6 
Tasmanian Field Naturalists' Club 
EASTER CAMP-OUT, 1915 
(By CLIVE E. LORD, Hon. Secretary) 
The Tasmanian Field Naturalists’ 
Club held its eleventh annual Easter 
Camp during the Easter holidays, the 
site this year being Maria Island, off 
the East Coast of Tasmania. It has 
been visited on several previous occa¬ 
sions, but owing to the numerous places 
ol scenic and historic interest that 
abound there, the charm of the locality 
by no means fades, but rather grows 
with more familiar acquaintance. 
The party this year consisted of 36 
members, which is a small one when 
compared with the full hundred taken 
last year, hut owing to the effects of 
the war and other causes the committee 
did not feel justified in running a large 
camp. The outing may be counted, 
from a social standpoint, as being the 
most successful ever run by the club, 
while the students of natural history, 
especially those interested in dredging 
the ocean’s depth, had a successful time. 
The weather, of course, exercised a 
great influence on the trip, and it is 
generally agreed by all that last Easter 
was the most perfect, we have had for 
years; in fact, during the whole of our 
stay each day was a perfectly calm 
autumn one, with never a suspicion of 
those cold westerly squalls we felt so 
keenly last year at Wineglass Bay, and 
our regrets were that our Sydney friends 
were not with us this season in order 
that amends might be made for the last 
trip when the weather prevented such 
a lot from being done. 
The site or the camp was near the 
settlement of Darlington, which is 
placed on a pretty spot at the north¬ 
west corner of the island, where a creek 
meanders down from the hills, and 
breaks through to the sea through a 
crescent-shaped beach of shining white 
sand, at the far end of which the jetty 
juts into the sen, while at the southern 
extremity stands out the knoll on which 
Mr. Bernacchi erected his famous 
pigeon loft, portion of which is still 
standing. The view from the summit 
of the loft is interesting, as it opens out 
the settlement as a man before the ob¬ 
server. and from whence he can pick 
out tlie convict buildings, or what re¬ 
main of them, as some have been pulled 
down, while others, although erected in 
the twenties, still stand, as do a good 
many of Bernacchi’s structures, which 
were raised in the eighties. 
1 lie history of Maria Island is inter¬ 
esting, and contains two eras of import¬ 
ance—the convict settlement, and later 
the boom and burst period of the Ber¬ 
nacchi company. The first European to 
record the island was Tasman, who 
noted it in his voyage of 1642, but wo 
do notjienrof it again until Cox visited 
it in 1789. Then the French expedition 
under Captain Baudin called at the is¬ 
land in 1802, and landed in order to 
bury their surgeon, M. Mongo, whose 
remains are supposed to lie near the 
shores of C hinaman s Bay. The first 
settlement took place about 18*25, when 
the island was chosen as a convict sta¬ 
tion, and many of the structures then 
erected may be seen standing to-day, 
the old barn and the store standing out 
prominently when approaching the is¬ 
land from the west. The Bernacchi era 
constitutes to date the most flourishing 
period the island has experienced. This 
was towards the end of the eighties. 
r I his period was the outcome of the 
efforts of a company formed to develop 
the natural resources of the island, and 
a great deal of work was done in the 
way of erecting buildings, including 
large cement works and kilns, a hotel 
of 30 rooms, the plantation of vine¬ 
yards, and numerous smaller structures, 
e!i of which are to-day in a more or less 
state of decay. However, if the cement 
manufacturing portion of the company’s 
proposals were once more set to work 
