In April 1855, J. E. Calder, Surveyor-General of Tasmania, set out to walk to the old convict station at Oyster Cove. So lovely was the day and so beautiful the terrain that Calder made detailed notes of his impressions for a Hobart newspaper. After passing through the hamlet of Snug on the southern edge of North West Bay, Calder followed the road upward into heavily wooded hills from which he caught the occasional glimpse of a spectacular landscape.

Now and then only, when an opening occurred … we greatly admired the varied and magnificent picture which lay before us. The dusky eminences of South Bruny stretched along the horizon, terminating in the bold and beautiful cliffs of the fluted cape. Adventure Bay on the east of Bruny—the place of anchorage of the famous old navigators Cook, Furneaux and Bligh, last century—lies fully in view, separated from the nearer waters of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel by the long, low thread-like isthmus that unites the two peninsulas of Bruny Island … and a vast extent of undulating country in the east and north east, fronting on the most varied coastline in the world, forming altogether a picture which well repays the toil of a long journey to see it.