Tawe Nunnugah
The 2025 Raid by Richard Forster
It is simple enough really. A biennial camping trip for a hundred odd people in small boats, sailing and rowing a dozen or so miles a day along the south east Tasmanian Coast until they reach Hobart. What's the fuss?
The documentary of the 2007 Tawe Nunnugah begins with the scene of a whale boat being rowed across Recherche Bay, past the hauntingly beautiful ranges which are its backdrop. John Young, one of the organisers of that first Raid, provides the voice over narrative. John comes along with us only in spirit these days, and 'the Raid' has quadrupled in size, but the magic of place and context which he so eloquently describes remains.
'Tawe Nunnugah'. Two surviving words from the ancient south east Tasmanian aboriginal language: 'tawe' to go, and 'nunnugah', the stringy bark canoe that was used to navigate these waters for thousands of years before the British assumed possession in 1803. This title reminds us that Tasmania's maritime heritage is one of the oldest in the world, and that simplicity can be a key to sustainability. So this is the story of a nine day voyage through time and space in ten simple small boats, and a wooden whale boat in the wake of the nunnagahs, the foreign explorers, the convict ships, the whalers and trading ketches of the past and the fishing boats and yachts of the present towards the biggest wooden boat festival in the southern hemisphere which is held every two years in Hobart, Tasmania. The voyage of one hundred and twenty sea miles begins at Recherche Bay, the southern most anchorage in Australia, and the scene of an extraordinary cultural exchange in 1793 between the Lyluequonny people and the explorers from revolutionary France whose discoveries fuelled the European enlightenment.'
Have a look at the clip below, from the documentary to put youself in the picture.
Of course people enjoy and participate in small craft Raids for all sorts of reasons apart from this magic - the challenge, the fellowship, the opportunity to sail and row their boats safely to exciting destinations. South Eastern Tasmania is the perfect place for doing this. It has one of the best cruising grounds in Australia, an intricate coastline of lightly inhabited hills, mountains and islands, with long stretches of sheltered water in harbours, flooded valleys, passages and estuaries. It is the home of thriving small boat communities, able to support such expeditions. And it has the Australian Wooden Boat Festival every two years as an unrivalled destination to arrive at and participate in.
The Living Boat Trust (LBT) is one such community organisation, whose Shed sits on the banks of the Huon River in Franklin. Together with its neighbour the Wooden Boat Centre it is a mecca for wooden boat enthusiasts. To find out more about us see OUR WEBSITE or come to a community dinner on Monday night, or better still come along on a Tuesday and do some paintin' and scrapin' on one of our boat projects.
The LBT has been organising and running the Tawe Nunnugah Raid biennially since that initial one in 2007. Through bushfires and Covid we have managed to do it no matter what. The collection of traditional boats (whaleboats, a leeboarder, rowing skiffs etc) we maintain are the core of the fleet. These are joined by a much larger group of rowing and sailing dinghies and yachts brought along by other participants. 2025 was fairly typical, with around half a dozen vessels coming from the Trust, and another 30 or so privateers, many from the mainland (the ‘north island’). The Trust also organises catering, marquees and camp infrastructure, campsites, safety boats, and a land crew. The logistics of providing for a community of 120 people in remote locations may be simple in concept but grow big in implementation, and the land and catering crews are a vital part of the event, never mind the coordinators Martin and Deb without whom nothing would have happened.
Destinations we visit along the way vary depending on circumstances, but fundamentally our passage is from Recherche Bay to Hobart up the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, with a couple of lay days to allow for bad weather, or simply to relax. After the Festival there is a shorter Raid from Hobart back to Franklin. (click to enlarge)
What happened in 2025? The best way to find out is to visit the TN25 WEBSITE. As you will see there are news postings about the event from the time of initial organisation right through to videos summarising people's experience of it. One of the participants this year was Matt Conboy, who runs the Small Craft Tasmania YouTube channel. Find the first of his Raid videos HERE. Matt assures us there is more to come. He brought along John Welsford, one of Australasia’s foremost boat designers, as his crew, so this year we had the pleasure of John's company and of enjoying a talk he gave us about his philosophy for designing boats for small boat cruising.
But this was only one of many highlights - each boat had its own. Longer reports have yet to come in but what we can say from scanning the online chat channel for the Raid is that everybody had a wonderful time. If you can't wait for these reports, read a couple from the 2023 Raid HERE and HERE
For myself on 'Seastar' (a 28’ fixed keel Hartley) Tawe Nunnugah is a regular excuse to spend a fortnight with one of my oldest friends from university days fifty years ago, doing something we love together. The vagaries of sea and weather and the infirmities of a boat built in 1974 throw up new challenges every year, so it is never boring. Sailing in company and with safety boats on hand has saved our bacon on more than one occasion. The other enjoyments listed above are all part of it too. Rowing ashore in the tender on a deserted beach is one of the great pleasures of life, but so is landing and hearing the happy hubbub from the Tawe Nunnagah camp, and knowing that you will soon be in heated exchange of boat shop talk with your fellow Raiders over a hot meal with a red wine on hand.
And time passes, not always for the worse. This year our crew was supplemented on the passage down to Recherche with a grandson and his friend who fed us on the crayfish they caught when we discovered that a precooked casserole had been left at home. Hopefully they'll hang around to man the foredeck when Ken and I get even more creaky in the bones.
We at the Living Boat Trust are all drawing breath now, and wondering how we can do it all again in two years time. It seems close already.