“TURN 180 degrees to your right now. We are on the other side of the button grass plain. Look for our orange marker”.

I release the transmit button and await the pilot’s acknowledgment. Two or three kilometres to our east, well over on the other side of a broad button grass plain, the Bell Jet Ranger tilts and makes a sweeping turn, coming towards where we stand at the edge of the treeline. The helicopter slows as it descends, hesitating as the pilot seeks solid ground on which to put down. Gently, the skids make contact with the earth, the engine and rotor wind down until there remains only the whine of the turbine.

A door opens and out climb two men. We lead them into the open forest of eucalyptus, over to where a log had fallen across a trail years ago. I point out fresh-looking scuff marks on the log and the older man bends down, his weatherbeaten face indicating a lifetime spent in the highlands. He places his hand next to the scuffmarks, wrinkles his face as if in deep thought and then announces: “Probably made a day or two ago”.

Conducting a line search in scrubby country.

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Tasmania’s Central Plateau is an easy place to get lost on.

The undulating, rocky terrain supports a sparse vegetation of tussocky button grass interspersed with belts of snow gum. Hundreds of lakes, known locally as ‘tarns’, dot this region which occupies an extensive uplifted area that forms the central land mass of the state. There is a sameness to the landscape and even rural people lose their way.

Callout

The callout comes late in the afternoon. “This is police search and rescue. We have an alert. Can you be at the police garage ready to leave for the Central Plateau at 7.30?”, asks the voice on the phone. I reply in the affirmative and go home to pack. Members of search and rescue keep a pack loaded with essentials more or less ready to go, so all I have to do is throw in some food, grab a bite to eat and walk down to the police garage. We are on the road by 9.30, driving through the darkness of the Derwent Valley, through the sleeping town of Ouse, climbing toward the Central plateau … on into the night.

The bus is old and slow and is the type designed for hauling passengers around cities rather than for long-distance travel. There are no headrests so the team members contort themselves into bizzarre shapes in an attempt to get some sleep. A few stretch out along the passageway.

At 4.30am we arrive at the start point to find a few police officers standing around, a couple police Range Rovers and a large tent. Into this we stumble for sleep. Briefing is at 5.30.

Briefing

Cups of hot tea steam in the cold air as we stand around the map in the pre-dawn glow.

“There’s a hut in the trees on the western shore of this lake”, the officer tells the group, indicating a point three or so hours walk north of our location.

“Select two others”, he says to me, “take a radio and go check it out. Report your position hourly and call in with what you find when you get there and we’ll let you know what to do next”.

I look at the terrain on the map, planning our course. It is mainly undulating terrain interspersed with button grass and patches of forest.

There is still an early morning chill in the air as we move out in a northerly direction. Other parties are going off to other points. The helicopter will only be leaving Hobart at first light, so it will not be available for awhile.

We figure we are on the most likely route for walkers trekking out to the hut although we have no idea of the lost boy’s destination. A faint track comes and goes through the button grass and the bands of forest. Clearly, people pass this way from time to time, but not all that often and not that many people. In places it looks like the sort of track that wombats make; elsewhere the track appears a little too substantial for an animal trail, but only just.

The walking is easy and the day looks as though it will be fine. That’s good news not only because it increases the chance of finding someone but because searches are sometimes conducted in atrocious weather. The more atrocious the weather, the more critical the timeframe to find someone in, especially if they are poorly equipped for cold, wet conditions. Bad weather is tiring for the searchers too, especially if they don’t get adequate sleep before starting the search. Tiredness increases the chance of accidents and of missing clues, and searching is a tiring business even in the best of weather because searchers might be out for a long time in difficulty terrain.

We walk at a moderate pace so as not to miss any signs that we could use to track the missing boy, scanning the countryside as we go. An hour in, we find the scuff marks and radio search base, explaining our find and giving them our map coordinates. The helicopter has now arrived and they despatch it with two local trackers.

Reconnaissance

A reconnaissance is the first phase of a search operation. This involves walking, driving or flying the main tracks and visiting huts and campsites in the area. It is about checking out the most likely places people would go. Walkers who are ill or injured are likely to be found during this phase. It was on a reconnaissance search that we were now engaged.

If missing people are not found during this reconnaissance but promising signs of their whereabouts are, a more detailed search may be ordered. Minor tracks and camping areas and other places of shelter are checked. Anyone encountered is asked if they have seen the missing person. Clearly, having someone who is familiar with the area will speed things along and increase the chance of finding a lost hiker. Where they may be in a smaller, more defined area, a line search might find them. This involves setting up a line of searchers who move close together over an area looking for signs. I had only been on a line search in training and all I found was a large tiger snake.

