The concept for Regional Food magazine, which my husband Fred Harden and I started with an ex-Murdoch Magazines partner in 2005, was to dedicate each issue to a particular region, with stories of its producers, food stores, eateries and people. “Places, People,  Produce” was the banner. The first issue, pictured above, was about King Island. You can browse it here on Fred’s website WhileIRemember.it  We shared the writing, while Fred did all the travelling and took all the pictures.

Alas, the magazine did not succeed. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. We certainly underestimated the difficulty of selling a magazine through newsagents, relying on just the cover to grab the attention of potential readers, and were over-ambitious with the numbers we printed.  After three issues and upping the mortgage on our house, we were forced to abandon the project.

My introductory article for the first issue, headlined “If this is pizza, it must be Friday” read as follows:

While commercialism can hitch a ride into mainland country towns, where townies and truckies are forever passing through, on King Island it has to come by sea or by air. And, so far, it hasn’t made the effort.

It’s the island effect. You won’t find a Macca’s, KFC or Pizza Hut.  The nearest equivalent for an evening takeaway on King Island is the bakery’s fresh-made pizza – and they only do it on Friday nights.  There’s not a billboard to be seen.  The businesses still carry the names of local people, not national chains.  And when you drop off your rental car at the airport, you leave the keys in the ignition. After all, why steal a car when there’s nowhere to hide?

Islanders talk about going ‘up north’ or ‘down south’ in tones that suggest untold distances, but the island is just 64km from north to south and 27km from side to side. Criss-crossed with narrow roads lined with hedgerows, its scenery is more intimate than grand. Think undulations, not mountains; glimpses, not panoramas.

King Island sits astride Latitude 40 ºS, directly in the path of the ‘roaring forties’.  That makes wind one of the defining features of the island. The spindly, mop-topped paperbarks have a characteristic lean and the kelp-strewn headlands speak volumes about the storms that pound this rugged coastline.

Those storms have taken their toll on shipping. After George Bass and Matthew Flinders charted Bass Strait in 1798, many a ship’s captain took this ‘fast route’ to Sydney. The unlucky ones ended their journeys on the reefs surrounding King Island.  Australia’s worst civil disaster remains the wrecking of the Cataraqui in 1845, when 400 people drowned just 100 metres from shore.

Today, the Cape Wickham lighthouse guards the western entrance to Bass Strait while, further south, the Currie Light looms above the harbour of the island’s main town. Diving on the wrecks is an island drawcard, while the less adventurous can follow the shipwreck trail along the coast, where memorials tell stories of heroism and heartbreak.

Currie makes few concessions to the tourist. Stay at Parer’s Hotel and you’ll very likely be witness to some local culture, when the boys come into town. “The trouble is, there aren’t enough girls” one local confided.  “They all go off to school on the mainland after year 10, and a lot of them don’t come back.” It’s a problem for the young men who stay around to work on the family farms. The odd wheelie in the hotel car park is one way of letting off steam. If you’re staying there, you’re advised to park your rental car in the rear section, out of harm’s way.

Grassy, in the south east, has a half-forgotten look. The single men’s quarters that used to house workers at the now-abandoned scheelite mine is a graveyard of asbestos cement sheeting and gaping window frames. Yet behind the unprepossessing cream brick façade of the Grassy Club is the best food on the island and the local butcher, John Boschetto does a great line in gourmet meats. His wallaby prosciutto and salami are highly recommended (just take our advice and don’t tell your teenage daughters what they’re eating!)

Locals will assure you that the Bennett’s wallaby is a pest on the island, so it’s fair game for shooters all year round (although you do need a license).  There are short seasons on mutton birds, pheasants and duck. You can also bag the feral turkeys and peacocks that have naturalised here, but you need permission from farmers to shoot on their land. If you’d rather use a camera than a gun, you’ll also spot potoroo, brush tailed and ring tail possums and the shy Orange Bellied parrot. The Grassy breakwater is home to a fairy penguin rookery.

