at 27 knots but the sea is calm and the ride is smooth.  A local food swap, one of several in Bass Coast At a local food forum, Linda Cuttriss discovers that the future of healthy, affordable food may be closer than we know.
 December, 1974. Darwin, after Cyclone Tracy hit. Photo: Australian Emergency Management Institute By Linda Cuttriss
NERVOUS memories of cyclones this morning as I listen to the news from Queensland and Northern Territory. My younger brother has been in Bundaberg on a camping adventure with his partner, just south of where Cyclone Marcia is predicted to hit the coast. I rang him yesterday and he'd just packed up camp and was on the road heading down to his partner's son's place on the Gold Coast. They are near the Tallebudgera River, which is prone to flooding so it won't be smooth sailing there either – but at least he'll be safe from potentially 250-plus-kilometre winds. |