Once, all seachers were carried out on the ground. Now helicopters are brought in. Quite a lot can be seen by flying low and slow over the terrain. But what you miss are the small clues of a person’s passing. If you want to find those then you have to be on the ground, on foot. Whatsmore, pilots will not take their machines up in fog or poor weather that foot searchers venture out in.

Alone

The boy we are searching for has been alone on the Plateau for two nights. The only sign of him was his yellow waterproof parka found by a tree a kilometre north of the search base. It has been left hanging there as a marker in case he somehow comes back that way. After that, there is no sign of the direction he took, no sign of his passage… nothing.

Why he left his parka puzzles us. It is not the sort of thing to be lightly abandoned in high country noted for rapid changes in weather and the onset of cold conditions. He was equipped for only a day out and having lost his parka, those who know this country are concerned for his wellbeing. Nights have been cold but not frigid. All the same, cold saps strength and without protective clothing or matches to light a fire a person expends a lot of energy trying to stay warm. Fortunately, there has been no rain while he has been missing.

The killer in these highlands is hypothermia, the progressive loss of body core temperature that ends with collapse and death. The possibility that we are looking for a body is not far from our minds.

On course

The scuffing on the log—it looks like someone has dragged their boot as they stepped over—is inconclusive. Yes, it could have been the boy but it just as well could have been someone else, a trout fishermen, maybe a bushwalker, perhaps a shooter.

The crew returns to the helicopter, doors close, turbine whines, rotor picks up speed and the machine jerks upward and disappears to the south. Back at search base it will take on board a team and drop them to our north-west where they will conduct a more detailed search near another lake. Silence returns. We walk through the belt of trees and out onto a button grass plain.

Coming out of a belt of trees, we stop to scan the open grassland between us an the next tree belt but see nothing out of the ordinary. We take a few minutes to look so that we might notice anything out of place in the landscape. What we would see first is movement, then silhouette, then bright colour, for it is in this order that things are noticed. It is only in closer proximity that sound is of any value, however experienced mountain walkers carry a whistle, the sound of which can carry a fair distance depending on wind strength and direction. We do not know if the boy has one.

In searches like this you watch both the far and near distance. It is in the near distance, the space around you, that you find the small clues—a scuff mark on a log, the imprint of boots in wet soil, belongings, branches freshly snapped off, remains of a recent campfire, food wrappers, even a direction-of-travel arrow scratched into the soil or tree trunk if the missing person has their wits about them.

We take a compass bearing and check our direction of travel on the map. Still on course and more than half way to our objective, the lake. We cross the grassy opening, pass through another belt of trees, then out onto another grassy plain. Not far to go now. The gently undulating terrain has made our passage easy and fast but you can’t hep but notice how the sameness of the terrain and its vegetation pattern would be easy to get lost in.

Then, in the distance, a lake, though it’s not our destination lake. This is a smaller body of water, one of the nameless hundreds that dot the Central Plateau. All the same, it’s the sort of place where a lost person who seek shelter and firewood.

“Look!”, exclaims the man in the lead, pointing to two boot prints in the sand of the lakeshore. “They look fairly recent”. And they do. The lugs of the sole have incised deeply into the moist sand and have not eroded yet. But is the print too big for that of a teenage boy? It seems so. If that is the case, and if they belong to the person who scraped the fallen log we came across earlier, then that person is not the missing boy.

Like most lakes out here, this one is surrounded by a narrow band of trees and among them we search for more signs, but the prints are the only indication that someone has passed this way. Whoever made the footprints was moving north, in the same direction we are going.

I click the transmit button: “Search base this is team 1″.

The reply is immediate: “Team one this is search base”.

I tell them news of the boot print and our grid reference.

“OK. Copy that, team one, look around the lake then proceed on to your search destination and radio in when you get there”.

The work of grinding ice

Tasmania’s Central Plateau was scoured into its flattish, undulating shape under the weight of an ancient ice cap. The tremendous pressure of the ice on the dolerite rock scoured hundreds of scrapes and pits which, when the ice age ended between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago, filled with water to become the lakes we see today. Over time, a vegetation of mosses and lichens, button grass, snow gum and other species adapted to the cycle of summer heat and winter cold colonised the bare rock. Forested patches, usually in areas slightly higher than that occupied by the button grass, spread in clumps and drifts between the areas of tussock to create a vegetation that alternates haphazardly between forest and grassland.

Periodically, bushfires sweep this region. They burn rapidly across the tussock grass and, when hot enough, kill the snow gums to leave the stark, grey skeletons we see in the copses around us. In winter the plateau is often under snow and the winds howl in from the west. Few venture out then.

This can be visually confusing terrain for those lacking a sense of direction or a compass. It is easy to head in one direction and be turned from that course to follow an easier route. That is why the search is covering such a broad area.

