Nature Writer

A Choir of Waves

2012-01-22T16:06:00.000+11:00

South West Cape Walk, Part 2

Tim takes in the wild south-west coast at New Harbour

They say 24 hours is a long time in politics. Which just proves how little bushwalking has in common with “the art of the possible” (as von Bismarck defined politics).

For us 4 hours – the time it took to trudge, wade, grumble, leap and muddle our way from Melaleuca to New Harbour – felt an eternity. With our packs at their heaviest; our feet at their tenderest; the weather at its most recalcitrant; and the daylight waning, it felt like bushwalking had become the art of the impossible.

I’d been trying to play the optimist card all day, reminding the group how beautiful the destination would be. Was there be mud, they’d asked early on? I’d pleaded that it was about 15 years since my last visit here. But yes, I did have memories of “a bit of mud” towards the end of the day’s walk.

As we hit the worst of that “bit of mud”, the promised hail came. Jim was almost gleeful, in an Eeyore kind of way. The rest of us pulled our rainhoods tighter and trudged on.

Memory is a fickle beast. Both precious and daunting memories are subject to the attrition of time. One particular fragment of memory chose to reactivate just as we started to hear the roaring of waves on the shore; just as we’d begun to grin at the nearness of our camp. I confided to Lynne my recollection that there was a scrub band guarding the beach.

“What’s that?” she asked innocently, trying hard to keep both energy and optimism intact. I explained that my vague memory of it was that we had to push through some “jungle” before we’d get to the beach. “And then it’s still a kilometre or so along the beach to our campsite.” I’m not sure I heard Lynne’s response but, bless her, she kept going. And so did everyone else.

At about 7pm we broke through the “jungle” – which actually wasn’t that bad – and stepped out onto New Harbour beach. We were greeted by a bedraggled and grizzled looking group of walkers who had occupied the easterly campsite. “It was more sheltered from the wind here” they told us “although there’s lots more room at the next campsite.” I would have taken this as a territorial hint had I not recalled that the next campsite was far superior to this one.

Lynne arriving at New Harbour as day fades

We left the group to their dinner, and immediately had to work out how to cross the fast-flowing freshwater lagoon. Both Jim and I still had dry socks: something of a badge on a walk like this. We walked as far seaward as possible, and found the shallowest crossing point. The wet-socked ones were less worried, and soon we were all over and lumbering up the long beach towards home.

And what a home it would prove to be. New Harbour is a vast, wide bay held in the embrace of long, south-trending rocky headlands, all set about with hills variously wooded or buttongrassed. This evening, as must often be the case, wet and fresh winds were conversing loudly with long sets of waves, while oystercatchers, gulls and plovers strutted, flew and trotted along the strand.

Amid all this wildness it was oddly comforting to find a set of wooden steps leading from the beach to our campsite. There, sheltered under a dense stand of native laurel trees, we found plenty of fine tent-sites. We used the last of the day’s energy and light to set up tents and get dinner cooking.

Camping beneath native laurels at New Harbour

And after that? How blissful was it to be horizontal, dry and warm inside a tent, and to be sung to sleep by a loud choir of waves? Worth the pain is my answer.

Nor Isobars a Cage

2012-01-21T18:30:00.001+11:00

South West Cape Walk, Part 1

The track between Melaleuca and New Harbour

It doesn’t pay to indebt yourself to the weather gods. After an unseasonally warm spring walk described here I had high hopes for our long-planned summer walk in the far south-west.

Yes, east is east, and south-west is south-west, and never the twain shall meet, in weather terms at least. But I was smiling as Christmas merged into New Year, and warm, dry weather patterns continued. With our group of five confirmed, we booked the light plane from Cambridge to Melaleuca for Monday the 9^th. And almost immediately the long-term forecast started to go pear-shaped.

I’m a keen watcher of weather maps, having studied climatology for two years. It has made me wary of long-term forecasts, but as the day approached the forecasters unfortunately looked like being vindicated. Formerly bold high pressure systems suddenly became shy, shrinking like children at their mother’s skirt – in this case mainland Australia.

Isobars tightened as a series of cold fronts began to push up over Tasmania from the cold Southern Ocean. Four fronts in two days, gale warnings, forecasts of snow, swells to 7 metres off the south-west, winds over 100km/hour at Maatsuyker Island. These are NOT ideal precursors to a walk in the south-west!

Rain on the Plain, Melaleuca, Tasmania

^{On Monday the 9th, after an almost sleepless night listening to wind howling through the trees, I was not surprised to get an early morning phone call from the airline saying our flights would be delayed till at least the afternoon by “unseasonally strong winds”. It was disappointing, but certainly not surprising.}

What to do in the face of such news? My response was to go forecast shopping, as if to will the weather to recover from its ill disposition. I huddled over various different internet weather maps, checked ground observations, watched trends, assessed wind and precipitation projections. And of course I debated the future of the whole trip with other members of the party, some of them not all that keen to continue.

17^th century English poet Richard Lovelace, once imprisoned for his political views, wrote the well known lines:

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.

I tried to convince the group that a little wind and some showers need not stop us getting out there, changing Lovelace’s words to “nor isobars a cage.”

We agreed to set Tuesday afternoon as our flight deadline. Each of us had other commitments, and only a finite number of days off work. While we waited we cast around for other walks, all of them "softer", and all of them still prone to the very same weather pattern that seemed determined to engulf the state.

Around Tuesday lunchtime the call from the airline came, almost at the last possible minute. We would be taking off at 1:30pm. We conferred, and agreed that this should give us enough time to arrive at Melaleuca, get organised, and walk to the New Harbour campsite before dark.

Rain on the Plane, Melaleuca Airstrip

A few of the group popped airsick pills with our hurried lunch, and just before 2pm we lifted off into the showery and blustery beyond. Taking the coastal route via Cockle Creek and the south coast, we turned inland at Cox Bight and landed at Melaleuca during a light shower. Yes, the forecast was for further showers, and possibly storms with hail, but I still found that prospect better than the terrible cabin fever that had gripped me for 30 hours or more. As traveller Paul Theroux puts it, being kept waiting is the human conditon. So how good it was to be waiting no longer, and to be out in this wild and beautiful place!

Some of the planks on Tasmania's South Coast Track

By 3pm we were walking the South Coast Track, the first few kilometres of which took us towards our own wilder, less-travelled track. By 3:10pm Jim, one of our most experienced walkers, had slipped and landed on his face and ribs on one of the first sections of planking. Bleeding and shaken, but still in one piece, he convinced us he was okay to continue. His ribs even coped with the mirth caused by our warnings against further “planking”. Still, it was not the happiest start to what was already a fraught trip.

Sharing the Shore

2012-01-08T13:20:00.000+11:00

Summer surf on Tasmania's East Coast

They come in boats, they come in cars, they come on foot. They bring their ragged temporary dwellings, their exotic foods, their noisy animals, their strange cultural practices. If it feels like an invasion, to the creatures that live on our shorelines it really IS an invasion.

Every summer, Tasmanians come down to the shore, to spend those few precious days or weeks with sand between their toes and salt on their skin. Whether the weather cooperates is almost beside the point. It’s about getting back in touch with saltwater and ourselves. It’s a primaeval ritual so deep and strong that it’s easy to believe those who say we came from the sea in the first place.

Scenes from East Coast Tasmania

But as creatures of comfort and instant gratification, these days we’re inclined to overlook who we share the shoreline with. Shorebirds are one obvious example.

I am visiting the Bay of Fires in Tasmania’s north-east. Today it is living up to its name, in temperature at least. By the time we reach the shore at Policemans Point the temperature is in the high 30s. Unless you’re immersed in the water, the conditions are ideal for neither bird nor beast. We still manage to see a dozen different species of shorebirds, including a pair of endangered little tern (Sterna albifrons sinensis).

As we wander the estuary shore, we start to see why some of these birds are endangered. There are a few boats messing about in the water. On the beach there are a couple of dogs and about a dozen people. In Tasmania that constitutes a crowd! There are also tyre tracks all over the sand: in short a pretty normal summer’s afternoon at the beach.

But if you’re a little tern or a hooded plover, both birds which lay eggs straight on the sand above high tide, it’s perilous. At any time eggs or chicks are vulnerable to crushing, trampling or harassment by humans or their agents.

People, their feet, and their machines, can harm what lives on the shoreline

As we watch a dog lollops up the beach doing what dogs do. It sniffs, runs, jumps about in the water, barks its happiness, turns to see where its humans are. Meanwhile it is getting nearer to three pelicans resting on the water. It doesn’t appear to have designs on the huge birds, but nonetheless its presence is too much for them. They lift off like lumbering, feathered float planes, and circle the estuary looking for somewhere safer to be. It’s an innocent enough scenario, but one that is repeated – and worsted – all over Australia’s accessible coastlines. And it’s avoidable.

A dog innocently scares off a group of pelicans

Only the most severely eco-pathic individual would deliberately want to harm shorebirds. But through ignorance and an over-strong focus on only our own needs, we can still be responsible for putting fatal pressure on the birds that share the shore with us.

One simple action here would be to have dogs on leashes when there are birds on beaches. Another would be to keep vehicles off beaches, or where they’re loading/unloading boats, only access the water via a straight line perpendicular to the shore. And for people walking on shorelines, the simple rule is to stick to the wetter sand, so as to avoid the nesting sites that may be in the drier, higher sands.

I would add one other suggestion. Get a pair of binoculars and a bird book, and start getting to know who it is we share the shore with. I’ve yet to hear anyone say they regretted taking up bird-watching.

Dog and pelican: both delightful, but not comfortable together

The Nature of Christmas

2011-12-26T12:34:00.000+11:00

I recently chortled at a one-liner that bemoaned crime in multi-storey carparks as “wrong on so many levels”. I thought to invert the line and apply it to Christmas, an occasion that seems to me right on so many levels.

Signs of Christmas: waratah blooming on Kunanyi/Mt Wellington

At the personal level I love the chance Christmas offers to stop and to get together with some dear ones. Socially I love the “good will” option that we might take up with our neighbours and acquaintances. Theologically I love that the birth of a child in poverty, in a dusty backwater of the Roman empire, caused – and still can cause – such ructions among the powerful and self-important. I even love the crazy hodge-podge of traditions, from the heart-stopping sublimity of some carols to the head-shaking silliness of a white-bearded fat man house-breaking through chimneys.

But when it comes to nature and Christmas, as an Australian I really do get a little stumped. So many of the themes and traditions of Christmas are based on winter solstice: the shortest and darkest days; the coldest and bleakest weather. It’s a time where hope can seem deeply buried. No wonder fatted beasts are slaughtered and ale flows free!

In contrast, we in the southern hemisphere have just passed the longest day. Far from scraping up cellared food, we are surrounded by the plump fecundity of summer gardens. There is a surfeit of light, and often of heat. Roasted meats, plum puddings and mulled wines can feel a little out of place, not to mention reindeer, sleighs and songs of snow.

So what have Australians done to “indigenise” Christmas? In the late 1940s, composer WG James and lyricist John Wheeler wrote a series of carols that wove Australian outback themes into a Christmas setting. I was part of a generation of Australian school children that learned to sing about brolgas dancing and drovers singing “noel noel”.

Brolgas in a Kakadu wetland

Despite their blatant artifice, they remain strangely affecting for me. So when, earlier this year, I actually saw brolgas dancing “out on the plains” of Kakadu, I was thrilled. Of course we didn’t have to go to Kakadu to find Christmas birds. This year one of the first sounds of Christmas morning in our bush was the soft “ting” of green rosellas greeting the dawn. These were my gentle Christmas bells, even if they were followed by the harsh “cark caaark” of some ravens: a reminder that softness is always tempered in Australia, even here in Tasmania.

A yellow-tailed black cockatoo decorates our banksia tree

A few days earlier we’d been visited by some wise cockatoos, perhaps the same ones which came last Christmas. Again they became the most welcome of decorations, landing on one of the banksia trees I'd planted a decade ago. And again they feasted on the banksia cones, conversing in a very Australian way, via scratchy half-squawks and atonal squeaks.

I guess Christmas is everywhere – and anywhere – if you care to look.

Meet The Quokkas

2011-12-18T16:49:00.000+11:00

[Glimpses of South West W.A. - Part 2]

A quokka on Rottnest Island, Western Australia

No doubt Paul McCartney only intended it as a witty one-liner. But when he called this place “the rottenest island I’ve ever been on”, he was neither the first nor the last to give Rottnest Island a bad name.

It started with Dutch sailors who bumped into the West Australian coastline, sometimes literally, in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Seeing the marsupial quokkas in large numbers on this island, they called it “Rottnest”, meaning rat’s nest. How they mistook a 3-4kg hopping marsupial for a rat is beyond me. But then I have never been at sea for months or years at a time. It does strange things to men.

So “Rat’s Nest” it became, and that was just the start of its ignominy. In the late 19^th century the island, about 5km off the coast, became infamous as a largely Aboriginal prison. On our visit we hear stories about Wadjemup, “place across the water” in the Noongar language, from Lennie, a Noongar man.

He tells us how the Rottnest prison, built using mainly Aboriginal prisoner labour, held large numbers of Aboriginal men and boys. Many were imprisoned for breaking laws they could not even comprehend. As we look over the water towards the mainland, Lennie asks us to imagine how those men would have felt when they could see their home camp fires by night.

Dark past: a holding cell on Rottnest Island

I am far from agreeing with the ex-Beatle about the island. It is a beautiful place, with miles of stunning beaches and coastline lapped by the azure tints of the Indian Ocean. And it has a fascinating history and an enviably laid-back feel to it. But the fraught and under-told Aboriginal history does sit awkwardly alongside the “million miles from care” tourism tag that “Rotto” – as most locals call it – carries.

There are other unacknowledged discrepancies like this in the west. It appears to be feeling little of the economic uncertainty hitting the east of Australia. Perhaps the enjoyment of prosperity in an enviably beautiful place is able to paper over cracks that might elsewhere be acknowledged.

I had earlier heard stories of the cruel and ignorant treatment of quokkas on Rottnest. During drunken end-of-year trips to the island, local youths had invented quokka soccer, a “game” that included these comely little marsupials being kicked to death “for fun”. It made international news in 2003, after which local authorities vowed to crack down on such behaviour.

A collage of scenes from Rottnest Island

Despite their maltreatment, the quokkas on Rottnest aren’t fazed by human presence. I stand and watch a group resting in the shade of a shrub. Occasionally one hops out to prod and snuffle at the ground. To my Tasmanian eyes it is like a smaller version of our pademelon. Its movements, its pear-shape, its tapered snout, are all similar to my back-yard “paddies”. Apart from size, only its sandier colouring and noticeably more rounded ears are standout differences.

I stand quietly watching, taking the odd photograph, but mostly simply marvelling at the compact completeness of this wee beast. Its sweetly furred face, set with dark liquid eyes and a matching snout tip, would surely beguile anyone with a scintilla of creature feeling.

I consider again how authorities have responded to quokka cruelty. Somehow their message not to get “blotto on Rotto” seems as much to encourage as to discourage the kind of drunkenness that unleashes the dumb brute inside of us. Or is that being unfair to brutes?

