KING'S BANQUET: Amid the constant onslaught of the Roaring Forties, King Island remains rustic and isolated, yet with a powerful export industry and a unique community spirit

摘要

IN 1802, King Island's first surveyor, Lieutenant John Murray, looked over a wilderness with thousands of elephant seals lolling on beaches and forest smothering the land, and predicted the future. "Thus we take leave of this large and fine island where the benevolent hand of providence has fixed the chief necessities of life and the means to procure some of its luxuries," he wrote with remarkable foresight about an island that wouldn't be settled for another 86 years. Today the elephant seals are gone — hunted almost to extinction in just three years — and so is most of the forest, but the luxuries are in abundance on this island where even place names read like a menu. There's Pearshape Lagoon and Egg Lagoon Creek. Currie is the main town, and at Porky Beach, the white sands and blue waters match the moulds inside the renowned cheese dairy on its shores.