Hut

“The hut is in the trees a few metres from the shore”, I tell the team. “If we walk along the edge of the treeline we should find it.”

The first lake, the one with the boot prints, was a waypoint on our search. No further sign of the person who left those bootprints in the sand has been seen. Some time recently he had walked this way, going in the same direction as we are, and had stepped out onto the sandy shore of the lake… and then left no further trace of his passage. The lake was a place that deserved searching and it provided confirmation that we were on course. This larger lake with its more substantial stand of fringing forest is our destination. We move along the western edge of the trees where they give way to the button grass.

“Here’s a bit of a track”, called one of the team. Sure enough, a faint path has been worn through the vegetation. We follow it. “There it is”, he says, pointing to the yellowing timbers of a hut now visible through the trees.

The hut is of medium-size, as the scale of mountain huts go, not all that old and in good condition, a sign that it is used regularly. But by whom? Fishermen, probably, less likely by bushwalkers who would prefer to travel on to the Lake St Clair region further west. What motivated someone to build here, I wonder? And why this lake? What is it that they do out here? Questions come and go in search of an explanation of why someone, perhaps a group of friends, would go to the trouble to build a hut on the shore of a nameless lake a few hours walk out onto Tasmania’s Central Plateau.

The door is pushed open to reveal… an empty hut. No warm ash in the fireplace, no sign of recent use. So, the boy did not make for the hut after all.

We inform search base and are instructed to return. Even though we walk faster on our way back we remain alert for any sign of the boy. We don’t talk much on the return for we are still alert for signs of the missing boy’s passage, and we are staring to feel tired after a largely sleepless night and early start.

Companions

My companions, like me, are used to long days on the trail in mountain country. They know how rapidly mountain weather can change from sunny to snowy, from fine to cold rain. It’s usually only people with experience who volunteer for search and rescue because it can be quite difficult—today was more a pleasant walk compared to what some callouts can be.

The police provide training and the wherewithal of searches and there might be a couple training weekends a year. This is necessary so that they can have confidence of the search and rescue teams and vice versa. Fortunately, callouts are rare.

The radio crackles

We walked on more of less the same way we had come out and had been on the track perhaps an hour when the radio crackled: “All units, all units. The boy has been found. Return to search base immediately”. We make good time.

The boy was well but he was not found by any search team. That afternoon, he wandered into a town on the edge of the Plateau and sought out the local police.

Debrief over, vehicles packed, we board the rickety, uncomfortable bus and start the journey home. Most are too tired to talk and sit immersed in their own worlds. Some doze. Others murmur quiet conversations.

One point made during the debrief, and a valid one it is,  was that we should never assume that we are searching for a body.

TO CLIMB or not? That was the debate I held with myself on the walk up from the Waldheim road head.

I have more than enough time to climb the peak but I feel an urgency to get well into the mountains before the day gets too late. It isn’t that I might not reach my planned destination before nightfall, the walk is through open country and is without major climbs once I reach Cradle Plateau. It is just this illogical urge to move far and fast.

The land is revealed as I ascend the trail past Crater Lake, making for the Cradle Plateau. The waters of the Dove Lake below appear black and, beyond, the rustic timber buildings of Waldheim denote the end of the road and the start of this, one of Australia’s premier mountain walks. Those huts are the legacy of the Austrian, Gustauf Weindorfer and his wife Kate. Gustav explored and opened up this part of the Tasmanian highlands around 1912 and Waldheim Chalet was reconstructed on the site of the original chalet in 1976, after the original had detoriorated beyond repair. It serves as a museum commemorating the Weindorfers and their foresight in bequeathing this part of Tasmania to the future.

Gustav was not the first European in the area, however. Loggers had extracted the native pines since the 1860s and, from the 1890s, miners were active in the region. That was the story through much of the island state’s high country—the places so beloved to bushwalkers today had been explored and exploited by trappers, miners and foresters.

The ridge of Cradle Mountain rises from Cradle Plateau.

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At last – the plateau. Here, above the tree line, the walk flattens and passes a small, two-level hut. Intended as refuge from the blizzards of winter, the upper-level door is for use when the lower level is snowed in.

Not far beyond I reach the decision point where the rough trail to the summit leaves the Overland Track. There, I stop and look up to the saw-tooth ridge. Indecision over—I won’t climb Cradle today. Instead, I bypass the mountain on its western flank, follow the snow pole line across the Cradle Plateau and head south.

It is warm out in this open country. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky and heats the skin to a mild sunburn that is not noticed until later. I continue across the rocky plateau, but a nagging regret at not having climbed troubles me. Sure, I reason, I have climbed Cradle before but what troubles me now is the knowledge that each climb of a peak is different… the experience, the weather, the season, the view from the top. What have I missed? Have I missed anything at all?