Curious Karri

2011-12-11T13:07:00.000+11:00

[Glimpses of South West W.A. - Part 1]

A large karri tree, Boranup Forest, Western Australia

Perhaps it’s just me, but primary school geography always seemed full of trees. From the African savannah and the Amazonian rainforest, to the jungles of Borneo and the conifers of Scandinavia, other countries were where you’d find extraordinary trees. If Australian trees were mentioned at all, it was the jarrah and karri forests of Western Australia. And that may as well have been a foreign country.

I arrive in the Boranup Forest, in the Margaret River region of Western Australia, towards evening. We drive slowly past a fire crew that is marshalling traffic through a control burn in jarrah forest. (The same fire crews will soon be fighting the fires that devastate Prevelly and Gnarabup, but that's another story.)

The place we’re staying is less than a kilometre away. The evening is cool and overcast, and the fire is downwind of us. Curious, we return after dark to watch.

The Boranup Forest burn-off at night

This is no inferno. Flames ripple and trickle across the forest floor; climb half-heartedly up trunks; lick lower branches clean of leaves. For the most part the sound is that of gentle waves on a distant shore. Occasionally there is a roar as flames create a Roman candle inside a hollow tree; a crash as those flames bring the tree crashing to the blackened earth in a spray of sparks.

In the morning the fire continues to creep through the jarrah. We drive a few kilometres away to an unburned karri forest. It is the first time I’ve seen karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor), and I’m keen for a close-up view.

We walk into the forest. It is still and quiet, except for the occasional cheee-wit of a golden whistler. That at least is completely familiar. Likewise the bracken undergrowth. Although it is a little late for wildflowers, there are hibbertia and crowea flowers that are not unlike eastern varieties.

But there is something else – something elusive – that distinguishes this from the eucalypt forests I am used to seeing “over east”. Although this is regrowth forest, maybe only a few decades old, the trees are already giants, already full of character. Their anthropoid curves and sleeves-rolled-up limbs give them a profoundly soulful presence.

Boranup Karri Forest

I feel like a late-arriving dinner guest. The other “guests” have paused mid-sentence to turn and stare, benign but curious. As we walk back to the car I’m tempted to turn suddenly, to see if I can catch the karri turning back to their animated conversation. Perhaps next time.

Further Down the Track

2011-12-04T15:43:00.001+11:00

[The Leeaberra Track Part 4]

We’d spent two restful nights at a great campsite, and half a day blissfully exploring upstream. The weather had cleared and was fine and mild. What could possibly taint our time in this beautiful place?

Shortly after seven in the morning Tim wandered over as we emerged from the tent. Pointing downstream, he suggested we should have a look. We pushed through bracken, clambered over and around a fallen tree, and there it was. The actual second Douglas River campsite. It sat high on the river bank, with direct river views, filtered sun, sitting logs and cleared communal eating areas. Perfect!

The Real Campsite: Ah well ... still a good place for breakfast

Apart from castigating ourselves for the eejits we’d been, we did the only other thing we could sensibly do. We carted our gear the whole 20 metres to the “new” campsite and enjoyed breakfast at the best address in the neighbourhood, smiling sheepishly as we basked in its sun, sounds and sights.

When you camp by a river, whether at the wrong or right site, your walk from there is likely to be uphill. At least we were right on that count. A steep climb for a little over an hour started to bring us into country full of grass trees (Xanthorrhoea australis).

Lynne takes a break among the grass trees

If plants can have characters, then grass trees are the kind that would wear striped suits with loud bow ties! Starting as small clumps of spiky grass-like leaves (hence their common name), they are notoriously slow growers, advancing perhaps only a few centimetres per year. Plants develop a trunk as they grow older. Xanthorrhoea recover strongly after fire and other set-backs, often responding with a quirky growth habit, such as bent or multiple trunks, or crazily crooked flower spikes.

A Western Australian grass tree reaching sky-ward ... eventually

When/if they develop a trunk, the elevated leaf clump comes to resemble a grass skirt, while the flower spikes projecting above the skirts have a spearlike look. It was the spears protruding out of fire-blackened trunks that led Europeans to call Xanthorrhoea “black boys”, a name now considered offensive.

On this section of the track I was more than once convinced there was a walker coming towards us, only to find I’d seen a grass tree in my peripheral vision. We enjoyed meeting these characters of the Tasmanian bush, and the change in vegetation they brought with them. But as we moved south down the track, part of which is an old vehicular track, we started to find clumps of dead and dying grass trees.

It was not the result of drought or fire; the usual suspects in Australia. It’s been caused by the fungus-like plant disease Phytophthora cinnamomi (sometimes called dieback or cinnamon fungus). As we walked south the carnage grew, as grass trees, and other species such as banksia and she-oaks, were dead and dying along the track.

The pathogen is introduced and spread largely via human action. It spreads via mud on tyres, boots and camping equipment. The north-south only direction of this walk is one way in which its spread can be confined: that and the careful cleaning of gear that’s been in touch with soil or mud in infected areas.

Dead and dying: grass trees, banksias and she-oaks in a Phytophthora-infected area

The haunting aspect of this disease is that its effect is insidiously selective. In the long-term the affected bush will still be populated by plants. It may look perfectly healthy, but that will be an illusion. It will be made up of only by those species that are resistant to the disease. Gone will be those species – like grass trees – which are highly susceptible to Phytophthora.

One day, a few weeks after the Leeaberra walk, I am walking down the Hobart Rivulet Track on my way to work. Passing the primary school my children once attended, I hear the familiar sound of children playing. At this distance the voices are generic, indistinct, and I imagine my children playing there still. I imagine the always-child in me playing there too. I become wistful about time passing, things moving on – even in two generations.

It gets me thinking about the legacy we have left in Tasmania, after less than ten generations. Down the Leeaberra Track, for instance, where is the sound of the real black boys playing? Further down the track will we lose the grass trees too? Change may be a necessary part of life, but do we want to be responsible for change that is harmful; change that impoverishes; change that is preventable?

Listening to the River

2011-11-26T17:45:00.000+11:00

[The Leeaberra Track Part 3]

Lynne and Tim at "The Growler", Douglas River

And on the third day we rested. I realise God managed to wait till the seventh day, but clearly we are not in His league. We had already planned two nights at the second campsite, so when the rain persisted through the morning, we needed little persuasion to stay in our sleeping bags.

All morning light rain fell, pooling in the tree tops, sending plopping drops, loud and large, onto our tents. The river shooshed along nearby; birds chitted and sang; we chatted, read or dozed, stirring only when bodily urges dictated. There is something profoundly satisfying about this kind of rest after exertion, especially when you are warm and dry and in good company.

Until well into the afternoon, the benignly wet weather continued to give us an excuse not to get up. We breakfasted in our tents, with only a quick excursion outside – during a dry spell – to boil the billy. But by late lunchtime our luck ran out: the showers ceased. Via negotiation hollered from tent to tent, we agreed to emerge for a late lunch and a “leg stretch”.

Rockpool detail, Douglas River

Our exercise, carrying only day-packs and camera gear, comprised a very slow stroll up the very beautiful Douglas River. Deeply enthralled, we stopped frequently to photograph, share our finds, or just simply watch and listen to this lovely small stream. How perfectly Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” captures the spell that the river wove around us that afternoon!

Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver – glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble.

At our slow wandering pace, we started to notice detail: the varying sounds of water on rocks, the contrasting textures and colours of rocks, the changing smells from forest litter to waterfall ozone. One small waterfall we dubbed “the growler”, as its particular geometry gave it a deep, resonant “voice”.

A little further upstream we added to the bestiary when we saw a “crocodile”! Joint lines in sedimentary rock aligning with eroded holes to create not one but two stylised sets of croc jaws and eyes. Facing each other, they looked like some sort of primitive bas-relief of crocodiles kissing.

The "Kissing Crocodiles" sit above a coal seam, Douglas River

Beneath our stylised reptiles, we were surprised again to find a coal seam with evidence of 19^th century mining, in the form of an adit, a kind of horizontal shaft. Just how desperately difficult it must have been to mine and move coal from this rugged and enclosed valley is evidenced by the small scope of the extraction.

We noticed other less benevolent aspects of the river. Despite the bed of the stream being wide and well watered, we saw very few shrubs or trees at low levels. Instead we found freshly concussed rock, savagely pruned trees, and mounds of debris and flood wrack, some of it well up the river’s banks. Clearly the floods of the previous winter, and the winter before, had scoured much of the vegetation flat.

On a calm and gentle spring day it was hard to imagine this. But the occasional forest giant, dead, bare and lodged up the bank, gave us some idea of the ferocity of flooding.

A gentle river today, but the gouged tree tells another story

Eventually we wandered, hopped and scrambled our way back to camp. We had plenty to talk and think about. I found it interesting that a few short hours immersed in a place like this could have us noticing and naming features; pondering on significant events and changes; creating a kind of a mental map that meant more to us than the cartographic one. Given several thousand years, would these kinds of thoughts become song-lines? Or part of the dreaming? Was that how it worked for Aboriginal people who lived intimately with places like this for so long?

Whatever the answer, as I settled back into camp for a second night, it was more than the starry sky that had me feeling small – and young.

And the Weather Gods Smiled

2011-11-23T14:28:00.000+11:00

[The Leeaberra Track Part 2]

Ah, the pleasures of walking in spring in Tasmania! You never know what cards the weather gods are going to deal you. In that regard it's much the same as walking here in summer or autumn. Or winter, for that matter.

On day two the vague forecast for this part of the world is for late rain. But by the middle of the day the clouds are already thickening. After our morning being seduced by the cooling waters and other delights of the Douglas River at the Heritage Falls campsite, we discuss staying another night. We end up agreeing that we’ve seen the area's major sights, and convince ourselves that the clouds actually mean it won't be as hot as yesterday.

Consulting the map, we note that our ascent to the next high point is only about one and a half hours: a much shorter time – and smaller altitude gain – than yesterday. Surely it can’t be that bad? We sling our packs up onto logs, wince our way into them, and immediately feel our resolve eroding.

Fresh is a relative term here, but with slightly fresher legs and lungs, we manage to scramble up the slope, around or over numerous windfall trees. For most of the first hour it's sharply steep, but then it levels off accommodatingly. Tim’s theory is that there are always four false summits before you reach the top. We hope he's wrong, but by the time we reach the day's high point - the saddle near Lookout Hill - we seem to have confirmed his theory.

[Tim plunges through the ferns on the Leeaberra Track, Day 2]

There are, of course, various ways to beat false summits. One is not to walk at all, but that seems lazy, if not cowardly. Another is to drop onto the ridge top by parachute or helicopter. I once did the latter, in the line of duty of course, landing on top of the Ironbound Range, on Tasmania's South Coast Track. After the peace-shattering chopper had left, I sampled the walk from the Ironbounds down to Louisa Bay for some map notes I was preparing. Carrying a day pack and talking into a tape recorder (yes, so last century!), I found the experience surprisingly unsatisfying, despite the stunning scenery. Maybe one of the rules of walk satisfaction is that you have to sweat and toil for your moments of joy.

Certainly at our saddle on the Leeaberra Track we’re sweaty and breathing hard, in need of a long drink and scroggin break. The promised rain seems to have vapourised, and the sun is back again, hot and strong. We don’t bother to find out exactly where the lookout part of Lookout Hill is. There’s eucalypt forest in most directions, and we're doubtful any high point will offer a less interrupted view than where we have stopped.

To the east we can see the long strands of Templestowe and Seymour Beaches. Further south we think we make out the township of Bicheno, tucked in behind hazy hills. As we guzzle water and Sour Squirm lollies, our conversation and imaginings turn towards the town, with its lattes and thick crust pizzas; its hot showers and soft beds.

What are we thinking? These are dangerous musings at such an early stage in a walk! With warning words against the "fleshpots of Bicheno", I hoist my pack and hurry off down the track, brushing noisily through a thick green understorey of hardwater ferns. The sound drags me back to the here and now.

For a time we're into the kind of easy rhythm that sometimes comes on the second day, especially when you're walking downhill. Still, it's a long march, and we're staggering again by the time we reach the next turn-off. I'm inclined to give the side-trip to Nichols Cap and Nichols Needles a miss; anything to get us to the campsite sooner. But I'm soon convinced that I may never pass this way again; may never get to see these unusual dolerite pillars up close again.

[Lynne and Tim on Nichols Cap, with Nichols Needles behind]

We replace heavy, full packs with light day-packs and almost skip toward what proves to be a surprisingly spectacular sight. I've seen and climbed many dolerite mountains, and yet somehow these smaller siblings hold their own for being in this humbler east coast setting. From the bony prominence of the Cap we look down a quite vertiginous drop between us and the twin spikes of the Needles. But the wind is rising and the cloud thickening. It's time to strap on our engines of torture for today's final push.

We stumble down to the campsite late, but there's time to set up our tents and cook dinner before it's dark. Just as we finish it starts to sprinkle, and by the time we're into our sleeping bags, there's a steady patter of rain to send us to sleep. We're smiling: just occasionally the weather gods are spectacularly benign.

[Consolation: the second Douglas River campsite]

A Good Walk Spoiled

2011-10-30T11:31:00.000+11:00

[The Leeaberra Track Part 1]

Below Heritage Falls on the Douglas River

The obsessions of youth often signify something more than the object of the obsession. Girls and horses is one that’s been well explored, but there are many others. I, for instance, was obsessed with golf. By my late teens I had become good enough to play off a single digit handicap. Once I even completed an 18 hole round in one under par. This secured me a trophy whose uselessness was profoundly amusing. A cut crystal sherry decanter was not the perfect prize for a (then) teetotal 17 year old.

By my early twenties I had lost enthusiasm for golf, and was developing some sympathy for Mark Twain's summation of it as a good walk spoiled. Even at the height of my obsession I was at times distracted from golf by the flora and fauna on view on my home course. I remember staring boggle-eyed at spawning eels; pondering the amazing semi-submerged life of mangroves; being transported by the warbling of butcher birds; laughing at the acrobatic antics of galahs. It didn't bode well for my golfing future, but was certainly a pointer to interests that now predominate.

I was reminded of all this when we recently walked the Leeaberra Track in Tasmania's Douglas-Apsley National Park. The three day walk normally begins at Thompsons Marshes, inland of the east coast town of Bicheno. But severe flooding in recent years had taken out two bridges on the access road. Without a four wheel drive vehicle to get us to the track head, we were forced to walk an extra 5.5 kilometres up old logging tracks. It was like having to play golf off the back marker.

To add to our handicap, it was one of those rare October days that gets uncomfortably hot. The walk – from near sea level to 400 metres – proved cruelly, sweatily tedious. We had estimated it would take us between one and a half and two hours. It took nearly three and a half. We arrived at Thompsons Marshes late in the afternoon, thirsty, sweaty and feeling as though we had already done our day’s work. Welcome to the start of the walk!

Tim and Lynne at the "start" of the track, 3 and a half hours after starting!

A good campsite can cover a multitude of sins, and when we finally got to the first night’s camp beside the Douglas River, it turned out to be one of those. Nestled high on the river bank, beneath a canopy of tall trees, the site had most of what you could ask for, including some useful lounging logs.

