Flinders Island

After chatting with Carolyn, the lamb-farmer-cum-mayor of Lady-Barron, at the Furneaux Tavern on Flinders Island, I wandered into the bar to take a picture of the “FREE NUTS” sign and came across a copy of an article from the Launceston Examiner with a photo of a smiling man holding what looks like a plate of fried chicken beneath this headline: “Mutton-birds: Uniquely Tasmanian.”

I could tell you what the article said but, what the hell, let’s just run the whole thing. This way you won’t think I’m making up this story about people eating mutton birds in Tasmania. I don’t know exactly when this article ran (judging by the photo, I’d say it was sometime in the last few years) but it was written by Michael Lowe.

“A cross between bacon and smoked fish with a big dash of fat is one description of that Tasmanian delicacy, mutton-bird. Shops are now selling frozen mutton-bird and at least one has gone a step further and offers a smoked variety.

“Casalinga owner Rob Perry said smoked mutton-bird was popular at the Charles St. butchery in Launceston, described as an emporium of traditional and gourmet meats.

“The mutton-bird season finished last month and Mr. Perry expects the supply of frozen chicks to last into next month. He is a qualified butcher and formerly ran the butchery Beef Wellington at Prospect Marketplace. But Mr. Perry grew up on Flinders Island and caught mutton-birds as a youth. Now he sells the birds both smoked and frozen. He says the smoked variety is by far the most popular because it avoids unpleasant cooking smells. He cooks every second day and is selling up to 30 smoked birds a day. Mutton-birds are harvested on the Bass Strait islands and are sold as plucked or “skun” birds. Skun birds have been skinned, which means the layer of fat beneath the skin has also largely been removed.

“Mr. Perry marinates the birds in brine before smoking them at 85 degrees for three hours, using pepper and hickory to vary the smoke flavour. The smoking produces an intense flavour—like a cross between bacon and smoked fish. An alternative is to cook the birds on a hot barbecue for 30 minutes or bake for 60 minutes in the oven at 150-180 degrees. But Mr. Perry warns the high fat content means oven cooking produces a strong smell.

“He says mutton-birds are an authentic Tasmanian product which strikes a chord with consumers. ‘It is very, very popular because it’s unique,’ he said. ‘People are buying it because they want to try it. But we have a lot come back and say they’re very impressed by the flavor. We have a unique product in Tasmania, let’s see how we can diversify and put Tasmania more on the map.’”

No wonder the Flinders Island bar has that “FREE NUTS” sign.

A boat far from the sea on Flinders Island. Photo by David Lansing.

From Trousers Point we loaded up into a couple of vans and headed up the road to the only real town on Flinders, Lady Barron (less than a thousand souls live on the island, which is sculpted by the Roaring Forties latitude, splitting the island in half). The wind howls here in a way that drives some people crazy. Tasmanian author Nicholas Shakespeare describes talking to one old-timer who complained how the wind transformed all her vegetables into propellers. “I’ve watched from my bedroom window a cabbage plant being blown round and round and then spin right off out of the ground.”

Fortunately for us, the morning was still when we visited but you could see its effect on the landscape, particularly in the copses of ti-trees, their trunks bent at 45 degree angles to the earth, denuded with nothing left but a crown of green on their tops, like so many emerald berets, and the tall grass, all bent as well, being topped by sheep and cows.

At Lady Barron, tea and hot scones were waiting for us at the town’s lone tavern, Furneaux, where a sign on the door to the bar advertised FREE NUTS with the purchase of a beer. Waiting for us inside the bar was the mayor, Carolyn, a cheerful, stocky lamb breeder who, while we drank our tea and ate our scones, told us about Flinders lamb (“premium and some say the best in Australia”), seafood (“crayfish, garfish, and abalone, though none of us on the island can afford to eat our own abalone; it’s too dear”), and wallaby (“we’ve got double the number of wallaby per kilometer compared to the rest of Tasmania.”)

After she’d finished her little talk I took my tea and went down to have a chat with her. I asked her what they did with the wallaby. “We eat it, of course.”