My first ascent had been in the November of 1973. That was eight months after I moved to Tasmania with my partner, Charmaine, a shift we had made somewhat impetuously by asking a salesman at Paddy Pallin’s adventure equipment shop in Sydney where we could go to live and find mountains to walk in. He suggested we forget our first choice, Western Australia, and, instead, head to Tasmania. So it was that one Sunday afternoon we disembarked the TAA flight in Hobart, our worldly posessions in our packs, and sought temporary accommodation in the Hobart youth hostel.

That was seven years before this warm, sunny Spring day. Then, in company with Pam and Dennis Elwell, a couple who became close friends, we had followed the ridge to the east of Crater Lake and climbed up from the valley. The scree slope was still covered by winter’s remnant snow drifts and soon, passing between steep crags, we emerged on the narrow ridge of Cradle Mountain, along which we made the traverse to the summit cairn.

There we stood in the warmth of a sun shining from a blue sky, looking out at a fantastic landscape of mountain and valley. Never had I seen such mountains… ridge after ridge, all unknown to me, and, here and there, peaks protruding from them. Fresh from the mainland, it was, for us, like discovering some unknown land. The Central Plateau, its lake-studded surface pitted by an ancient ice cap gone these past 15, 000 years, lay to our west. South was the solo spire of Barn Bluff and way beyond it a horizon formed by the hazy, bluish shapes of mountains unknown to us then but which we would get to know over coming years.

A decision forced – or a decision already made?

Again the question—to climb or not? It comes and goes as I follow the trail along the rim of Cradle Cirque. I look east and, five or six kilometres away is the minor peak of Mt Emmett. I wonder if anyone ventures out there, then realise that there are certain to be people prepared to make the dash from the Overland Track. Peak baggers, we call them—competitive people whose not-so-secret obsession in life is to climb as many peaks as they can, no matter how insignificant they are in topographical terms.

Cradle Mountain is almost an hour back and now my fixation is on Barn Bluff. A hundred meters ahead the decision will be forced as that is where the trail splits – one branch decending into Waterfall Valley and the other leading to the scree slopes and the ascent to the summit.

I should not have bothered to question myself about climbing because not to have done so would have been to miss the tremendous view from the summit and the physical pleasure of ascending the jagged scree slope leading to the summit. I think I unconsciously knew this when I was back on the cirque and I suspect it was then, as Barn Bluff loomed ever larger before me, that I really made the decision to climb. My continued questioning had been nothing but so much chatter in the monkey mind.

Barn Bluff is higher than Cradle Mountain. Immediately below, on the Bluff’s southern side, is Lake Will, a large body of cold water reflecting the clear, blue sky. The lake empties via Innis Falls, however I have never visited them and will not do so on this journey although there is a trail to the lake from the Overland Track. They are to remain unknown to me and that’s something I don’t mind because, if all places of potential interest are visited, what unknown territory is there for the mind to wonder about? Smaller lakes dot the landscape into the distance, one of them Lake Windemere where I will make a brief stop the following day.

Sitting on the sun-warmed dolerite of Barn Bluff summit, I look upon the terrain of tomorrow’s walk. I know from a previous traverse of the Cradle Mouuntain national park that crossing boggy Pine Forest Moor could be a muddy experience. The Moor can best be envisionaged as a flattish plateau of boggy soil supporting a hardy vegetation of button grass and dotted with numerous lakes and ponds around which grows the stunted indigenous pine. If the weather holds, the track will take me to the distant group of mountains that forms the southern horizon—the Pelion Range, roughly half way through my walk.

Once, I recall, this wild country was the preserve of fur trappers, prospectors and others who ventured into it in search of a livelihood. What an independent, self-reliant type of humanity they must have been. Their’s was a life of hardship stoically accepted as normal. They were so different, so very different, to today’s townspeople that they seem almost to belong to some vanished age of heroes.

Star trails over Cradle Mountain.

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Reflection – joy trough movement?

I speculate that there are two reasons people ascend peaks.

The first is a combination of challenge and enjoyment—the physical exuberance of scrambling over boulders and through passages between rocky bluffs. It is a sort of joy through movement, a rhythmic negotiation of terrain. It’s true that movement is something enjoyable… the simple rhythm of putting one foot in front of another.

The second reason is reaching the summit and the feeling of satisfaction, of completion, that comes as you look out over the landscape. It is this revelation of the land that is the attraction, not some competitive drive to reach a summit. It is about looking out over the country you will traverse in coming days, or looking into country you may never visit that makes climbing a peak, no matter how modest of height and how unspectacular, a worthwhile pursuit. But that is when the weather is kind; when it is bad you do not get much of a view, just a face-full of sleet or cold rain. You do not stay long on the summit.