The hot clear day had turned to a cool clear night, and after a welcome meal, and an even more welcome wash in the river, we relaxed against our logs. Stars pricked the dark above us. Robbed of some familiarity by the trees that blocked our view of their companions, the stars’ beauty and mystery seemed to multiply.

As the river shushed, and currawongs bugled a cheery last post, I contemplated getting out my tripod and trying for a long exposure shot of the canopied stars. But the physical and mental effort needed felt beyond me. Instead comfort, inertia and sore muscles prevailed. After a little more lounging and yarning, we stumbled off to our tents, and slept like our campsite’s logs.

From very early the birds were up and active. A tuning orchestra of calls drew me into consciousness, from the clink of currawongs, the ding of green rosellas, and the cheeeerr of fantailed cuckoos; to the chip of crescent honeyeaters, the weeee of firetails and the dizzy-dizzy-dee of grey fantails. You realise how tuned to birds you’ve become when you’re identifying their calls before you’ve even registered you’re awake!

The morning was set aside for waterfall visits. If you hanker after high mountains and expansive views, the Leeaberra Track would probably not be your first choice. But if you can’t get enough of running, tumbling, gushing, falling or tranquil rock-cloistered water, it’s near enough to perfect.

Tim takes a shortcut down the Douglas River

We picked our way down steep and sometimes slippery tracks – and non-tracks – to the two falls that neighboured our campsite: Heritage and Leeaberra Falls. This was as far as I had been on previous visits to the north of the park. I remember being surprised to find waterfalls of this height and volume in the “dry” east of Tassie.

Flowing water has always entranced me, and although the flow over the falls was more modest this time, it was still impressive enough to still conversation. Each of us wandered around the falls, photographed, or just sat contemplating the ever-changing interplay between fluid and rock.

We knew we soon had to return to the campsite and put those heavy packs back on. Yet somehow the night’s rest and our exposure to this beauty had already started to unspoil this good walk. We were ready for day two.

The Seeing-Nose Dog

2011-10-04T17:11:00.000+11:00

Our dog "Noo" enjoying the bush

Quadrupeds are not meant to trip. So it is a little unsettling that our dog, Noo, has started tripping over on our walks through the bush. That she is also barking at shapes and shadows, and has a tell-tale milky film over her eyes, is enough to convince us of the hard truth. At almost fifteen years of age, she is starting to lose her eyesight.

She is going deaf too, seeming to ignore our normal whistles and calls, and only responding to loud claps and yells. I haven’t clapped while walking since we were advised to do this in the Alaskan bush, as a way of alerting bears to our presence. I’m still not entirely sure it wasn’t a joke they play on visitors, as they also told us to sing and talk loudly, and to wear “bear bells”. When you’ve behaved in such a loony fashion while walking, a little clapping and shouting seems quite ordinary in comparison.

When I was young my sisters and I used to debate which would be worse: losing your sight or losing your hearing. As my eyes age and glasses become an essential part of life, I admit to tasting slightly the grief of that power fading. If I was unable to hear music or birdsong or soft conversation, that grief would grow terribly.

Yet somehow I cannot project such grief onto our dog, even as I holler and clap my way through our daily walk. She sheds the years every time we are out, bounding puppy-like through the bush. Although she may stumble over the odd stick or rough spot, I would still back her to find her way home blindfolded. Nose to the ground, scanning territory like an ill-disciplined minesweeper, she has her number one sense fully and joyfully in operation.

"Noo" reads the bush through smell and taste

I am a pauper in this smelling game. Deploying my mere five million smell receptors from 1.75 metres above the ground, Noo puts her 200 million receptors right onto the subject. She also uses 40% more of her brain to smell than I do. So rather than mourning her declining capacities, or metaphorically putting her out to pasture, I really should engage her as my seeing-nose dog!

I fancy, for instance, that she could tell me a great deal about the cast of characters that have had this bush as their stage all night. Here a pademelon or a family of possums; there a goshawk or a frogmouth. And she’d doubtless fill me in on the plot too: a dispute in this tree; a scent marking on that bush; an owl's pursuit and kill over there; plus the ordinary munch, scratch, hiss and growl of everynight in our bush.

While my life with dogs did not start auspiciously – my first childhood dog was a neurotic people-biter – I have since had four long-lived, characterful and faithful dogs. They have sometimes been hard work, as most worthwhile things are. But time spent with them in the bush has taught me new ways of looking and feeling and smelling and hearing. And their joyful dedication to the present tense is something I am constantly striving to learn.

Dog tired! Our 1980s dog "Wup" shares a rest with me during a bushwalk (photo - KDM)

Climbing With Darwin

2011-09-25T18:18:00.005+10:00

The summit of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington from the southern side

In February 1836, while on the voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin climbed a mountain. It happened to be Tasmania’s Mount Wellington. For years it had been blandly labelled Table Mountain, but in 1832 it was renamed in honour of the victorious Duke.

Darwin’s ascent of the mountain took him five and a half hours. He blamed this slowness on the “stupid fellow” who guided him via the wetter gullies on Wellington’s southern flanks, rather than up the drier northern slopes.

I look out on those same wetter slopes from my writing desk. Although much has changed in the 175 years since Darwin’s walk, the gullies remain damp. It gives me some sympathy for the man struggling up the same creek lines that harbour the same tree-ferns, that produce the same “gloomy shade”, he described.

But Darwin also carried some of that gloom with him. He had been at sea for nearly five years on what was supposed to be a three year voyage. Sea sick, home sick, perhaps sick-at-heart over the implications of his ideas, he was described by the Beagle’s Captain FitzRoy, as “so much the worse for a long voyage”.

Certainly he was in no mood to be impressed by Hobart and its mountain when the Beagle docked. After comparing the town unfavourably with Sydney, he went on to describe Mt Wellington as “of no picturesque beauty.” Yet he was still determined to climb the mountain. And rather than be easily put off, Darwin made two attempts to reach the summit, succeeding only on his second try.

On that fine and warm February day he was kitted out in walking clothes that would horrify the modern walker. They were basically the same as any 1830s gentleman’s street clothes. Ankle length woollen trousers were tucked inside leather boots; a coarse long-sleeved shirt and woollen waistcoat covered the body; a neckerchief covered the throat; a sunhat covered the head. He may well have discarded his heavy outer coat and pocketed his neckerchief, but his clothes would still have been heavy and cumbersome, his boots poorly suited to mud and slippery surfaces.

Dicksonia antarctica: lover and creator of "gloomy shade"

I picture him on those slippery slopes, a scratched, muddied, puffing, sweating gentleman, tetchily at odds with his incompetent guide. Certainly in his journal he summed it up as “a severe day’s work”.

But once at the summit Darwin seems to have recovered some of his appreciation of life. “The day was splendidly clear, and we enjoyed a most extensive view” he wrote. He stayed on the summit for some hours, not returning to Hobart town till around eight in the evening. I smile at his inability to resist noting in his journal that he’d found a better way down.

Nonetheless I resist poking fun at the famous gentleman from this safe historical distance. It may seem fair to say that getting to the top of this particular mountain is nothing out of the ordinary. But in the context of his time, his health, his equipment, his food and the rigours of a long sailing voyage, he showed great stamina. Not many of us actually continue to push ourselves; to explore; to edit out the pain and sweat; the march flies, the heat, the sleet, the wind, the fog, the fear, the fatigue or whatever else might be involved in getting to a mountain summit.

That stamina in itself is enough to earn some small esteem from me, a fellow walker who has trodden some of the same fern gullies, reached that same unspectacular yet uplifting summit. That alone I can admire. And of course there is the person who this Darwin became, the famous Darwin whose mind and body ranged over some of the wildest terrain, and grasped at some of the hardest ideas possible.

But there is another Darwin, a kind of ghost-Darwin - one that is far more like you and me - that I fancy is always climbing that mountain. It mutters its way up the gullies; it heaves towards those summit cliffs; it humphs at inept companions; it mulls over its deep and dangerous thoughts; it is uncomforted over the absence of its loved ones.

Perhaps one day it will reach that summit again, and get some sense of rest and peace as it looks out over a world far grander than it - or any Darwin - could imagine.

Charles Darwin around the time of the Beagle's voyage

Take Off Your Shoes!

2011-09-18T16:48:00.002+10:00

God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses! . . . Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground.” – Exodus 3:4-5 (abridged)

Sunrise and moonset over Kunanyi/Mt Wellington

A friend used to frequent a place called Bastard Hill. When he asked why it was called that, a grizzled local replied “because it’s a bastard of a place”. It’s the kind of sensibility that has lead to place names like Dismal Swamp, Useless Loop, Mount Buggery, Bust-Me-Gall Hill and Stinky Bay.

When it comes to place names, Australians don’t get lyrical. We tend to call a spade a bloody shovel. We’re generally not good at poetics or reverence, tending to shy away from overt exhibitions of emotional connection. The exceptions that prove the rule are places like Uluru and, arguably, the MCG. The former is as close to a universally accepted version of holy ground as Australians are likely to get. The Melbourne Cricket Ground’s “sacredness” is only likely to be recogised by that vociferous minority of Australians comprising most Melburnians and the sports mad.

Off-shore you might add places like Gallipoli and Kokoda, but certainly the list of “sacred sites” is a small one for most non-Aboriginal Australians. I wonder if that reluctance to overtly own our connection to place is a short-coming worth working on. I think back to former Tasmanian Premier Robin Gray’s description of the Franklin River as a “brown leech-ridden ditch”. Surely that bluntness merely disguised a wish to exploit or harm that wilderness river.

In thinking about this in local terms, I realised with a slight shock that I have no name for “our” neighbourhood bush. I walk in it most days, whether for a 10 minutes dog walk; as a “long cut” on my way to work; or simply to get out and breathe, ponder, talk, exercise, pray, listen, explore or photograph. To us its either “the back track” or simply “the bush”. But should it have a proper name?

What might this bird orchid be singing?

Freeing my inner Eeyore for a moment, I’d be inclined to suggest that there isn’t anything particularly spectacular about it. It’s a mixed forest of peppermint and stringybark eucalypt on steepish, flinty mudstone broken here and there by outcrops of sandstone. Although its understorey of shrubs and ground-covers sometimes approaches prettiness, it has been much put-upon over the years, variously fire-ravaged, over-tracked, eroded and beset by weeds. All in all most would feel it more holey than holy.

But what constitutes “holy”? According to the Talmud, “every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, 'Grow, grow.'” How mind-boggling is the thought of every living thing attended by a celestial maintenance team? Only marginally more boggling than the sight of the night sky above the bush; or the moon setting over the cloud-blanketed summit of the mountain; or a bird orchid rising in mute worship from this spring’s leaf litter; or a gang of black cockatoos flouncing and squawking their way through the forest.

The night sky over our bush

Angels aside, the bush holds enough small wonders to still my soul every time I’m open to that. If holy ground is where you can feel insignificant and yet paradoxically connected to that which IS significant, then yes, this bush is holy ground.

Which makes it a place God can “call” to me from. I think it’s time to take off my shoes.

[I would like to acknowledge Barbara Brown Taylor's book "An Altar in the World" for seed ideas as well as the Talmud quote.]

The Wild Wet West

2011-09-11T13:19:00.001+10:00

[Scenes from Tasmania’s West Coast]

[Roaring Forties waves pound the shore at Granville Harbour, Tasmania]

It is an effort to get to Tasmania’s west coast – its actual coast. Even when you’ve reached the unofficial capital, Queenstown, the nearest accessible salt water is still 40km away by road. And what a road!

Tasmania’s road builders were reputedly paid by the curve, not by the mile. The joke is very close to the truth for the road between Queenstown and Strahan. In the 1930s, the Commonwealth government appeared keen to evade its obligation to pay for a road between the two towns. They thought that they would succeed by agreeing to only fund the construction of the road surface, but not any bridges or culverts.

I can picture the Australian government advisor poring over the map; looking at the rumpled topography; considering the drainage patterns; raising an eyebrow at the huge rainfall. Surely the impoverished State government, he eventually suggests, would never be able to cover the considerable expense of bridging such a route.

He hadn't reckoned on the engineering skills of a workforce used to constructing mine access roads in the wild and hilly west. Today the road is a testament to the cunning of the locals: a triumph of the "little" people over the big city sophisticates.

But the triumph comes at a cost for any road traveller prone to motion sickness. The notoriously winding road follows the contours and somehow evades all of the many creeks. We arrive at dusk, a little green, and mightily relieved.

The next day we explore the shores of Macquarie Harbour by mountain bike. Showers scud by, mud flies up from the wheels, and muscles unaccustomed to the work are stretched. We rest in the rainforest around Hogarth Falls. A deep still green pervades the place. Vivid lime green ferns, both terrestrial and epiphytic, are the highlights contrasting with the regal green of myrtle beech and blackwood, and the whisky hues of the creek water.

[Forest scenes from western Tasmania]

I have been in Fiordland, New Zealand, at the same time of the year. There similar forests are watered by similar clouds heaved onto the land by the same roaring forties. In Patagonia I’m told I could experience the same weather, see sibling forests also dominated by southern beech trees of the Nothofagus genus.

Gondwana may have separated nearly 100 million years back, but some of the genes are remarkably and recognisably persistent in these now geographically scattered forests.

A few nights later we sleep in a cabin in Corinna’s Gondwanan forest. The night is still, and remarkably silent. It’s the kind of quiet you can hear. Or perhaps that’s the sound of your blood pulsing. And then the rain comes, first tapping, then drumming, then thrashing and lashing and deluging on the roof just metres above us.

We’re in a rainforest: it’s what you would expect. But this is not ordinary rain. It’s borne by heavily pregnant clouds, which have sprawled down and broken their waters directly over us. The thundering gush makes conversation impossible, even if I wasn’t determined to try and stay asleep.

Here the water cycle is vivid and concise. Just a few kilometres downstream from Corinna, the Pieman River will swiftly return this newborn water to the ocean, although it will meet resistance from the incoming rush of gale-blown swells at the Pieman Heads. And the same winds will bring more clouds, low, fat and ragged, to dump yet more rain and hail on the already sodden land.

But in the morning the birds sing the silence awake, and the sun returns. In the forest, rising vapour interfingers with the growing sunlight, and all seems right with the world.

[Morning, Tarkine rainforest, western Tasmania]

Raven Mad

2011-09-01T17:19:00.003+10:00

‘”Nevermore”, quoth the raven’ - Edgar Allen Poe

Why do corvids get such mixed reviews across so many cultures? What have crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and their clan done to deserve our generally negative view of them? Words might have something to do with it. Perhaps colour too.

Words first. When extremely hungry, you’re said to be ravenous, and are likely to gobble your food greedily. Just like a raven? Well, no. The word ravenous has its origins in the Latin word rapina (whence words like rape, with its implications of preying upon and plundering).

The bird word, raven, has an entirely different etymology, going right back to the Old High German word hraban. Any guilt about its greedy or plundering ways is surely guilt by association.

But then colour is added to that prejudice. In ancient folklore, from Hebrew to Roman to Australian Aboriginal, the crow was originally white. It was only made black as punishment. An example is the story of Wakarla the crow, from the Adnymathanha people of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges. Because of the crow’s lack of respect for his elders, Wildu the eagle punishes Wakarla by turning him black using smoke.