I told her I had no idea Australians ate wallaby. “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. “Very lean. No cholesterol.” You could make steaks and chops from wallaby or ground wallaby but she said her favorite was wallaby salami. “I would have brought some if I’d known anyone would be interested,” she said.

I asked her if there was anywhere I could get a little bottle of mutton-bird oil. “That’s a bit of a rarity these days,” she said, though she told me she’d had more than her share over the years. “Can’t swallow it without a bit of sugar in it,” she said. “It’s got a taste you’ll never forget. A bit fishy. Not to everyone’s liking, that’s for sure.”

So now I have a double mission: Finding mutton-bird oil and wallaby salami.

Landing at Trousers Pt. on Flinders Island. Photo by David Lansing.

The early morning transfer to Flinders Island aboard Zodiacs necessitated a wet landing at Trousers Point beach, which meant wearing reef shoes or flip-flops in the boat and then switching to walking shoes once on shore. Beautiful spot, Trousers beach, a curvaceous bay with cerulean water and blond sand from which lichen-painted boulders, the color of dried oranges, hang out over the crystal clear water.

While I was sitting on a rock putting on my running shoes, Andrew Hood, our on-board wine expert (he started the winery now known as Frogmore Creek, near Hobart, that is considered one of the finest makers of cool weather wines, like Riesling and Pinot Noir, in all of Australia if not the world) walked up to me holding a clump of seaweed in his hand. I had no idea why he was giving it to me. “Eat it,” he said. “Sea grapes. They’re quite tasty.” And they were. Only a wine maker would think to forage for sea grapes.

A flock of mutton birds near Flinders Island, Tasmania.

This morning I woke before dawn and trundled up to the seldom-used Galaxy Lounge on Deck 6 where the fixings for a continental breakfast are set up around 6:30 for early risers. Charles, one of the Filipino waiters, was up there making coffee and putting out muffins and such. He gladly made me a pot of Earl Grey tea to take back to my room. I was sitting on the love seat facing the balcony, comfy warm in slippers and robe, watching as the sun ever-so-slowly broke through the morning fog when I became aware of an astounding formation of large, sky-black birds flying in a single-file line just inches off the water. I sat there watching bird after bird pass by. It must have taken at least 15 minutes for the vision to pass.

What I was seeing where thousands and thousands of short-tailed shearwaters, or mutton-birds as the Tassies call them. Once called “flying sheep” because of their size, they got their nickname after a British officer back in the early 1800s remarked that the birds tasted like mutton. Exploring the Furneaux Islands in the Bass Strait off the north-eastern tip of Tasmania in 1798, British explorer Matthew Flinders noted in his log that the birds had passed overhead without interruption for a full 90 minutes in a broad stream. “On the lowest computation, I think the number could not have been less than a hundred million birds.”

Their numbers have dwindled, but an estimated 12 million birds still make the 9,000 mile journey from Siberia arriving on Flinders Island (named after the British explorer) punctually on September 27 each year where they burrow in the sandy dunes and lay their eggs. What I was seeing were thousands and thousands of mutton-birds feeding for krill which they would then take back to their burrows and regurgitate for their chicks. Over breakfast I talked with Mick Fogg, our expedition team leader, about the mutton-birds. He said even today some Tassies, especially those with Aboriginal identity, go “birding” for shearwaters, which involves sticking your arm up to the shoulder in a burrow that may hold a mutton-bird or a poisonous tiger-snake “thick as my wrist and as long as my arm.” Mick said if you worry about snakes you’ll never catch a mutton-bird.

As recently as 1950 there was a canning factory on Flinders Island, where we’re headed this morning, employing 300 people who processed the birds and exported them as “squab in aspic.” Mick told me that when he was a kid, his mother would give him a spoonful of mutton-bird oil every morning. “It was said to cure colds and put a glossy shine in your hair and god-knows-what-else.” I asked him what it tasted like and he shook his head in disgust and said, “Vile.”

I think I shall have to try some. If I can find it.