Time spent on a summit can be solitary, social or metaphysical. If it is social you sit under a warm sun, eat the food you have carried up and talk with friends. If it is solitary or metaphysical, you ponder the landscape and experience the presence of rock, sun and wind in all their raw nature. At best, the experience can be almost transcendental, but that sensation is felt only after you have sat a while, when the speech of your companions has quieted and you become aware of the rock, the lichen, the sun shining down, the distance, the quietness of it all. I felt this most acutely in the Western Arthur Range of South-West Tasmania while sitting at the base of Mt Scorpio summit, gazing northward over plain and mountain. Then, I lost awareness of myself as separate from the mountains and plains… it is hard to explain but others have experienced it… I believe it is described as ‘oceanic feeling’, a somewhat strange term that does not help much in describing it.

Home in a hut

Home tonight is the old Waterfall Valley hut, a small timber building below Cradle Cirque, a shelter basic in appointment but comfortable, as are all the public huts in the national park. It snuggles against the pines immediately below the slope of the Cirque. Nearby is the newer and larger Waterfall Valley hut, a structure probably put up some time in the early 1970s.

You reach Waterfall Valley hut after traversing Cradle Plateau and the cirque leading to Barn Bluff. The hut is a good overnight stopover on the first day out of Waldheim. The photo was taken during a cold season traverse of the Overland Track.

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I unpack my sleeping bag and spread it on the bunk, find my torch and put it next to my bag, locate my wash kit and place it nearby. Then it is time to cook a simple evening meal on my hiker’s stove. I connect fuel tank to burner, prime the device and light it. Soon, its blue flame purrs steadily, a comforting sound that promises a full belly. This is an act that will become an evening ritual over coming days. I have the hut to myself for I have seen no one since leaving Cradle Mountain, and then it was only a party of two out for a day walk. This I feel good about for I do not mind solitude.

Outside it is quiet; no wind blows and as night comes on, the peace is calming. I stand in the door and look into the gathering darkness. The weather is holding fine and cooler air is condensing a mist around the summit of Cradle.

Reflection – walking alone

There is something pleasurable about walking alone especially on longer hikes. It is then that you slow to a pace of life that suits you, a pace that allows you to stop, to look, to appreciate the land you walk through.

There is a cadence to solo travel, it’s that pleasure in rhythmic movement over rugged terrain. No hurrying to catch up with fast walkers or slowing for the less fit, just a pace that varies with ascent and descent and with the muddiness of the track. Importantly, this is a pace at which you are free to stop to take photographs, to wait until the light is right, be that one minute or fifteen.

Even if you walk fast, solo walking feels unhurried. Distance is estimated by the time it will take to get to that night’s stop. You start out with more than enough time to spare… taking care to check that you have put everything into your pack before leaving and noting your intentions in the hut’s log book. A final glance around—got everything? Close the hut door and set off. Your pack feels heavy at first but it is soon forgotten as you assume a pace adapted to the terrain. This is how I will live over coming days during which I will have the trail to myself, encountering no one apart from a small group on the last day of the walk.

In Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park you encounter hikers from early Spring but they are just the occasional band of Tasmanians eager to make an early start to their season in the mountains before the trails become crowded. The walking season does not get underway properly until November and the hordes of mainlanders do not descend until mid-December or January, the national holiday break. According to tourism sources, the numbers visiting the Cradle Mountain area has grown incredibly, from 536 (as recorded in the Waldheim visitor’s book) in 1938-1939, to around 3000 by the end of the 1950s increasing to 20,000 by the end of the 1970s, the time of my journey. In 1998, an estimated 140,000 came. Most of these do nothing more venturesome than day walks around Cradle, however the number making the full transit of the park—it is usually done north to south—has grown tremendously.

For the long-distance walker, life in the mountains is a simple, repeated ritual… walking, eating, sleeping, packing, walking. It is regulated by day and night, by light and darkness. It is life as transit and it is a great way to live.

Frog Flat’s boggy bottom

Frog Flats is an appropriate name for the boggy patch of button grass where the descent from the plains of Pine Forest Moor bottoms out. Here, the churning of bushwalker’s boots year after year and the melting snows of Spring have broadened the trail into a bog of considerable breadth.

Boggy tracks are familiar to anyone who walks Tasmania’s mountains and plains. They form where walkers spread out to avoid muddy areas and, in doing so, enlarge the bog they seek to avoid. Even in summer the tracks never fully dry out and over the years what was just a boggy patch becomes a morass. The bogs are common on the poorly-drained tracks of the highlands because of the moist, peaty soils. If you miss your step you can go into the sticky, black ooze knee-deep or more.