Urrakurli the magpie, not quite as culpable as Wakarla, is only half-punished, ending up black and white. For the Adnymathanha these tales contain moral lessons that are reinforced every time they see these ubiquitous birds. And clearly they’re not alone in associating ill omen and evil cunning with these black birds.

A Torresian Crow in the Northern Territory

However it’s not all bad press. A few years ago I spent time in Alaska and became familiar with the northern raven, Corvus corax. Its guttural croak, half a register higher than Australia’s ravens, is one of the signature sounds of Sitka. The raven features positively on totem poles and in local Tlingit legend, according to which the raven not only brought daylight to the people, but also taught them how to speak.

Having spoken with Tlingit people, I would back up Sitka writer Carolyn Servid’s observation*:

Listen to Tlingit language being spoken and it’s not hard to understand the legend.

I’ve not heard any similar legend among Aboriginal Australians, but given our broad, nasal, laconic manner of speech, I’m tempted to believe we learned it from crows and ravens! Not that we should equate the corvid’s yokel Aussie drawl with a lack of intelligence. These birds are emphatically NOT drongos (even if the bird of that name happens to be a corvid.) Rather studies of crows and ravens have shown them to be quick learners, innovators in fact.

The New Caledonian crow, Corvus moneduloides, for instance, has been observed fashioning and using tools. You can see an amazing example on this YouTube clip

Despite their brain power, ravens are not invulnerable. As a frequent visitor to New Zealand, I was surprised by the apparent absence of corvids there. I discovered that there had once been a New Zealand raven, Corvus antipodum. When the Polynesian ancestors of Māori arrived, they introduced Pacific rats (kiore). These voracious rodents ate raven eggs and chicks, and humans also hunted the adult birds.

Astonishingly, given how smart and adaptable ravens are, they were extinct before the first Europeans visited Aotearoa. It's an all-too-familiar story for New Zealand birds, which evolved in the absence of predatory mammals.

Back in Tasmania, forest ravens, Corvus tasmanicus, are one of the most commonly seen birds. Bands of sub-adult ravens, seemingly fully grown, sometimes congregate in the trees around our house. Up to forty birds hold the equivalent of teen “raves”. Their loud – some would say lascivious – kaark-aaarrrk calls multiply and echo through the bush.

This morning a plump individual alights on a bare branch near our deck. It exudes health, its feathers glossy like black silk shot with deep purple. Its legs appear a little lighter, hooped like stockings. The raven is not much under 60cm long, and maybe 700g in weight. I look into its knowing eye, and wonder. Given the healthy appetite of just one bird, and its capacity to clean up whatever it can find, what would forty or fifty of these birds demolish?

Perhaps there's another way to think about it. Without these intelligent and resourceful scavengers, how different would our bush appear?

A forest raven about to do what it does best

_____________________________________________________________

[* in her delightful essay Raven, in Wild Moments (ed. M. Engelhard), 2009]

Slow Dance Into Spring

2011-08-21T17:45:00.000+10:00

Swaying or dancing? Tenuiramis woodland in South Hobart

Have we been abandoned by the roaring forties? That fastidious sweeper of Tasmania’s weather threshold; that dependable bringer of showers and sunshine in equal measure, seems to have left us in the lumbering grip of moody, blunt-fingered low pressure troughs. Careless heavy rains, doldrum drear winds, and a long run of dreich* weather have been the result.

Whatever the weather, getting out is still essential, even if walking our dog in the bush has become a gum-boot affair. This morning everything is still wet. The background shush of the rivulet joins with the tickle of water in a newly eroded gully. As we climb the hill behind our house, the usually hard, dry soil, where it’s not just plain muddy, has an unaccustomed give to it.

There is a feel of change in the air: sunshine for a start, and sunshine with warmth in it. But there are other sights and sounds of change too. The pee-paw of spotted pardalotes and the chip and chatter of other birds also signal the shift.

We find the season’s first orchids, greenhoods and spider orchids, thriving on the wet winter conditions. Wildflowers too are blossoming, from the whites and reds of epachrids to the creams and yellows of acacias and the deep gold of pultenaeas.

Signs of spring in our local bush

In places, however, water has turned from giver to destroyer. The sheer volume of winter rain – in concert with inept road drainage upstream – has stripped out great gobbets of topsoil and created open-cuts in the slopes. We climb steeply towards the head of the gully, where a huge dead tree straddles what is becoming a gorge. This survivor of the 1967 bushfires must soon be undermined and fall.

Lower down this new gully a crater has appeared. A garage-sized block of earth has collapsed due to undermining. Fully-grown stringybark trees have dropped into the hole intact. For the moment they live on, shaken and skewed, but alive. Still, given the instability of the soil, their struggle might just be beginning.

This freshly-collapsed block of earth, complete with trees, has been undermined by water.

We wander over to one of our favourite “character” trees, a Eucalyptus tenuiramis we’ve nick-named Lena on account of her near-horizontal angle of growth. Alas Lena too has been hit hard by the wildly wet winter. Already undermined by insect attack, her trunk has fractured near ground level. Instead of hovering above the earth, Lena has fallen fully to ground.

We inspect the tree, and find there are still some connections between the trunk and the rootstock. Her leaves are green and healthy looking too. She may, perhaps, live on in this state for some time. We will keep a regular eye on Lena, although we wonder whether we should rename her Reclina.

"Lena" the gum tree before (left) and after (right) the fall

Elsewhere there are happier stories among the tenuiramis clan. The habitually dry, shallow soils have taken water deep. The tenuiramis woodlands seem to glow with health. I fancy they are swaying, dancing even: a long, slow dance to the wildly intricate rhythms of the seasons. If they know anything, they know to dance while they may. And what better reason than the stuttering, slow, but inevitable arrival of spring in Tasmania.

* a Scots word for grey and dismal.

A Passionate Pedestrian

2011-08-14T16:40:00.000+10:00

It was a bizarre way to find out mainstream opinion on the activity we call bushwalking. I’d been involved in the production of a very brief promo for our national ABC television network. It was a series depicting people engaged in a particular activity, who then faced the camera and traced the ABC logo in the air.

The logo of Australia's ABC

One of our bushwalking mates worked for the ABC at the time, and he took on the job of filming and producing the promo. It was shot in the Pine Valley/Labyrinth area, and included some lovely footage of wilderness landscapes, plus walkers brushing past bushes and boots crunching through ice.

The final scene had us gathering around a map outside Pine Valley Hut. At the appropriate moment we looked up, traced the ABC logo in the air, and chanted the eternal cry of the bushwalker: “How far now?”

It went to air over the succeeding couple of months, but then suddenly disappeared from our screens. When we asked our mate what had happened, he laughed and told us that Sydney had pulled the promo. The reason? What it depicted, according to ABC management, was too much of “a minority activity”. We were all quite miffed, but that turned to incredulous mirth when it was replaced by a promo with a yodelling, transvestite ice skater tracing the logo.

You learn to live with condescension when you’re Tasmanian. There’s many a metaphorical pat on the head – and not a few references to your second head – when mainland Australians hear you’re from the “tiny” island state.

But if wanting to get out into Tasmania’s wonderfully wild landscape is considered a quaint pastime suited to an eccentric minority, then I'll proudly wear that hat – on both my heads. Because bushwalking is certainly one of the things that brought me here in 1980.

Why we walk! A perfect spring day on the Acropolis, near Lake St Clair

And as a bushwalker new to Tasmania, it was natural enough that I would seek out others to walk with. What surprised me at the time was that the bushwalking groups all seemed to cater for hard-core walkers, or those who aspired to be. A youngish new father, I wondered where those with children, or walkers who were less experienced or less ambitious, might find people to walk with.

And then I had one of those good ideas that comes along only a few times in your life (in my case, at least!) Why not start a group myself? It fitted in with my new job of organising school programs and outdoor activities. And although I’d never have put it this way back then, there also seemed to be an obvious market for a family-friendly bushwalking group in the north of Tassie.

Of course I would need local expertise, which I soon found in the shape of two experienced, passionate and generous Launceston walkers. And so, back in 1981, Boots’n’All was born. There are not many things you can look back on with a satisfying glow thirty years after you’ve helped get them started. In my case I would happily put having three children at the top of that list, but for most of us the list is short. Time so often dissolves our best efforts at making our mark.

The next generation on an early Boots'n'All walk (photo by KDM)

Boots’n’All allowed me to combine, at times, two pursuits I have always held dear: parenting and bushwalking. Slipping on a backpack as part of my work seemed privilege enough. But being able to put my young child in a carry pack lifted the privilege to a completely new level.

Those early walks carrying our first daughter – and later our other two children – were moments to savour. Instead of a mute lump of shelter, clothing and food, my back was loaded with a sentient, giggling, chattering and completely delightful small person. I forgave her the odd grizzle or grasp of my beard, just as she forgave me the odd stumble. Together with the rest of the group we were out there, experiencing the world first-hand, as only walkers can.

Daughter No. 1 gets some walking experience with her eccentrically-hatted father in the early 1980s (photo by KDM)

Thirty years later, living among so many children who suffer from what educator Richard Louv has dubbed nature deficit disorder, the idea of getting children and their parents out into the bush seems more urgent than ever. So I will keep bushwalking, especially now that I've got grandchildren to initiate into this "eccentric" marvel. I'll leave it to someone else to show them how to ice skate.

Been Here A While

2011-08-06T16:44:00.000+10:00

In the Top End they call this season “the dry”. It’s typically laconic, don’t-open-your-mouth-much-or-the-flies-will-get-in, Australian understatement. Like saying the Aboriginal people have “been here a while”.

Our visit to Kakadu puts some perspective on both weather and longevity. Weather first. The Bininj/Mungguy people of Kakadu recognise six different seasons, and many subtle transitions between those. For them the “dry” – or that part of it between June and August – is called Wurrgeng. They see it as “cold weather time”, although we sleep with the air conditioning on!

Sunset during the burn-off, Mirray Lookout, Kakadu

In the Aboriginal calendar, it's time to burn country. The flowering of a local eucalypt, the Darwin woolybutt (Eucalyptus miniata), is a signal to start burning the woodlands. This has the twim aims of bringing on green fodder for grazing animals, and keeping fuel loads low as protection against wild fire.

When we are there fires trickle rather than rage, and many places combine a sooty dessication with vivid new greens. Burning practices are so ancient that birds and other animals have adapted. Remarkably the whistling kite (Haliastur sphenurus), a species found throughout Australia, has locally learned to spread fire by picking up and dropping burning branches. This increases its likelihood of successfully finding the prey species which either flee or perish in the flames. I daresay pre-cooked is just as good as fresh to a hunter and carrion eater.

A whistling kite - minus the burning branch - in Kakadu

We discover other subtleties about the dry. Certainly it doesn’t rain – that much is straightforward. But neither is it all blue skies and relentless heat. In July most days begin clear, but as the day progresses clouds tend to wander across the sun’s face. They gather in a desultory fashion, like school children who have yet to do a serious day’s work but are headed in that general direction.

When these trainee storm clouds gather, piling high enough to hint at darkness, it isn’t hard to imagine how things would change as temperature and humidity are lifted a notch. Those more serious clouds are part of Gunumeleng, known to many as the build-up. That will start in mid-October and culminate in Gudjewg, the monsoon season (December to March). While I love a good thunderstorm, I’ll be happy to spend that season back in the predictable uncertainty of temperate Tasmania.

During “the wet”, the floodplains of Kakadu will fill, and all non-aquatic life will move to higher country. Ubirr, with its vast views over the East Alligator floodplain, gives us a good sense of that. It is a place with a powerful presence. Rock walls, overhangs and cliffs hold more than a thousand generations of Aboriginal art.

“More than a thousand generations” may sit easily on the page, but in the mind it can create temporal vertigo. As we wander past these galleries in near-silence, wonder after wonder is revealed. Here a brilliantly sylised depiction of a hunter; there a portrayal of some of his food sources.

A stylised hunter, Ubirr art-site

As a Tasmanian I am stunned to see a thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) outlined on a wall. The creature became extinct in the 1930s in Tasmania, but has not lived in Kakadu for thousands of years. Its depiction high on the main gallery of Ubirr gives me a dizzying sense of how long Aboriginal people have belonged to this country.

A thylacine depicted in the main gallery, Ubirr art-site

We end the day, along with many others, watching the sunset from the top of Ubirr. People wander about, chat in clusters, take photographs, or just sit and look. There is a quietness that borders on the reverential.

Although it's the dry, the setting sun gives away the presence of large amounts of water, as tell-tale reflections shimmer from the vast floodplain. Climate scientists fear that Kakadu, and the floodplain we’re looking out over, could be profoundly changed by climate change and sea level rise. That is as sad and sobering as the toxic presence of the invasive cane toad. But somehow there’s something hopeful in the fact that the Aboriginal people have lived here long enough to have seen enormous changes like this before. And they’re still here.

Sunset from Ubirr Rock, Kakadu

Smiling at Crocodiles

2011-07-26T16:10:00.000+10:00

[Unfamiliar Territory: Part 2]

[A log with eyes? Crocodile on Yellow Water Billabong, Kakadu.]

Never smile at a crocodile, No, you can't get friendly with a crocodile
- Jack Lawrence and Frank Churchill

Ornithorynchus anatinus and Crocodylus porosus have one thing in common. Both the platypus and the estuarine crocodile can be mistaken for logs, albeit of different sizes, when seen floating on the surface of water. But that is very much where the similarities end.

Before I see my first crocodile, it has lurked in my mind much as sharks do when I take to the surf.

I am swimming in Darwin Harbour in an area that looks far too manicured for crocs. I'm pretty certain it is also netted. Nonetheless, as my legs scissor and my arms thrash about, fleeting fears bubble up, literally from below. I imagine a staggered, snaggled set of teeth steeling up from beneath and ending my life in a particularly messy fashion.

In a Kakadu billabong, in the relative safety of a flat-bottomed boat, I wonder if I’ve found my chance to dampen those fears with a dose of reality. As we edge closer to a long dark shape atop the lily-spattered billabong, it flexes its tail and heaves to alongside us. From the top of the crocodile's roughly chiselled head, a prominent, marbled-brown eye regards us, unblinking.

We drift slightly apart before another micro-waft of the tail brings it back towards us, both eyes now facing our way. Looking into those vertically-slit spheres, I can understand those who see something inherently fearsome in such 5 metre long predators. The local NT News, for instance, demonises crocs ad nauseum.

As I regard this crocodile’s angular excellence, its shapely, patient snout, its slit-eyed regard, I cannot help admiring it. Through more than 200 million years of earth history this beast and its ancestors have lived in waters like these. In that time they have seen the coming and going of the dinosaurs, and have survived several ice ages, all the while honing their hunting skills to an unsettling perfection.

But in that amber eye I also see something unlooked-for. There’s a fragility, a reticence, that reminds me of my dog in her most sheepish moments. It may be pure fancy – either that or plain perversity – but I find myself smiling. How could I not, when I am suddenly seeing this crocodile as a dragon flung to earth? No, to water! One close-up view has made me want to dialogue with this "devil"; to know its story.

