After 72 years, a proud dame of southern waters is back where she belongs.
The old girl has come home. Her bones creak and sigh as she floats up the Huon River, past clapboard settlements and ruby-flecked apple orchards and leatherwood and swamp gum forests climbing steadily towards the Hartz Mountains. Her belly is empty now; it aches with the ghosts of crayfish and gummy sharks, scallops and abalone. In their place burns a wood stove; seafarers thaw their hands here when the weather turns feisty.
But the day is bereft of wind and aglow with sunlight. This stretch of the Huon River, traced silver along the banks of Franklin township in south-western Tasmania, is still as a ribbon of mercury. The Kerrawyn's bow cuts a tender path through it, the timeworn hull resting light against the tide. The sails are furled; in the absence of wind, an engine slaps out a melody.
The two Egg Islands lie between starboard and the river's opposite bank; these estuarine islets are thick with endangered black gums and native birdlife. In the 19th century the then-solitary island was severed in two by a handmade gut canal - Australia's oldest - to facilitate access between the opposite riverside communities. The scoop used to dig the canal has also been preserved; it rests in Frank's Orchard near the banks of the river.
The Kerrawyn has come home to rest, too, after a tireless journey that began in the nearby town of Cygnet, where she was built for a fishing family 72 years ago. For 30 long years she plied the ocean off the coast of Strahan, on Tasmania's mid-west coast, before a second trawling clan took her on.
Another 30 years passed by on the high seas. When the second owner died about 10 years ago, business partners Anastasia Konstantinidis and David Golding took the Kerrawyn into safekeeping.
"They just needed to find a good home," Konstantinidis says. "When the boat's been a part of their family for 30 years, it's such an emotional thing. It's one of the children, you know."
The old dame had found safe harbour: Golding is a shipwright, Konstantinidis one of Australia's few traditional riggers.
"So much of Tasmanian maritime history has been destroyed, wrecked or taken out of the state," Konstantinidis says. "I just said, 'Look, [we] aren't going to chop the masts off and put a big cabin on it and [not be] true to her history'. We've kept it very honest. She's never going to be a fancy, modern, shiny yacht. You know, she's a fishing boat."
Her days of fishing are nevertheless over. The meticulously restored Kerrawyn was assigned light duties at the end of 2020: ferrying guests on morning and afternoon cruises along the Huon River, and setting forth on overnight voyages by special request. Those old families are still part of her story: on her 70th birthday, they gathered on deck for a party.
"We've had all the children back on board, all of the grandchildren," says Konstantinidis. With their blessing, the Kerrawyn is back where she started, a prodigal daughter living out her dotage in that familiar tidal estuary.
Catherine Marshall was a guest of Huon Valley Council. See huonvalleytas.com. Cruises depart from Franklin's marina. The Kerrawyn can also be booked for tailor-made excursions. See sailkerrawyn.com