It’s a relief to reach Pelion Plains after the climb out of Frog Flats, not that the climb is difficult. Once out on the plains the terrain is a flat expanse of yellow button grass, a tussock so-called because of the circular seed cluster at the end of a metre-long stalk. To the east lay the long, flat-topped ridge of Mount Oakley, its end a cascade of vertical, eroded spires that dominates Pelion Plains. The Overland Track winds past the mountain’s western end as it heads towards Old Pelion Hut on the far side of the plain… accommodation for the night.

It has been a comparatively easy day on flatfish terrain with only the decent into and climb out of Frog Flats to vary the terrain in any significant way. The good weather has held—the state of the weather is always of interest in the mountains. Crossing Pine Forest Moor turned out to be a few hours of slog, of putting one foot in front of the other, setting eyes on the distant massif of Pelion West, putting the brain into neutral and just going…and going.

I think it was Heinrich Harrer, author of the book Seven Years in Tibet who wrote of the ‘mountaineer’s stride’ that could cover considerable distance in a day. The long, relaxed stride is common to experienced bushwalkers, too. It is a rhythmic pace that comes into its own on flat terrain, where large distances are to be covered and it seems to simply eat up distance. The stride can be maintained whether lightly or heavily laden and is broken only at creek crossings, in sticky mud and when the walker takes an accidental slide on the slippery ground. It is adapted to descents where the walker adopts a pace—terrain being suitable—somewhere between a rapid walk and a controlled fall.

Making good time and arriving well before sunset to spread out sleeping bag, make an early meal from unappetising-looking dehydrated food and brew some tea, I sit on the doorstep, warm cup in hand, and enjoy the silence and the fading colours of evening. Alone in the mountains, such moments between activity are a chance to reflect but in company they are times for quiet talk, for reminisence but rarely for speculation about the future. It is the present or shared, good times in the past that dominate after-dinner campfire conversation.

Colour drains and the monochrome of night falls on the land. The air chills. Above, a high layer of wispy cloud covers the sky. This is a landscape without lights. Inside, I make sure my food is packed away in my backpack, out of reach of marauding bush rats. I fluff up spare clothing as a pillow, climb into my sleeping bag and zip it most of the way in anticipation of a cool night. Laying back, in the moments before sleep, my mind wanders.

Early start, early finish

The aged, grey timbers of Old Pelion are tucked into the treeline on the northern side of Pelion Pass. Like other huts in Cradle Mountain park it is a reasonably weatherproof and rusticly minimalist structure, a refuge to those unlucky enough to be caught in the bleak weather that sweeps in at any time of year. Just as Waterfall Valley has an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ hut, so has Pelion.

In the coming summer, the huts dotted along this trail will host hikers making what has a reputation as one of the  most famous of Australian treks. The visitors will deplete the firewood supply and bury their waste in sometimes too-shallow holes in the bush. Clusters of tents will sprout like colourful mushrooms. Night will bring not solitude and unlit darkness but the yellow flicker of campfires and the blue flame of bushwalker’s stoves. Silence will be punctuated by the murmur of subdued voices and outbursts of laughter, the sounds of campfire conviviality.

The weather had been good so far. Warm days, blue skies and cool evenings with just the right amount of bite to remind me it is springtime in the mountains here at 42 degrees south latitude. It could be worse. Blizzards are not uncommon even in summer; cold sleet comes at any time of year and days of torrential rain are a fact of life in these highlands. I recall that it has snowed on my last two Christmas-new year bushwalks. It is for this reason that a waterproof parka and warm clothing are carried, even in summer, as part of the essential bushwalker kit. The first two days on the trail have been more or less cloudless and warm but late this afternoon the band of high cloud moving in from the west had started to obscure the sky.

Morning. Up early. Stuff sleeping bag into its nylon sack.. pull on woolen shirt – it is cool so soon after dawn… eat a hasty breakfast… mix powdered milk into cereal and add water… put billy of water on stove for tea… wash bowl, spoon and cup… wipe dry, stow in bag and stuff into pack… waterproof parka goes on top… off with the wool shirt and drape it across the top of the load—it is chilly but it will be a warm climb to the pass—tighten pack lid over the lot and heave the thing onto my back. Pelion Gap awaits.

Closing the hut door, I look across the plain to Mt Oakley silhouetted against the grey sky of early morning. It is quiet. There is no one else in either the old or new hut. In the coolness I set a moderate pace through the euclypt forest… it is a bit of an uphill slog to the gap, the saddle I had seen from Barn Bluff a couple days ago, and there is no sense in hurrying.

The forest thins close to the gap and I release my pack and take in the sweep of the land. Sweat evaporates coldly from my back. The grey timber of the old direction sign are weathered and stained by lichen, yet somehow it has stood here for decades in defiance of fire and snow, wind and walkers. It names the peaks back the way I have come and those that lay to the south, where I am bound. I lean my pack against it and climb the pimple of Pelion East, just a short scramble past an old timber hut that was built many decades ago, so I understand, by miners. People leave their works after them and, like the sign, the hut has persisted in this wind-blown place. Pelion East is at one extremity of the Pelion Range which enfolds the valley from where I have come this morning and extends via peaks known as Achilles, Thetis and Ossa all the way to Pelion West.

