See also photo pages here, another from Chris Littlejohn, one from the 2007 RAID and finally one about all sorts of LBT expeditions and activities. The 2011 Tawe Nunnugah website can be seen here.

Every two years, keen adventurers set off from Recherche Bay in the far south of Tasmania to row and sail to Hobart , over 100 nautical miles away, in a fleet of small boats. This expedition over 9 days takes participants along some of Tasmania’s beautiful and unique coastline, from the wild south and along the spectacular and historic D’Entrecasteux Channel and up the Huon River before entering the Derwent River to Hobart.

The idea for the term RAID came from the Scandinavians via the French company, “Albacore” which the LBT invited to Tasmania to plan a small boat expedition of the kind they had already made popular in Europe, for 2005. That fell through; but the idea has since caught on here in a big way. Tasmania has much to offer for marine adventures with both sheltered and wild exposed waters. Recherche Bay is at the very south of the D’Entrecasteux Channel between Bruny Island and the mainland of Tasmania and has been a focus of human activity for thousands of years. The original people belonged to the Lyluequonny tribe of the Tasmanian Aboriginals. These people constructed reed and bark canoes in which they navigated to offshore islands for their bountiful food sources at certain times of the year. These islands are breeding grounds for many seabirds including millions of the sooty Shearwater (known as yolla by the Tasmanian Aboriginal people) and also seals. These simple but effective craft were also used to cross rivers and bays. The term “Tawe Nunnugah” means “to go by canoe” and is used by the LBT in honour of these first brave navigators. In 2005 our Whaleboat Swiftsure was rowed up to Hobart on her own for the Australian Wooden Boat festival by a Living Boat Trust Crew. In 2007 a full Raid of nine days from Recherche to Hobart was organised, and this was successfully repeated in 2009.

The French spent some time in Recherche Bay in 1792 and 1793 and had fairly extensive and mostly friendly and respectful contact with the Lyluequonny. They mistook Recherche for Adventure Bay, further east on Bruny Island, which was first charted by Abel Tasman in 1642. It was the French who explored the area and left a legacy of many French names and who proved the existence of the extensive D’Entrecasteux Channel. The Huon River, Port Esperance, Labillardiere Peninsular and of course Bruny Island are a few of the place names left behind.

We now humbly follow in these explorers' footsteps, probably as much in awe of the beauty of the area, much of which is as it was in those days, as of the French achievement, and our expeditions allow an examination of the history and current issues affecting these areas. At each resting spot speakers present ideas to the expedition group and draw on the human, biological, geological, history and extend these to current issues facing ourselves and our environment.

The first RAID was in 2005 from Recherche to Hobart to coincide with the bi-annual Australian Wooden Boat Festival with more organised occasions being the Tawe Nunnugah I & Tawe Nunnugah II.