[Dragon in exile? An estuarine crocodile in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory]

I want to ask: what sin brought about your exile? What offense caused your fiery breath to be doused; your proud wings to be clipped; your eager ears to be pinned flat; your stout legs to be truncated? What transgression reduced your diet to fish and fowl, with only the occasional careless mammal for variety?

In local Aboriginal language crocodile is Ginga (rhyming with "singer"). In the creation era, he killed a man, and was subsequently restricted to the lowlands. Children are also told the story of the star-dwelling Namarrgarn Sisters, who enjoyed coming down to play near the water. They took to frightening each other by changing into crocodiles that suddenly lunged out of the water.

The story is meant to warn children about crocodiles and explain why they are so dangerous. I suppose it’s fair to say that the advice is not unlike that in Lawrence and Churchill’s song, or for that matter in the signs at every Kakadu waterhole. But whether the warning be sung, recited or put on a sign, I think I'll always reserve the right to smile at the thought of Ginga as a dragon in exile.

[You have been warned! A crocodile safety sign in Kakadu.]

Unfamiliar Territory: Part 1

2011-07-13T10:38:00.001+10:00

Now I know how the piano felt. More than three decades ago we moved from central west NSW to Tasmania, taking ourselves, our dog and our piano from weeks of 40 degree dry heat to the single digit summer moistness of Fern Tree. There in Hobart's highest mountainside suburb, the piano suffered such climate shock that only a piano tuner could put it right.

There is no tuner to greet us as we step out of the plane into Darwin's blue, smoke-tinged heat. Just hours before we'd been in a Hobart lashed by storm-force winds, with snow imminent. Even though it's the dry season, the drive from the airport still shouts to us that we're in the tropics. Banyan trees, frangipani, hibiscus, palms - a veritable hosanna of herbiage.

I search for an appropriate term to describe my sense of dislocation. Climate shock isn't enough because it's about a lot more than climate. Nor is it quite culture shock, although there are elements of that. There is a whole suite of subtle and not-so-subtle differences: temperature, humidity, smells, sounds, light, flora, fauna, the plain look of the place.

The Greek word for place is topos (hence "topography" etc). But somehow topo-shock doesn't trip off the tongue. Whatever it is, there is nothing like immersion in a new place to help cure the dis-ease. The call of a figbird, both unfamiliar and enchanting, lures me into birdwatching. Right in central Darwin, in a vast banyan tree, figbirds are calling each other with their loud, slightly descending chiew.

Figbirds eat what you would expect them to eat, given their name. And the banyan, being in the Ficus genus, is full of figs. But the birds are not just feeding in the city, they are nesting here too. They weave large cup-shaped nests out of banyan leaves, vines and twigs. Some of these are visible from the street, as are the vibrantly-coloured male birds. We watch long enough for me to photograph both bird and nest, all the while feeling the enchantment of their bright calls in this unlikely setting.

Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes, as Jimmy Buffett sang in the 70s.

I have a rule of thumb: you can tell the ambient temperature of a place by running the cold tap for thirty seconds and then drinking from it. Darwin water isn't quite body temperature, but it's not that far off it. Better perhaps for swimming in than drinking, immersing rather than imbibing.

Other differences bring a wry smile. While al fresco dining is pretty much universal throughout Australia, the paraphernalia needed to make it more comfortable is a little different here. We have an outdoor lunch at an Irish pub (some things are universal) and notice that where overhead gas heaters would be in Hobart - and much of southern Australia - in Darwin there are overhead fans.

On Sunday night we head for Mindil Market, an outdoor market behind the dunes of Mindil Beach. The place thrums: it seems half of Darwin is here. But around 6:20 pm the market goes quiet, the buskers lay down their instruments. In a scene reminiscent of Time Machine - minus the siren sounding - everyone suddenly walks onto the beach.

The beach faces the Arafura Sea, and the sun is lowering towards it. It's been overcast most of the afternoon, but the sun is about to break out into a wedge of clearer sky just above the western horizon. Hundreds and hundreds of people are lined up along the beach, sitting, standing, eating, chatting, testing cameras, commenting on the sky. The dry is burn-off season in the Top End, and the sunset colours are richly enhanced.

At about 6:35 the sun eases itself below the horizon. People spontaneously clap, some even cheer. Everyone seems to be smiling, confiding their feelings to strangers. Darwin has its party scene, its crocodile shows, even its casino. But night after night crowds like this turn up to see what is obviously the best show in town.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Darwin

An Ill Wind

2011-07-08T16:06:00.000+10:00

A storm over Kunanyi/Mt Wellington

Oh, and the night, the night – when the wind full of emptiness feeds on our features. – Rainer Maria Rilke

I live a whisper short of 43 degrees latitude south, although the mild weather belies that fact. In Vladivostok or Toronto, two of Hobart’s northern hemisphere latitudinal equivalents, average winter maximums are below zero, and snow is a part of daily life.

Here snow is a part of daily life perhaps once a decade. The difference is down to our proximity to the sea, which has a strong moderating influence on temperatures. The trade-off for that protection is our exposure to the Roaring Forties. That band of winds gushes around the southern parts of the globe, interrupted only by Tasmania, New Zealand’s South Island, and South America.

For the past week, it has roared with singular ferocity. Our protective weather angels, those plump highs that process across the island, have fled north, leaving us at the mercy of winds hurtling up from the Antarctic south. If King and Flinders Islands were spinnakers, and the rest of Tasmania a vessel, we would long ago have fetched up on the shores of Aotearoa!

Wild winter weather above the Du Cane Range, Central Tasmania

And I’m not sure they’d have been surprised. In Maori mythology, Tawhirimatea is the rather fierce god of weather. After a dispute with his brothers over their role in separating his parents, Tawhirimatea vowed to bring havoc to his brothers' lives and that of their children. On occasions he is persuaded by his parents to be forgiving, and the weather is calm. At other times he remembers his vow and sends tornadoes, hurricanes, and cyclones.

Two nights out of the last six, Tawhirimatea has been very grumpy indeed. On both occasions I have lain in bed waiting for the roof to lift. Whistling and wailing; thumping and rattling, groaning and grinding, the house has voiced its timorous resistance to the wild weather god.

With winds reaching Storm Force 10 on the old Beaufort Scale, Beaufort would have warned us to expect that “trees are broken off or uprooted, saplings bent and deformed. Poorly attached asphalt shingles and shingles in poor condition peel off roofs.”

On this morning’s walk, while finding precious few fallen shingles, I did have to walk around a number of ravaged trees, including a massive bunya pine branch. It must surely have wondered why it was ever transported here from Queensland.

I assume Beaufort wasn’t a bird man, or else he might have added a few notes about the wind’s effects on our avifauna. At 2:30 this morning I heard a number of clinking currawongs flying over, in complete darkness, giving voice to their disgruntlement. They were presumably in search of somewhere safer to roost.

And then there was the gull I saw later in the morning. By 8am the wind had backed off to a dull roar, though I was still getting its assistance as I walked unusually swiftly to work. At one point I noticed I was matching speed with a silver gull. This might have been commendable but for the fact that it was actually flying in the opposite direction. A colony of gulls lives under the Tasman Bridge, and each morning the group flies upstream to plunder the riches of McRobeys Gully Tip.

The Hobart Rivulet on a winter's morning

Every time this particular silver gull flapped or veered, the opposing wind would hoosh it backwards. It hunted the full width of the valley searching for a break from the headwind. The last time I saw it, it was still being blown backwards. I’d have been tempted to give up and go back to bed.

On a River of Words

2011-07-02T16:42:00.002+10:00

Apparently there is no official collective noun for a group of writers. Among those proposed, I’m rather taken with a block of writers. Apart from its delightful play on words, it proves perfectly suited to that sub-set of writers I find myself amongst. A bush-block of nature writers sounds pretty well perfect to me.

Some of the writers viewing Russell Falls in Mt Field National Park

That said, I’m not sure the word will die of over-use. Writers are more lone wolves than herd animals. Most of our work is done alone and in our heads, which at times can be filled with our howls. That’s all the more reason to get out and enjoy the occasional gathering of writers, such as last weekend’s workshop in Tasmania’s Mount Field National Park.

Under the guidance of visiting US writer and ecologist, Dr Robert Michael (Bob) Pyle, twenty-something Tasmanian nature writers really did go bush to work on the craft of nature writing. Dr Pyle, who is based in Washington State, is both a world-renowned butterfly expert, and a prolific, award-winning nature writer.

Bob Pyle scans the Russell Falls Creek for a platypus

Water, in all its forms, seemed a thematic thread for the day. Outside we heard it, felt it, smelled it, tasted it, saw its effects in the forest all around. Inside we reflected – itself a water-inspired metaphor – on what we were experiencing.

Using “river of words” exchanges, Bob Pyle got us writing and sharing, initially through brief exercises, later through more complex challenges.

He reminded us that while a reporter reflects, a poet refracts. As a trained ecologist Pyle is used to accurate and factual reportage. Many of his works are scientific guides. And he quotes fellow lepidopterist – and famous novelist – Vladimir Nabokov, on our obligation to “attend to the individuating details”.

But that attention to particularity, for the nature writer, leads on to a strong identification with place: what Pyle calls a “rooted companionship with homeground” (borrowing from Oregon poet Kim Stafford). In turn that leads to a sense of obligation to connect with the audience about that experience of place, something which can only be refracted through the individual personality of the writer.

I would risk summing it up like this: Give me the facts by all means, but also let me hear just a little of that howl in your head.

It’s not something everyone can pull off, but you know it’s worked when you read it, or hear it read. I wish I’d written down Bob Pyle’s words inspired by his first sighting of a platypus. It happened during the workshop, while we were walking beside Russell Falls Creek. From memory he rejoiced in the platypus’s oneness with the flow, as it disappeared downstream after his “nano-sighting”.

Perhaps this longer quote from “Wintergreen”, a book of his essays (published by Sasquatch Books), will reveal more of his style. As something of an arachnophobe, he writes this about spiders.

Spiders, as one learns, enhance one’s life even if one is not an arachnologist. Of course they consume flies and other bothersome insects in large numbers; but consider their beauties too – such as the crosslike pattern on the backs of the big female orb weavers so common hereabouts. Need so much as a word be written about the beauty of webs in the morning, in a misty place so generously hung about with them? Their short-lived lambency so perfectly reflects the nature of light and substance in a land where the distance from dead gray to brilliant silver is an angstrom or less, where form and formlessness mingle intermittently in the mist.

I grow more and more appreciative of spiders’ ability to disperse when I watch the rain of gossamer in summer; exodus of spiderlings ballooning wherever the breeze should take them.

[My thanks to the Tasmanian Writers Centre for organising the workshop, and to the Parks and Wildlife Service for hosting it. And special thanks to Bob Pyle for his inspiration and guidance.]

If These Boots Could Talk

2011-06-19T18:38:00.000+10:00

Friends and foes: some of my bushwalking boots from the last decade and more

“Yes sir, surprisingly, they’re made in Ireland. But these boots are very well respected among the mountaineering fraternity.”

The salesman took a micro-breath, stepped closer, dropped his voice conspiratorially. “The Irish do wonders with leather sir. Think of their horses. And the clincher is, they’re 60% off, today only, and we have them in your size!”

The idea of buying mountaineering boots for bushwalking was odd enough, but Irish ones?! I’d been to Ireland; I knew they had few “real” mountains, and that they were not exactly famous for breeding mountaineers. And I could hear my walking mates’ jibes already. (“An Irish mountaineer walks into a bar. ‘Now who left dat t’ing lyin’ around?!’”)

Despite all, I succumbed to the salesman’s blarney, walking away with a pair of James Boylan mountaineering boots. And truth to tell, they ended up being some of the best I’ve ever entombed my feet in.

Because let’s face it, you’re likely to have a love-hate relationship with your boots. No matter how good they are, there will be times when putting them back on will feel like strapping on an instrument of torture. Your feet are sure to rebel against what your boots put them through on a hard bushwalk. That rebellion can take the form of blisters, pressure sores, bruised toes, cracked skin, blackened toe-nails and all manner of other aches and pains. And then there’s their olfactory rebellion, which can be serious enough to have you casting the offending footwear into the night.

Yet what a different story it is in those days leading up to a bushwalk. How loving we are to those boots then: carefully bathing any mud or marks from their skin; warming them gently; massaging them deeply with magical unctions. And why? A vain effort to make them see things our way, to consider remaining pliable perhaps, dry even. How touchingly optimistic we are in those pre-walk days!

A boot-eating quagmire on Tasmania's Arthur Plains
And when the worst happens? Like the proverbial dog returning to his recycled dinner, we find ourselves mooching about in outdoor stores (or their on-line equivalents) looking for a solution. Deliberately putting ourselves in harms way, we ask the salesman (or the forum members or on-line reviewers) what they think about Gore-tex or eVent or full-grain leather or composites or Vibram or light-weight or trail-runners or … The list is long indeed.

If we run true to form, we sooner or later find ourselves in possession of footwear that promises to give us Mercury’s wing-ed feet. Too often our purchase fails to make us fly, and only our wallets are lighter. Because in the end, a hard bushwalk will be tough on our feet, whether they’re in boots, boat-shoes or bare.

After all, what is it we’re wanting out of a walk? To get out of it unscathed? Oh, I hope not! The whole point, to me at least, is to come out of it properly scathed: to be wounded in that most difficult, wonderful, painful, life-affirming way that only effort and anguish can bring about. That’s the kind of hurt that actually ends up healing.

I’ll be trying to remember that next time I strap on my boots … while I’m trying to forget their price!

The latest blarney purchase: Italian full-grain, handcrafted, Gore-tex, 3D sole, etc etc!

Table Service

2011-06-14T11:59:00.044+10:00

There are mountains, and then there are mountains. Even if we don’t know much about them, we know what we like.

Undeniably beautiful: Tasmania's Cradle Mountain, reflected in Dove Lake

Cradle Mountain, for instance, seems to have a universal appeal. Stand at Dove Lake on the right kind of day, with the shapely mountain reflected in the lake’s tranquil, tannin-tinged waters, and you’ll be hard to please if you aren’t enraptured.

Table Mountain is not that sort of mountain. For me, for the 30 plus years I’ve been driving Tasmania’s Midland Highway, Table Mountain has been one of those mildly interesting landforms I’ve acknowledged as I’ve driven past.

It’s a flat-topped, doleritic eminence that draws the eye only because of its remarkable flatness – hardly a characteristic we’d attribute to beautiful mountains. And yet the explorer in me has always pondered what it would be like up there; how you would get there; what you’d see from its flat roof.

Such seeds usually germinate. So, when a cold winter’s night broke into the sort of clear morning that sang “climb a mountain today!”, I decided Table Mountain’s turn had come. We knew little about the access, just a road number and a property name about 20 minutes north of Bothwell. But both were obvious, as was the steep-sided, flat-topped slab of Table Mountain rising out of the forests to our east.

Tasmania's humble Table Mountain, as seen from the Bothwell-Interlaken Rd

The farmer whose property we would have to traverse was a man of few words. Cautious, and possibly suspicious of our intentions, he finally thawed enough to show us the recommended farm track. But he still made us walk all the way rather than take the car any closer through his property.