King Island is not a cosmopolitan place. After a while, you become disconcertingly aware of all those clear blue eyes. Most of the surnames have a distinctly English ring to them. Many are preserved in unlikely memorials, like the somewhat featureless stretch of grass that rejoices in the name of Eleanor Snodgrass Park.

If you’re a resort-goer, look elsewhere. There are no five-star facilities here, no designer boutiques, no in-crowd to impress. Service comes with genuine warmth and concern for your comfort, not professional polish. There are a few restaurants, and they feature the spectacular island produce, but how many times do you want to eat deep fried camembert with plum sauce? People laugh and suggest that they’re “stuck in the eighties”, although it sometimes seems more like the fifties.

You sense, however, that the yesteryear feeling is as much a result of conscious choice as of isolation. King Island has its share of sea-changers – refugees from high stress lifestyles elsewhere. Conveniences of modern life, like teller machines, EFTPOS, and the internet are as readily available as on the mainland. The food industries use up-to-the-minute technologies. And, after all, it’s only a 40-minute plane ride to Melbourne. Just like taking the bus.

So why would you go to King Island?  Remember your childhood holidays down (or up) the coast?  Before real estate prices went ballistic and the fibro shacks were replaced by neo Italianate fantasies with vast decks and six bedrooms? You can recapture that feeling on the Island. Rent a cottage with a view of the ocean; buy your produce fresh off the boat or straight from the dairy. Cook it the simple way, on the barbecue, maybe with a touch of the local mountain pepper.  Sit by a driftwood fire and watch the waves that come all the way from Africa.

It’s a sea place, as you’d expect an island to be, with beaches that are clean and uncrowded – and unpatrolled, so it’s up to you to take care.  Those waves rolling in from the Southern Ocean offer some of Australia’s best surfing. And with over 200km of coast, more than 60 known shipwrecks, and the lure of crayfish and abalone, divers have much to discover.

Then there’s the fishing.  Sweep is the favoured catch off the rocky western shores and there is excellent surf fishing from King Island’s sandy beaches.  Or you can try for squid or barracouta off the wharves at Currie or Grassy.  Three of the island’s lakes are also stocked with brown trout.

If you’re a serious foodie, you might suffer restaurant withdrawal.  But this is more than compensated for by the sheer quality of the produce available on your doorstep.  The Fromagerie at King Island Dairy provides, not just a staggering array of cheeses (many you will have never seen before), but the best yoghurt you’ve ever tasted. King Island beef may come in unappetising cryovac packages from the supermarket, but its superlative flavour and tenderness is a beef-eater’s epiphany. Oysters, crays, abalone, fish of all descriptions are sea-fresh from King Island Seafoods, in Currie.

Of course, there’s also the ‘restaurant with no food’, more properly described as a combination of drop-in centre, gallery and picnic spot. Local potter, artist, promoter and social lynchpin, Caroline Kinimonth, has restored the old boathouse that nestles beneath the lighthouse on Currie harbour. Whether you’re calling in for coffee, browsing for souvenirs or planning a party, everything works on the help-yourself system. Use the gas barbecue, and put your $5 in the honesty box. Make your own tea and coffee (instant), sign the visitor’s book, and leave a donation if you will.

The Boathouse has an eclectic (to say the least) collection of furniture, eating and drinking utensils, books, artworks and flotsam.  Each table bears a ‘menu’ that lists “BYO champagne, wine, beer, food…”  What is supplied in plenty is atmosphere, as you watch the light change on the harbour and the fishing boats coming and going from the wharf opposite.

Obviously, King Island is a place people come back to. We heard lots of stories of going and returning. In Caroline’s visitors’ book is a note from a group who had just fulfilled their final obligation to a deceased relative. She’d expressed a desire to return, “in powder form” to the island of her birth. To float away with the gulls on the winds of the roaring forties…that’s not such a bad way to go.