The walkway takes its name from Truganini, the last full-blood Tasmanian Aborigine, who died in 1876. The daughter of Mangana, the chief of Bruny Island, Truganini lived to see her mother killed by white settlers, her uncle shot and her sister Moorina carried off by lawless sealers. The rest are simple, clapboard weekend cottages, served by an old-fashioned general store that stocks nuts and bolts alongside nectarines and apples. Descendants of the mutineers still populate Australia s Norfolk Island. Mount Mangana is the highest point on South Bruny, rising 1,600 feet high.
Gravel roads wind south to Cloudy Bay, an expanse of golden sand backed by forested headlands.
These beaches are usually quite deserted except for one or two surfers chancing the breakers that roll in from the Southern Ocean.