Snow had fallen earlier in the week, and patches persisted in the shade beside the farm track. We quickly pulled the mountain closer, surprised that legs and lungs working hard can do this! Once, when studying ancient Hebrew as part of a theology degree, my professor used a phrase that has stuck with me. When he thought me impatient he would say “Al regel ahat”. It translates literally as “on one foot”, and he meant that I wanted to learn it all in one quick hit.

The implication was that I needed to take it one step at a time. The words have now become something of a mantra for me while bushwalking. No matter whether you’re fast or slow, a streaker or a snail, you can only get there by putting one foot in front of the other. Al regel ahat.

Of course a track helps too, and for this walk there wasn’t one, just a maze of forestry and fire trails, and a very obvious cliff-line in front of us. Fortunately the line-of-least-resistance route to the top was also obvious. With a little slipping and sliding, and huffing and puffing, we soon stood on the 1095m table-top.

The mountain's flat top probably derives from a combination of geology and geomorphology. Geologically it looks like the top of a broad sill created when rising molten dolerite hit resistant layers and spread out beneath. Its geomorphological history would have involved a stripping away of that overburden, and a bull-dozing flat by ice sheets over a few ice ages.

I suppose I'd imagined that, as a result of these forces, the top would be rocky and flat; perhaps not billiard table flat, but at least clear and open. Instead we found a stunted, snowy forest, on gently undulating ground, with only the cliff edges clear.

But the views were every bit as good as I imagined. North-west were Great Lake, with the distant Walls of Jerusalem behind. West we could see many of the peaks of the Cradle Mt-Lake St Clair National Park; south the Wellington Range, and between them the snow-clad peaks of Mt Field National Park.

Dolerite table service, on Table Mountain, Tasmania

We found ourselves a perfect table-like rock for lunch. In warm sun, with clear skies and hardly a breath of wind, only the snow on the peaks around us hinted at winter. That and the lengthening shadows which, even by 2pm, reminded us to be off the mountain and back to the car by 4pm. Without a tent and warm overnight gear, you would not want to be benighted out here.

Still the sun was so beguiling that we dallied on the return walk, finding a sun-filled meadow among tall but sparse trees. While we soaked up some gentle vitamin D, a South American mountain was helping to add a spectacular end to the day. Volcanic ash in the stratosphere was not only delaying 20 000 Aussie plane travellers, it was catching the sun's final rays and reflecting them back at the earth. Little compensation to air travellers, but unforgettable to those on foot.

A perfect ending to a wonderful day out walking

Life in the Fridge*

2011-06-06T13:54:00.004+10:00

A harbor seal on ice, South Sawyer Glacier, Alaska

They say firewood warms you three times: collecting it, splitting it and burning it. During the latest blast of wintery weather, while my thrice-warmed body relaxed by the fire, my curious mind was free to wander in comfort. It got to thinking about how other mammals deal with the cold.

A few years back we had the privilege of spending time in Alaska. Before you get mental images of snow and ice and polar bears, I should quickly add that we were there in summer, and in the relatively mild south-east. Except for the highest parts, the area is dominated by coniferous forest and intricate and rich waterways.

But it can still get cold, and the incredibly diverse wildlife of both sea and land has had to adapt to that. We were fortunate enough to see some of the amazing variety of mammals that live in and around Alaska’s Inside Passage.

Largest of all were the whales, mainly humpback, but also grays. The area is a hot-spot for humpbacks, providing both large amounts of food (krill) and vast sheltered waterways. Their protection against the cold water is two-pronged: fuel and insulation. Digesting food gives the body energy, and thus warmth. But the right kind and quantity of food also builds up a fatty layer (blubber) just beneath the skin. It can be up to 15cm thick, and keeps the whale’s body warm even in freezing cold water.

A mother humpback whale and calf in the Inside Passage, Alaska

Steller sea lions and harbor seals use a similar tactic, building up layers of blubber that can account for up to 30% of their weight during winter. Both have extremely fat-rich milk, enabling their pups to quickly put on weight, including the all-important insulating layer of blubber. Although both of these pinnipeds have some hair, the hair has absolutely no insulating value.

Steller sea lions hauled out on a rock in Sitka Sound, Alaska

That contrasts starkly with the defence against cold used by sea otters. We came across a raft of these charming aquatic mammals in Sitka Sound. They were swimming and resting in the kelp-covered shallows, occasionally surfacing with shell-fish, which they ate using their tummies as a table. We approached slowly, engine off, so as not to scare the skittish mammals. They’ve been hunted close to extinction, so their wariness is justified.

Sea otters dining in the shallows, Sitka Sound, Alaska

Apart from fuelling themselves via a rich shell-fish diet, sea otters have the densest fur of any mammal. Hair density can reach an amazing 165,000 hairs per square cm, equating to hundreds of millions of hair fibres per otter. Only God is supposed to know how many hairs humans have on their head (see Luke 12:7), but scientists estimate a mere 150 000 in total. And that's if we've kept them all!

Only one other mammal comes close to this hirsute sea otter, and that’s Australia’s unique monotreme, the platypus. Body fat becomes far less important to these creatures, as their dense fur traps air and excludes water, both of which keep the body warmer.

On land we came across a mammal which uses yet another tactic to cope with life in the fridge. Bears, both Alaskan brown (or grizzly), and the black variety, live in south-east Alaska. We got uncomfortably close to the obligatory three bears, although in our case it was a momma bear and two baby bears (papa bear, thankfully, didn't show). Although the state of their fur and the amount of fat they carry are still important, bears also beat off the cold by hibernating through the winter months.

Interestingly, Australia's other monotreme, the echidna, also hibernates. In fact echidnas lower their temperature far further, and hibernate more deeply, than do bears.

Meanwhile there's snow on Kunanyi/Mt Wellington, and I’m carefully considering my cold-beating options. I'm not keen to add blubber, and my hair density only looks like heading south. While hibernation also has its attractions, I think I’ll settle for food (in moderation) and fire to protect me from the cold. That and the feathers that fill my doona and down jacket. I bless the geese that kindly loaned me those!

* When Alaska was purchased from the Russians in 1867 for $7.2million (about 2c an acre), it was derided by the press and many politicians as a waste of money for a useless “ice-box”.

Melaleuca: Down the River of Time

2011-05-29T13:36:00.000+10:00

That night we play cards in the ranger’s hut: a game of “Up and Down the River”. Despite my ignorance of the rules, I finish equal second, almost clinching a card-shark reputation.

On the walk back to my Nissen Hut a full moon sails clear of cloud. I take my camera down to Moth Creek to try and photograph her reflections. I always seem to think of the moon as feminine. The creek is wide and still, and the moon reflects perfectly from its molten, dark surface. But my photographs fail to capture her wonderful light and alluring face. Some faces just resist being well photographed. I suppose that’s what memory is for.

The molten surface of Moth Creek, Melaleuca, SW Tasmania

Though I’m standing on a modern jetty, the moon reminds me that this area holds far older stories. It's highly plausible to view this whole south-west landscape as an artefact of Aboriginal burning over 30-40 000 years. Looking at the broad expanses of buttongrass, and the relatively small patches of forest, it makes sense.

Buttongrass thrives under a regime of regular, if small scale, firing. If its left unburned, scrub and then forest start to assert themselves over moorland. With rainfall as high as what is received here, you would, under other circumstances, expect to find much more rainforest. Indeed you do find it along rivers and in sheltered patches, but it’s not as expansive as it might be.

Why did Aboriginal Tasmanians burn this country? Two reasons stand out. Firstly fire in buttongrass moorland is followed by strong regrowth, and this “green-pick” attracts grazing animals. They are more easily seen, and more easily hunted, when concentrated in a small recently-burned patch. Secondly a burned landscape is easier to move through than a scrub-covered one. That’s good for a nomadic people, as any bushwalker could confirm!

A well-fed pademelon: one marsupial favoured by the selective burning of moorland

The so-called “conciliator of Aborigines”, G.A. Robinson, walked through this area with his party in 1830. Whatever harm his attempts to round-up and resettle the original Tasmanians might have done, he seems to have been motivated by a genuine concern for them as human beings. This, remember, occurred during a time of martial law in an often lawless colony. Life was cheap, and the lives of natives, for some, ranked below that of livestock. The impact and worth of Robinson's missions may be vigorously debated, for sure. But on a purely physical level, his journeys through this country were extraordinary.

For over four months, Robinson and a party of up to 20, journeyed from Recherche Bay in the south-east to the far south-west and west coasts. They walked first along what are now the South Coast and Port Davey Tracks, at the time either untracked or Aboriginal routes. They then travelled to places as fearful - and exciting - to bushwalkers as the Western Arthur Range and the west coast between Window Pane Bay and Macquarie Harbour.

An aerial view of the rugged Western Arthur Range in fine weather!

Robinson kept a detailed journal, at times accutely describing the ruggedness and beauty of the landscape; at others bemoaning the numerous illnesses, personnel difficulties and weather set-backs of the summer/autumn trip. An excerpt from 10 March 1830, gives a flavour.

Here nature appeared in all her pristine forms; perpendicular cliffs, immense chasms through which the water was heard to gush with frightful roar, mountain tops hid in the clouds, and anon the piercing wind gushing up the ravines rendered our situation truly uncomfortable.

I continued still very unwell. Yet there was no alternative; to decline was useless. No medical assistant, no friend near to soothe or to offer consolation. The night excessive cold.

While the party was occasionally re-supplied by boat, it was otherwise self-sufficient. I marvel at this mixed group of British and Aboriginal men making such a journey without all the 'survival' gear modern walkers count essential. But then Robinson and co. had both the assistance of the 'natives' (as they called them) and the psychological goad of not wanting to concede to 'weakness' in front of the same.

The dubious reputation of Robinson within the contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal community is tempered for some by the detailed observations he made of Aboriginal life, beliefs and customs in the 1830s. While he may not always be trusted as accurate, there are precious few other contemporary accounts.

We've noted already that Robinson saw many Aboriginal huts around Melaleuca, and that the area appeared to be a “resort” for the Needwonee people. Apart from having a good supply of water, game and especially swan's eggs, the area between Melaleuca and Cox Bight also appears to have had a strong spiritual significance.

Through conversation with his Aboriginal companions, Robinson learned that one of their central creation stories took place here. In that tale one of the ancestor spirits, Moinee, “was hurled from heaven and dwelt on the earth, and died and was turned into a stone and is at Coxes Bight.” This is probably at Point Eric, in the middle of the bight.

Visiting this broad, bleak and beautiful landscape, it is not difficult to see its special significance. The river of time has touched this place over a very long period, with little else to obliterate its work. Before the Moinee story, before Cox Bight even existed, sea levels were much lower than they are today. The Needwonee’s ancestors would have walked over land to what are now the De Witt and Maatsuyker Islands, but what would then have been hills.

The river flows back further still. Before humans, there were other animals. During our visit we see many birds, including wonderfully cryptic ground parrots, and some mammals, especially pademelons. We find evidence of many more: a ringtail possum dray in a tree; wombat droppings; echidna scratchings. All of these have lived here, and in landscapes that have now worn away, for millions rather than thousands of years.

Where's Wallicus? Can you find the ground parrot (Pezoporus wallicus) in this picture?

But that too is an eye-blink in geological time. The quartzite that is the foundation of much of the south-west is Precambrian rock perhaps one billion years old. The moon is around four billion years old, the earth itself older still, and the river of time flows back beyond that.

That night, as I stare at the moon reflecting from the surface of Moth Creek, I ponder the whole nature of time and space, and what is behind it all. Some, like me, sense a mind … even a heart. Some sense nothing at all. But both are ready to be awed and humbled by that experience. Better that than never stopping to reflect at all.

Melaleuca: A Resort for Kings

2011-05-22T14:14:00.002+10:00

Resort (noun): a place to which people go for recreation, rest, etc.

An aerial view of Bathurst Harbour, the wild waterway just north of Melaleuca, SW Tasmania

Melaleuca is not the place to live if you’re used to popping in on the neighbours for a cup of sugar. To call it isolated is an understatement. Surrounded by half a million hectares of Tasmania’s south-west wilderness, it’s either an hour long flight, or a multi-day foot or boat trip, from any population centre.

It’s also Tasmania’s weather frontier. The day we flew in was the first flight to reach the rough gravel airstrip in six days. Torrential rain, low cloud and high winds had kept planes from getting here. As we unloaded, a desperately relieved German bushwalker almost hugged the pilot. He’d been waiting five days for a flight out of the wilderness after a wet and wild walk along the South Coast Track.

A subtle wildness: on the track from the airstrip to the public huts, Melaleuca

But isolation and wildness notwithstanding, wilderness is a moot word in these parts. Even flying in over the tweeded hills, with water reflecting back at us from almost every surface, we make out the clear signs of the small-scale mining that has been carried out here. A series of unnaturally straight channels in the flattish landscape show where strips of over-burden had been removed in the search for tin.

Mining has finished now, and the excavated strips that are visible from the air are disguised and overgrown at ground level. But the buildings and some of the machinery used by the miners: first Charles King, then his son Deny King, and also the Willson family, can still be seen.

Charles Denison (Deny) King, the second generation of Kings to live and work here, is the best-known of the people who called Melaleuca home. Not only did he mine the area for decades, he was also a naturalist, artist, and advocate for Tasmania’s wildlife and wild places. He became host and friend to many bushwalkers, artists and others who visited the remote “kingdom”.

A century before the coming of the Kings, the so-called “conciliator of Aborigines”, G.A. Robinson, walked through this area with his party in 1830. He noted many Aboriginal huts, and thought it “a resort for the natives”.

Deny King must have had a similar feeling for the country. He moved here as a young man in 1936, and stayed until his death in 1991. Although twenty years have passed since then, his legacy at Melaleuca continues to be cared for by family and friends.

One of the Nissen huts used by visitors to Melaleuca

Part of that endowment is the buildings that are still in use today. They include the distinctive Nissen huts that became home not only for the King family, but also for visitors to the area. Today two are open for public use, including the Charles King Memorial Hut, while the original is still occasional home for Deny’s descendants.

In the King's garden, Melaleuca

To visit his garden, and peer into the many outbuildings that are still cared for, is to feel still the presence of this extraordinary individual. Typical of the man, the private garden remains open to the public. His family simply asks that their privacy be respected, and for a donation to help with the upkeep.

Deny King's boatshed, with "blue boat" inside, Melaleuca, SW Tasmania

Especially evocative is the boatshed on Moth Creek. Inside we find “blue boat”, freshly painted and ready for use. A smaller cream-coloured dinghy floats free on the bank. The creek is still and calm, as dark as stout from the tannin-rich waters that wash from the surrounding hills.

Deny’s semi-outdoor art “studio”, complete with a palette, benches and a contemplation chair, is perched on the bank above the creek. His blue chair, upholstered in hessian, is even monogrammed with his initials.

Deny King's monogrammed chair, art studio, Melaleuca

There is a hush about the place that seeps into you. Everywhere there are birds. They chat and flit between native trees and the exotics that Deny mixed together. Here and there pademelons hop about, probing for fresh fodder.

