DAY 7 -  From Spain Bay to Stephens

We started our day in Schooner cove, and during a slow morning of getting ready for beach cleaning we said goodbye to our amazing team member Alice, who headed up to Melaleuca to fly back to Hobart. We had a quick steam around to Spain Bay, a beach at the southern side of the entrance to Port Davey. We cleaned up the lovely campsite at Spain bay, gathering up a large pile of rubbish from between the tea trees that walkers and campers had already collected. We then began the 30-minute walk over the headland to Stephens beach – a spectacular hike with panoramic views of button grass plains, islands, beaches and mountains, right down to Southwest cape!

Again, we found a large pile of rubbish that had been stashed at the campsite by walkers. This was a refreshing and comforting reminder that there are so many people that care about this wild and beautiful land. 

 We hoofed it to the end of the beach with the intention of combing our way back through, meanwhile taking in the incredible views that spanned in every direction. By far the most powerful part of this vast landscape was the massive dunes, and the cultural living sites that were scattered throughout. They glittered with huge abalone shells and stripy warreners, a consistent reminder in the landscape of human life – fun, laughter, families and thousands of years of connection to place. It became evident early on in our endless scour for plastics that many of our targets were within and around these sacred sites. There is a stark contrast between tens of thousands of years and countless generations worth of human gatherings, to an omnipresent layer of 8,182 plastic flakes, rope fragments and bottles that have been only 2 generations in the making and drifted in from distant sources. The humans that produced this waste have likely never stepped foot on these beaches. If there were any evidence that we need to focus on our sustainability on this earth, this is it. 

After an 8m swell and a few days of rain, we didn’t find as much rubbish as expected – likely having been buried deeper into the sand or washed back out to sea. 

We made our way back across the sunny headland, lugging all the bags of rubbish over the headland to begin the count on Rumours – mostly made up of tiny micro-plastics and small rope fragments. After a long day of walking in the wind and sun, we were treated to a beautifully made dinner and a specky mountain sunset, ready to do it all again tomorrow! 

Words by Ruth and Clare

Pics by Lee