To reaching Pelion Gap is to reach the centre of the park in both a geographical and temporal sense. It is the divide between the park’s geographically different northern and southern reaches and marks the approximately half-way point in the time most walkers spend on the trail. I had no intention of making the long climb from Pelion Plains to Mt Pelion West, the angular mass that broods over the middle part of the Cradle Mountain national park. Experienced walkers have the option of the two day traverse of the ridges and valleys from Mt Ossa, Tasmania’s highest but far from most spectacular peak situated immediately west of Pelion Gap. It is an option taken by only the adventurous few.

Gone are the wide, boggy button grass plains on the southern side of Pelion Gap. The land here is forested ridge country and the track falls, in an up-and-down manner, towards Lake St Clair.

A place revisited

I had been here before, a couple times. Once, on a warm summer’s day, our group had left our packs at Pelion hut, climbed the pass and set off over the bump of Mount Doris to ascend Mt Ossa.

Not far below the Ossa’a peak, high on the boulder slope, we stopped to listen. At first we thought it was thunder, a morning storm coming in, but we were not sure… the roar was continuous and getting louder. We were perplexed… none of us had encountered a noise like this in all our years of mountain walking. Louder it came, gaining direction, coming in from the south. As we looked back and down, a shape emerged from the misty valley and an F111 roared up over Ossa to disappear to the north.

The land, a downward trend

From Pelion Gap I have the option of making a short day of it and staying in the old fur-trappers hut at Du Cane Gap, not far to the south or, alternatively, spending most of the day on foot and walking all the way to Windy Ridge hut in the forest above Lake St Clair. Even, perhaps, going on to Narcissus hut at the northern tip of the lake.

The route decends into Pinestone Valley, then to Kia Ora hut on the upper Mersey River adjacent to Kai Ora Falls. That is a good place for a break after which it is a relatively short walk to Du Cane Gap. From there, the eastern end of Falling Mountain is rounded with the possibility of short side trips to D’Alton, Furgusson and Hartnett falls.

So different to the open country of the northern park, this region I now pass through. There are deep valleys and forests and an upward trend to the land as I approach Du Cane Gap. The day remains mild with a high overcast and walking produces a sweat that cools the skin whenever a stop is made.

I will choose where to overnight as the day goes on but I suspect that I will continue through to Narcissus hut. Why, I do not know as I am enjoying my time alone in the mountains and to walk through to Narcissus is to knowingly shorten it. Perhaps I just enjoy covering distance on foot. Going all the way to Narcissus will rob me of a day if I walk out to the roadhead at Derwent Bridge the following morning. It is just that illogical but persistent compulsion to move forward, to walk on… task-orientation without reason.

Reflection – the simple life of the mountains

There is contentment in routine. Not the imposed routine of modern life but the simple routine of life in the mountains. it is a routine defined my cooking and eating, sleeping and movement. It is a routine of your own making, and that is good.

It starts in the morning when you unzip your sleeping bag and climb out. You stretch, preparing muscles for a day on the move. Then you put on clothes and look out to see what the weather is doing. Make a simple, cold breakfast… cereal is fine… and wash it down with a cup of coffee or hot tea then clean and stow your utensils, force the sleeping bag into its stuff sack, put it all into the pack and you are ready to move.

In the early afternoon you stop for lunch… crispbread biscuits with peanut butter or cheese, a few swigs of water and a handful or two of scroggin—a mixture of nuts, chunks of dried fruit and small pieces of chocolate favoured by bushwalkers. Lunch is usually at some significant point in the journey, a pass, a peak or whatever, but sometimes it is taken sitting on a rock or log by the side of the trail, watching your boots to see that leaches do not sneak under your socks to suck your blood. If you are up high and the going has been hard, sweat evaporates and chills you and you put on a pullover or parka.

Time marked by movement… the day passes to the rhythm of your stride. Reach your destination and it is either pitch a tent or lay out your sleeping bag on the bunk of a hut. Cook a meal—something that travels well in your pack, is dry and light to carry and is easily prepared on your hiker’s stove. Pasta and cheese with dried vegetables, perhaps. If you are really a masochistic lightweight traveller or are culinarily dysfunctional, your meal might be one of those overpriced, small-serve, freeze dried concoctions sold in bushwalking stores. But why buy this stuff when, for the price of a bag each of noodles and dried vegetables you end up with something just as nutritious?