Our visit has come on the tail end of a strong south-westerly weather pattern. In a place that is otherwise almost silent, we are surprised to hear a distant roar, like that of waves on the shore. But with Cox Bight nearly 10km south-east of us, we think that unlikely.

It turns out to be precisely the correct explanation. Swells between 7 and 10 metres are pounding the distant coast. With no wind or ambient sound to interfere, the muted crashing of waves is our background noise, a literal white noise.

One of our party, a first-time visitor to Melaleuca, is finding it hard to sum up the difference between her expectations and the reality of Melaleuca. It seems it is both more and less than what she expected. Its physical presence is less commanding: with no wildly high mountains; no cascades tumbling into deep ravines. And yet there is a wildness about the place, a blend of isolation, open skies, bleak weather and a brooding sense of the past. Together they seem to produce a profound calm that might help you understand why generations kept returning to this "resort".

The Pragmatic Pygmy Possum

2011-05-16T17:09:00.001+10:00

Good "inside" weather: But what's it like outside? (Lake Dobson, Tasmania)

The day started well. If it's going to be cold and wet, you may as well have something to show for it. And we did. Kunanyi/Mt Wellington was coated with snow to low levels. As we drove towards Mt Field National Park for the weekend, more mountains, from Domedary to Collins Cap, and Trestle to Field East, were looking at their best, a fine mantle of snow over the shoulders of each, and down to the surrounding hilltops.

We'd forgotten, however, that the same beautiful snow might make it a little difficult driving our two-wheel drive vehicle all the way to the ski hut at Lake Dobson. An ignominious retreat, a delay, and a lift up the mountain in our friend's 4WD eventually got us up to the snow-bound hut.

While the temperature hovered around zero, and snow flurries added to the already good ground cover, we revived ourselves with hot drinks by a warm fire. My thoughts turned to those caught out in this weather with no such luxuries, in particular the native animals which call the mountains home. How did they cope in weather like this so early in the season?

Then Phil walked in carrying a bucket of wood shavings. These are kept in the hut toilets and are used to help aerate the composting toilet waste. Three furry grey blobs, each about the size of a hacky sack (or for the Potter-philes, a small snitch) huddled in the bottom of the bucket. Pygmy possums!

To be precise eastern pygmy possums, Cercartetus nanus. These featherweight marsupials weigh between 15 and 40 grams, and stretch to maybe 90 mm in length, excluding the tail. They had apparently climbed into the buckets for warmth, and to shelter from the early and heavy snow, and had become trapped.

A sleepy eastern pygmy possum shows us it's alive (photo by Lynne Grant)

We pick the little creatures up to check for signs of life. Disproportionately large dark eyes blink at me, whiskers slowly twitch, and a rapid heart beat flutters faint against my hand. Finally its long, bare and exquisitely curled tail unwinds. Pygmy possums use their tails to help them climb around the forest canopy, where they feed, mainly on nectar. However they are also known to take invertebrates, including moths, which they can spot at night using their large and sensitive eyes.

Another member of the Burramyidae (pygmy possum) family is the mountain pygmy possum, which famously feasts on bogong moths in the

Australia

n Alps every summer. That mountain variety hibernates for much of winter. With weather as fickle and occasionally freezing as that in the Tasmanian highlands, eastern pygmy possums have opted for mini hibernation, or torpor, during cold spells rather than full hibernation.

Their body temperature lowers close to the ambient temperature, and their metabolism drops correspondingly, decreasing their need for energy inputs. Torpor lasts from a few days to a few weeks, perfect for the “here today, gone tomorrow” nature of snow in Tasmania.

A furry hacky sack with whiskers: the rotund figure of an eastern pygmy possum

The eastern pygmy possum was first described by French naturalist Francois Peron in 1802. Peron collected a live pygmy possum from an Aboriginal man on Maria Island, in exchange for some trinkets. The Frenchman was of the opinion that the Aboriginal man was going to cook and eat the tiny mammal – hardly a square meal!

Our hut-visiting pygmy possums don’t seem unduly concerned at our handling of them, and when we reposition them in a shallower container, they simply shuffle close together and continue their slumber.

We check the “fur kids” several times in the early evening, as much smitten by their furry charms as for any real help we might have offered them. When it’s bed time for us, we put their open container out in the vestibule, and leave them to it. We figure, correctly, that they will move on during the night.

As I settle into my sleeping bag in the near-to-freezing bunkroom, I shiver for the first minute or two, waiting for the down bag to have its effect. In that moment I envy the pygmy possum its ability to curl into a ball. And as the wind thumps into the side of the hut, and whistles through the door and window cracks, I start to see why the occasional period of torpor might have a lot going for it.

Wildcare Prize Winners

2011-05-10T17:04:00.000+10:00

Announcing the winners of:

The 2011 Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize

The prize's orange-bellied parrot logo was designed by Bradley Trevor Greive

The 2011 Prize attracted entries from writers all over Australia, and as far afield as Newfoundland, Canada. The Prize winners were announced in April during “10 Days on the Island ”. The free event was held at the Upstairs Function Room, Republic Bar (cnr Elizabeth and Burnett Sts, Hobart), and hosted by the Tasmanian Writers Centre.

The 2011 winner is:

Peter Shepherd (Upper Brogo, NSW) for his essay “In the Land of Nod”. Peter receives $5 000 plus return airfares to Hobart and a two week residency in a Tasmanian national park.

The minor awards were shared by:

Amanda Curtain (Bassendean, WA) for “On the Uses of the Dead to the Living”

AND

Elizabeth Bryer (Yarravile, Vic) for “Of Stars and a Lake”. They each receive $250.

Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to all authors who submitted works.

Peter Shepherd was unable to attend the presentation, but forwarded this acceptance speech to me:

________________________________________

The Wildcare Nature Writing Prize has been, for some years, both my inspiration and my big stick. It has led me, each time I have entered (third time lucky, hey?), to a new level in my writing. What drives me is respect: for the existence of the prize, for the standard, and for its aim of drawing attention to what nature writing can offer.

I believe it can offer a lot. No, actually, I believe it can offer the world. Through the practice and teaching of nature writing I've discovered the importance of intimacy in this way of communicating with the world; of grace and courage and all those things that make good writing a yearning toward something fundamental and large; a search that drives every human heart.

Nature writing, I believe, is our best hope for a language of connection.

And that is because the connections it offers are those beyond the fences of industrial culture. Nature writing opens a space to listen to the larger spaces in which we are woven: skies, mountains, oceans, history and future, and the land itself. It suggests the possibility of listening in ways not just brain-based, but to the spiritual poetry of wonder.

Without losing the critical importance of the everyday poetry - children, laughter, this single rock, the colour and miracle of this particular fungus. The human commons. The earthly commons. Seeing neighbours despite how many legs they have or which end of their body they breathe out of.

And sharing the story of it.

Whatever you want to call it - nature writing, earthspeaking, or just plain writing or sharing - here is a call, as I see it, to reclaim our wild human heritage, to fling heartfelt poetic truths into the world around us in shapes and connections that the shallow plastic of industry-speak simply can't stand against. Without root and blood how could it? Without breath and a proffered paw, wing, hand and chirruping, sky-scaling song, what chance does it stand?

None, despite the sheer volume and effort of it. None, because it cannot stand eye to eye and heart to heart with one other and say, "I see you. I hear you. And I care."

Nature writing can. And, through rebellious spirits everywhere, will continue to deepen and expand, and reconnect with a song and language that has never been lost, but has merely been waiting for us to come home again.

I want to thank fellow conspirators: Island Magazine, Wildcare and Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife, the Tasmanian Writers Centre, all the poets and writers and dreamers and hopers and passion painters who have entered, and continue to enter, this award. And Peter Grant, whose persistence, work and vision makes it possible, beard and all. And my partner, now my fiancé, Jurnee, who holds a deep standard or writing and being that, it seems, the earth itself holds in respect. And our kids - Darcy, Teia and Niamh - who, by their simple existence, remind us of what is ultimately important.

The Dying of the Light

2011-05-08T17:31:00.000+10:00

"Where I live it gets dark at night. The kind of dark eats up the light." Alexi Murdoch from the song "Someday Soon".

This afternoon the bush track is different. I know it well, I walk here two or three times a week, and yet I am suddenly uncertain which turn leads where. My steps have become tentative, feet threatening to roll on the uneven ground; eyes darting left and right; hands out ready for a fall; breath coming a little heavier; ears half-listening for threat.

It is the light dying. Our days are shortening, our nights attenuating. The chill air is asserting itself. Even the garden is telling me that we have gone beyond Keats’ season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Today, having deliberately caught the wrong bus so I could walk down through the bush to my home, I find it almost too dark to negotiate my familiar but steep bush. It is an unwelcome reminder: for the next few months I will be arriving home in the dark.

Autumn storm clouds gather over the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Tasmania
Thoughts of migration begin whispering in the heart. This morning a mass of short-tailed shearwaters, over a hundred strong, was visible from our deck. They are the last of their kind to leave, fledglings grown fat on a fish diet provided by devoted parents. They are sometimes too heavy to fly, and must exercise off some podge by flying around the coastal hills. Within days they will begin their phenomenal 15 000 kilometre migration to north Asia and Alaska.

Their wonky, whirling flight briefly awakes something in me too. I think of fellow Hobartians who head north every winter, keen to follow the sun. Most of us make do with the promise of some surrogate sun in the hearth, by ensuring that our wood supply is ready. If it is only a consolation, it is a delicious one.

Despite fleeting thoughts of winged escape, I love autumn. Its crisp nights and clear days, its galleon clouds and galloping winds all portend the longed-for possibility of snow.

An autumn snowfall blankets the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania
Yet I find a subtle down-cast in my mood. An inexplicable sense of loss and melancholy grows with the dying of the light. Thirty years of experience in the south of this island tells me that winters here are seldom hard; that active outdoor life will continue despite the cold; that wild weather is beautiful; that the garden can still be worked, and will still bring forth produce.

Regardless of what the rest of Australia imagines, Tasmania has a mild maritime climate. Certainly our latitude south is similar to that of northern places like Toronto and Vladivostok. But in terms of weather, there’s no comparison. Our temperatures stay regulated by the (milder) oceans.

So I know there will be no Siberian – or Ontarion – winter extremes to deal with in the coming months. And yet I still find it hard to shake the melancholic edge that hovers around my thoughts as May days descend towards night.

Autumn and winter: fine for fungi, as here in Mt Field National Park, Tasmania

Rather than “snap out of it”, I decide to sit with the feeling, allowing it to play with me for a while. A shower of bullet-like rain spatters on the roof. Squalls rush in from the south. Although the light is fading fast, I can make out that snow is engulfing the highest parts of Kunanyi /Mt Wellington. Tonight will be a cruel one for some of the mountain’s creatures.

I begin to see that for me dark and cold and winter are signs of loss, decline and even death. These are not topics most of us enjoy facing, but they are realities. And they are undeniably sad. But I also begin to see that within the same there are possibilities of renewal.

I think of Albert Camus’ meditation on winter: "In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." It may take the heat of an artificial sun and the support of family and friends, but I – like most of us – will get through this winter. And in recognising my own decline and death in its gentle jaws, I also somehow recognise the power and wonder of being alive: perhaps a personal migration.

The Ants Are My Friends

2011-04-30T17:26:00.001+10:00

Small wonders: ants follow a scent-line up a eucalypt trunk.

I love a good mondegreen. By simple definition a mondegreen is a miss-heard song lyric, and one of my favourites forms the title of this post.

It refers to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”, in the chorus of which he sings “the answer my friends is blowin’ in the wind”. It’s fair to say Bob was never the clearest articulator of lyrics, so this mondegreen, which makes the chorus sound like a friendship pact with the Formicidae family, was probably inevitable.

Most of us would probably have difficulty singing that pro-ant chorus with any degree of feeling. Put simply we’re not on very amiable terms with ants. Their ability to spoil our picnics and trample indiscriminately through our kitchens, is exacerbated by the capacity of some to bite and sting.

But what if we did learn to appreciate these little wonders? Moving to a house among the gum trees has made me think it might be possible. That house is built on the rear section of our old house block, in what used to be a eucalypt forest. When our children were young we often played up there among the trees, taking for granted that we would come across lots of small foraging ants.

We would occasionally pause to watch long lines of them climbing up and down the tree trunks. Awed by their gravity-defying abilities, we also wondered what they were after or where they were nesting. But soon we’d get back to our own business, and leave them to theirs.

Years later, when the new house was built, several of those forest trees were toppled to make way for it. Remove a tree and you remove what has been larder, road system, refuge, nest and meeting place for some ant species. Replace the trees with a building and, from an ant point-of-view, you lay out the welcome mat. Effectively you’ve put back some of their former resources.

So after all these years of admiring our small black ants from a distance, I now find I’m getting to know them up close. In fact a few of them are ambling up my computer monitor as I type. My guess is that they’re a small species belonging to the genus Iridomyrmex, which normally like to forage in eucalypt trees. Since our house has become a substitute tree, they are happy negotiating their way in, over, around and throughout our house.

Friendly advice: an ant monitors my computer

If ants ponder, they may think it a strangely misshapen, rigid and hard-shelled sort of tree. On the other hand its hollows are vast, its hiding places legion, its “roads” neat and smooth, and its food supplies copious and replenished daily.

* * *

Today we head out into the local bush with our young granddaughters. I’ve given them the task of finding ant trails on eucalypt trunks. They search hard but find very few. We decide it must be ant sabbath. A long spell of fine, warm weather is ending, and perhaps the bulk of their labour is, for the moment, done.

I think of the Bible proverb that advises the lazy: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” (Proverbs 6:6-8, KJV) Perhaps today all has been safely gathered in, and our ants are indoors having whatever sabbath rest they’re allowed.

I had been keen to test out a theory on today’s walk. Having noticed that ants often climb on the northern or western sides of a tree (or a house), but seldom on the southern and eastern side, I wanted to test it with further observation. My conjecture is that they might favour the warmer, drier sides of these structures as these provide easier access and better shelter.

Today’s walk provides too small a sample to really test my theory, but we do get to see a few ant trails. In effect these are invisible pathways that follow a pheromone scent laid down by the lead foragers: more scent-line than song-line. A long and heavily-used trail may be the sign of successful foraging. But today we also observe numerous ants leaving from, and delivering to, a nest hollow.

We also notice how amazingly prolific these little invertebrates are. Everywhere our bush ramble takes us we find evidence of ants. There are ant in hills, ants on the ground, ants under bark, ants cleaning up the dead, even ants under attack (in the form of echidna diggings).

Somebody has to do it! Ants clean up a dead bumble bee.

By dint of hard work and numbers, ants must be considered among the real movers and shakers of the animal kingdom. Their work in turning over soil, fertilising plants, and removing a huge volume of dead plant and animal matter means they literally help re-shape the face of the earth.

I learn that our Iridomyrmex ants even have a symbiotic relationship with certain caterpillars. In return for providing a security service to the caterpillars, they receive food in the form of a sweet secretion from the grubs.

It’s not much of a stretch to suggest that we’re actually in a similar relationship with ants. We just might not realise what good friends they can be to us.

Tidings

2011-04-24T10:58:00.001+10:00

Climbing above Lake Rhona, SW Tasmania on a perfect day

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings – John Muir

Mid last century, as a small child, I was entranced by transistor radios. Our family couldn’t afford one, so I acquired instead a cheap crystal set, a primitive radio without batteries or power. It picked up radio waves, but without power it couldn’t amplify the sound. To improve the signal, we ran a copper wire around the house’s exterior brickwork, and attached the crystal set to this aerial via an alligator clip.

Hunched and hushed in bed at night, earphone in one ear, I would pick up faint sounds through the tiny device; words and music that seemed magic to my young ears. Even then I had an outward urge, a desire to tap into what was happening out there.

And then there were mountains, faintly and tantalisingly visible from the same childhood home. Combine an outward urge and mountains with an adventurous father, and a love for exploring the bush was all but inevitable.

Still, during my apprentice walking years, I quickly understood that bushwalking has a perverse economy. Not only do you do without many of the necessities of life for large chunks of time, you also suffer numerous positive indignities. You experience body-wide aches, voluminous perspiration, and frequent exhaustion. You expose yourself to dire weather, restricted rations, drastic toilet arrangements and almost constant discomfort.

Is it any surprise that first-time walkers often ask a less polite variation of "this is fun!?" Totting up the apparent economic equation, you'd have to agree with those who call economics the dismal science.

And yet – and perhaps this is why I failed economics – I believe there might be an alternative economy at work here. Why is it that so many walkers, even some of those same first-timers, start planning their next walk even while they're going through the anguish of their current walk? Why do we keep banging our heads against this particular wall?

"Are we having fun yet?" Climbing Mt Pelion East in sleet

One walking friend opts for the endorphin thesis, explaining repeated walking as simple addictive behaviour. Certainly studies show that exercise releases endorphins in the brain. This in turn leads to what is commonly known as runner’s high, which can become addictive.

As a very part-time jogger who has never experienced runner’s high – but can vouch for runner’s grump, runner’s grumble and runner’s unprintable-expletive-dumby-spit – I would have to say I remain unconvinced.

I will risk explaining it a different way. Do we actually keep going back because we experience, and somehow get beyond, a walker’s low? While it would be foolish to argue that hard walking is a true parallel to serious illness or significant loss, the despair and ennui that sometimes engulf me on the hardest of walks, smell and feel kin to these. The worst moments can be accompanied by a deep psychic innertia that feels as insurmountable as grief or despair. How do you go on?

I think of the Samuel Beckett character in The Unnamable. "You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." Somehow body and soul move on, to the eventual strengthening of both. And that’s the point: that in getting up and carrying on despite the agonies, we grow. Our psyche expands in ways we wouldn't think possible when we're in the midst of the suffering. (Just don't call it character-building!)

Another part of the explanation for our recidivist behaviour might be sought outside of ourselves. Many of us sense that there is something out there that calls to us. Scotsman David Craig, in his fine climbing book, Native Stones, plays with the notion that mountains are somehow alive. “How else to convey the sense that they are beings, whose company I need as much as people’s”.

This creates the tantalising thought that we might somehow have a relationship with these places. If so it would seem no ordinary reciprocal relationship, for how could a mountain need us?

Certainly on my side, the desire to be in the company of wild places is very real. Sometimes it feels like a form of occupation, a kind of reclaimation, even an expression of belonging. It is certainly no claim of ownership. Rather presence becomes a counterweight for absence. We have stories of gain to counter those of loss; return that stands against exile; fellowship in place of brutality; a tentative re-inhabiting that witnesses against genocide and extinction.

By the very ordinary act of being there, we also witness the passing of many things both ordinary and extraordinary. Our attachment grows, despite the wilderness’s seeming indifference to our presence. It continues as it always has. Yet by being there we can somehow tap into, and be fed by, that continuity. We begin to feel that we somehow belong.

If this were a reciprocal relationship, we would have to ask what the wild places receive in return? Is it possible that they gain a form of protection - albeit a tenuous form - from being loved by us? After all, aren't we humans known for protecting that which we love? Beyond waiting for us to go the way of the thylacine, the wilderness seems to have no other choice.

Meandering through alpine herbfields on a perfect south-west day

Tonight is a clear autumn night. I am camped on an alpine beach beside Lake Rhona. The next day will be as close to perfection as a walker could wish. We will sweat up the steep slopes to the rocky plateau; we'll meander through the alpine herbfields; we'll scramble to the top of Reeds Peak and take in views that defeat superlatives. We'll then return to a calm and sun-filled beach, and soak our sweat-stained bodies in the icy lake.

But that's tomorrow. Tonight, 50 years after that crystal set, I lie hunched and hushed in my tent, listening still. There are no more than faint and hopeful whisperings from the mountain, but I sense I will not be disappointed.

Nature Writer: An Interview with Fortyspot

2011-04-16T15:44:00.001+10:00

[Some of my thoughts about nature writing]

Fortyspot is a blog run by Lyn Reeves, a Tasmanian poet, editor and publisher. Lyn recently interviewed me about my passion for nature and my love of the genre "nature writing". Here's the interview, interspersed with some of my photographs. It is reproduced with Lyn's kind permission.

Fortyspot: When did you first become interested in nature writing, both as a reader and as a writer? What attracts you to this form of writing?

PG: I think it’s come out of a lifelong love of the natural world. A childhood chasing butterflies and cicadas; keeping silk worms; catching skinks and so on. And devouring “How and Why Wonder Books” on volcanoes, dinosaurs and the like.

But it was reading Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” in my 30s that really turned on my nature writing light bulb. It was like discovering a whole new planet that had barely been explored. Dillard is a writer who sees beneath the surface, and writes with a knowledgeable love of nature that leaps from the page.

That was the late 80s, and I spent the next few years trying to find more books like that. I’m strongly attracted to writing that shows me what’s hidden in plain view. I eventually decided to try and write my own local version of that.

Buttongrass and mountains, Southwest National Park

Fortyspot: Who are the nature writers you most admire or who have influenced you the most and who you might recommend to someone wanting to learn more of the art of nature writing?

PG: I’d start with Annie Dillard and Richard Nelson. Dillard once told an interviewer “You almost have to hold a gun at my head to make me read ‘nature writing’, but I’ll crawl over broken glass for Richard K. Nelson.” Amen to that! I count Richard, who is based in Alaska but often visits here, as both friend and mentor. His “The Island Within” is breathtakingly good.

In a field generally seen as dominated by American writers, I should also mention classics like Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac”, Barry Lopez’s “Arctic Dreams” and the works of writers like Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder and Terry Tempest Williams.

But there’s a British tradition too, often more bucolic than wild in nature. The father figure is probably Gilbert White (“The Natural History of Selborne”), but others include 19th century figures like John Clare and Richard Jeffries. In the 1950s T.H. White wrote a memorable book in “The Goshawk”, but also had some wonderfully observed nature writing in his history/fantasy “The Once and Future King”.

Of the more recent Brits, I was also lucky enough to meet and spend time in the Tasmanian wilds with the late Roger Deakin. His “Waterlog” is a classic; charming, poignant, acutely observed, and as disarmingly eccentric as the author himself. Robert Macfarlane’s “The Wild Places” and Kathleen Jamie’s “Findings” are two other recent book I’ve enjoyed and admired.

A couple of quality magazines that feature this kind of writing are “Orion” (from the US) and “Resurgence” (from the UK).

In Australia the list is thin. Eric Rolls’ “Celebration of the Senses” and “Doorways: A Year of the Cumberdeen Diaries”, and more recently Mark Tredinnick’s “The Blue Plateau”, are some notable exceptions.

King Billy pine at Lake Rhona

Fortyspot: In 2002 you co-founded the WildCare Tasmania International Nature Writing Prize, the world’s first literary award for unpublished nature writing. What led you to do this, and how did you go about it?

PG: As I noted above, I believed there was a dearth of Australian nature writing. With this in mind I asked Eric Rolls where nature essays might be published here, and he indicated that the options were few. In 1992 I wrote an essay about this in Island (#53, 1992). It was a kind of “call to arms” for nature writers. It took nearly a decade, but I eventually took up my own call, and travelled to Britain, Ireland and the US to study the nature writing traditions there.

I learned much, including that there was no writing prize anywhere – even in the US – for new nature writing. I came back and shared my findings with people like Pete Hay, and David Owen (then editor of Island), and we came up with the prize idea. When Andrew Smith of WildCare came on board as the major sponsor, we were off and running.

Fortyspot: The prize defines nature writing as ‘literary prose whose major inspiration and subject matter is the natural world, not necessarily excluding its significance for humans and/or their interactions with it.’ How did you arrive at that definition and what were some of the models or templates that you had in mind as examples of the genre?

PG: Pete Hay essentially came up with that definition. He’d been teaching literature and the environment at UTas for many years. We didn’t really have any models or templates, we just knew that we wanted people to engage in a heartfelt and literary fashion with the natural world.

Winter scene: Walls of Jerusalem National Park

Fortyspot: From reading the entries and prize-winners in this biennial competition, can you describe the general direction or particular attributes that distinguish the works submitted as ‘nature writing’. Have there been any ‘stand out’ entries that you’d like to mention?

PG: The best entries tend to be grounded in a particular place, and offer a reflective and knowledgeable consideration of experience in that place. In this context Robert Macfarlane talks about the need for “prolonged acquaintance with a place” so that “the slow capillary creep of knowledge” can occur. I tend to think of nature writing as the “slow food movement” of literature. It involves patient exposure to place; unhurried collection of observations; methodical gathering of relevant detail; and judicious combining of those ingredients with the individuality of the writer.

The fast food versions of nature writing are likely to give superficial descriptions of peoples’ experiences in nature, or worse, offer unsifted thoughts on current environmental crises, such as climate change or drought.

As for stand out pieces, I’d rather not single anyone out. Instead I’d urge people to read some of the winning entries in Island magazines. Past issues that have WildCare Prize winning essays include 92/93, 101, 102, 109 and 118. And the next issue, # 125, will hopefully have the 2011 winning entries.

Wallaby prints in snow, Walls of Jerusalem National Park

Fortyspot: Would you agree that the genre of place writing is less developed in Australia than in North America where there is a strong tradition comprising works such as Thoreau’s Walden, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek and the more contemporary works of writers like Barry Lopez, to name a few? Have you noticed a growing interest in the genre of nature writing in Australia in recent years and, if so, what would you put that down to?

PG: Yes, as discussed above, I think it is less developed here. But I also believe there’s now a burgeoning interest in nature and place writing in Australia. I think part of this is an expression of our desire to finally put down roots in this land, rather than simply camp on its surface. There may be a faddish element to it too, which could mean the spotlight will only hover here occasionally. But I think the more we live in this land, and reflect deeply on it, the more it will come out in our thinking, talking and writing.

Fortyspot: What suggestions or advice would you give to the novice nature writer?

PG: Spend time in the natural world; look deeply; be curious; ask a lot of questions; read widely; and then practice, practice, practice your writing. The good nature writers I know tend to be gentle and somewhat obsessive. It’s probably a helpful combination to cultivate.

My thanks to Lyn Reeves from Fortyspot for permission to reproduce this interview on my blog. Her blog focusses on writing about place.

Returning to Rhona (4)

2011-04-12T13:20:00.001+10:00

Part 4: Wasting the Wilderness

Autumn 2011. Trip number 5 to Lake Rhona starts in the kind of summer weather we've not seen during summer itself. We cross a summer river, walk up a summer valley, feel the peat-bound heat of summer reflecting back at us fiercely. We climb that final summer hill and promise we'll slake our thirsts in the deliciously cool summer cup that is Lake Rhona.

Lake Rhona, with Reeds Peak behind. An idyllic scene, but the dead standing pines tell a story

On every bushwalking trip I carry baggage. I don't mean the sort that fits inside my pack, but the emotional kind. On trips to Lake Rhona, the memory of the tragic loss of Lake Pedder is the heaviest of these, no matter how much I insist that Rhona and Pedder are completely distinct from each other.

I lost a sister to cancer at a tragically young age. To this day her now-adult daughters always remind me of her. That's not to say they don't each have their own unique and treasured identity. It's a simple acknowledgement of what gets caught in memory's net.

To walk through any part of the Tasmanian wilderness is to be reminded of its past: what it has lost; the threats it has faced; the threats it continues to face.

For me it starts with a loud absence: that of Tasmania's Palawa. In the 1830s escaped convicts, Goodwin and Connolly, reported seeing many Aboriginal huts in the Vale of Rasselas. Within decades they and their occupants had either died or been driven from the area.

Ironically the absence of their fire use opened the area to greater fire risks. Aboriginal burning was generally small-scale and out of peak season. Its main purpose was to clear localised hunting grounds. European burning was less judicious, and too often of a timing and scale that brought landscape-wide devastation.

Early on this was for exploration, mining and grazing. But later forestry burning had a huge impact too. Even Ernie Bond, who was not averse to burning his grazing grounds, was aghast at the effect of post-war forestry fires in the Gordon, Florentine and Rasselas valleys.

On my first trip to Rhona there was another piece of heavy "baggage". The summer before a hazard reduction burn in the Florentine had gone drastically wrong. The fire had escaped, burned through the Vale of Rasselas, and found its way up to a defenseless Lake Rhona.

The great majority of the stunning King Billy pine forest that lined its northern shore was burned and lost. Dead stumps still stand there today, the pines' residue resin keeping them preserved from rot, vertical but lifeless. Nature abhors a vacuum: eucalypts have largely filled the void, with just a few King Billys left alive to remind us of our folly.

A King Billy pine clings to life on the shores of Lake Rhona

Meanwhile, back in autumn 2011. Exhaustion and a late arrival prevent us from keeping our promise to drink Rhona's cup dry. But on the way up we've also been discussing the touchy issue of toileting in this area. It has started us thinking about the quality of the water in the lake. By our back-of-the-envelope calculations, bushwalkers deposit around 1 000 "number twos" around the lake shore every year. This being an alpine area, we've learned that decomposition of solid waste is very slow. Essentially most bushwalkers here are "pooing in their own nest", to borrow some technical ornithological terminology!

Our inspection of the area immediately behind the campsite confirms some fairly squalid toileting practices. Solid waste and toilet paper are not hard to find. Some has been buried in shallow sand, an easy find for the wildlife. The presence of a bold - and very plump - native rat (probably Mastacomys fuscus) at the campsite has us speculating in a very ugly direction regarding its diet!

By mutual agreement our party has decided to walk the 100-200 metres out of the catchment area to do our "number twos". Another solution would be to use "poo tubes". This combination of biodegradable bags and large tight-lidded plastic "pots" (approx. 10cm in diameter) for storing and carrying human waste, is the ultimate "carry in, carry out" practice.

Lake Rhona water: as cool and clear as iced tea ... we hope!

Some find the thought of this as gross as considering the Rhona rat's diet. Many would prefer someone else take responsibility for removing their waste, hence the popular call for a fly-in-fly-out toilet to be placed behind Rhona's beach. Personally I hope we can learn from our wilderness mistakes of the past, and start to take a deeper responsibility for removing unnecessary traces from these wild places.