Eating utensils washed, teeth brushed, it is time to sit quietly—outside if the weather allows, otherwise in the hut by the fire or, if the evening is really cold, snugged into your sleeping bag. It is time to let your mind wander, to think about the day’s journey and what you want to do tomorrow… to think of home, friends and freshly cooked, non-dehydrated meals accompanied by a bottle of mellow red. Zip up your bag and, finally, you sleep.

In some Tasmanian huts your sleep will be interrupted by the scratching of possums or bush rats trying to find a way into your food. Sometimes in the depths of the night you will be awakened by an unearthly scream that gives the unknowing bushwalker the horrors. This, though, is only possums fighting or the nocturnal scream of the Tasmanian devil.

This routine is the pattern day after day, the pleasurable cycle of life in the mountains. Life reduced to basics.

Fire

You could still make open fires when I took this solo walk through the Cradle Mountain National Park. Today, the pleasure of the flame, the shared company around the campfire or the fireplace in the hut is gone, banned by park management. These are the days of the hiker’s stove, those little gas or shellite-powered devices that roar away under your billy and add extra weight to your load.

The park management’s reasoning in banning open fires in the highland parks is sound. First, there is the question of firewood. As the number of walkers increases so does the amount of wood they burn to cook their meals and keep warm. As firewood became more difficult to find, walkers break off branches and collected wood that looks dead but is not. The vegetation around huts and popular camp sites is damaged.

Secondly, there’s the soil. Tasmania’s mountain soils carry a high portion of combustible peat. Although moist, the organic matter in peaty soils can smoulder for days after campers think they have extinguished their camp fires and can suddenly come to life and burn out large tracts of land. It is environmental damage and the fear of bushfire that has forced the no-fires policy.

Fires can be devastating in this country. The forest does not recover as quickly as does the fire-adapted eucalyptus bush of the mainland. Five or so years before making my journey a young man, a keen conservationist, camped with his friends near Mt Olympus at the southern end of the Cradle Mountain Park. Somehow, their campfire got away in the peaty soil and scorched a large area along the flank of the mountain. I would not be surprised if, all these decades later, he still suffers remorse over the event.

Next day to last

I reach Du Cane hut before midday and seriously consider continuing to Narcissus. I know I am about to make another of my impulsive, irrational decisions and will later, probably, regret doing so. I slow my pace to spin out my time on the track.

You come on Du Cane hut suddenly as you emerge from the trees after a long uphill walk . The hut occupies a grassy clearing and is a truly rustic shelter of rough-cut planks now warped by time and weather. Built early in the twentieth century it has somehow survived decades of inhospitable climate to stand at the edge of a dark tree line that encloses the base of the steep bluff of Falling Mountain. Home to the trappers who came into the mountains after the thick, dark pelts of the Tasmanian mountain possum, the hut now shelters the occasional party of bushwalkers. Its existence is a reminder that for some, the past was a life of isolation that demanded a self-reliance barely imaginable today.

Once seasonal home to the trappers who lived off the possum fur trade, Ducane hut sits atop the pass immediately below the range.

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It is no exaggeration to say Du Cane hut leaks a little. But when the weather comes in, when the snow starts to build up and walkers cower from the westerlies, the hut is a welcome sight. If the last party has stocked the hut with wood (a custom in the mountains) a warm and drying blaze can be started in the fireplace.

The hut is home to a possibly mythic, possibly real but definitely large and voracious possum know as ‘Black Pete’. Some say it is his size that sets him apart, but all agree that his formidable reputation comes from his bad habit of gnawing through bushwalker’s packs to get at their food. I do not know how long possums live, but Black Pete must be a long-lived member of the species for his legend has persisted over the years.

There is no sign of this voracious mammal when I push open the door to the empty hut. I have the feeling that nobody has been here for some time, perhaps since last summer or as late as autumn which would have brought the passing of the last party of bushwalkers of the season before rain, sleet and snow closed the mountains for the winter. After a brief look around, I close the door and head south. From Du Cane Pass the track decends towards the valley of the Narcissus and it is here, I have decided, that I will make for.

Towards Narcissus

A gentle snow falls. The flakes come straight down… there is no wind and they remain on the ground only a few minutes before melting. I suspect that this is just the start and that the skies will get darker and the snow become heavier. The change in weather started slowly… no dramatic downpours, no white-outs. I set out on this journey in the best of spring weather, but spring is a changable time although in the mountains of Tasmania the same could be said of all seasons. Blue skies and warm weather had yesterday given way to cloud and falling temperature. What started as a streaky, wispy layer of cirrus that came over mid-afternoon has given way to a puffier, darker formation of the type that bears summer rain or winter snow.

Tasmania’s mountain landscapes are places of shifting character formed by the interplay of terrain and weather. When cold fronts blow in from the Southern Ocean the peaks take on a threatening grey colouration. In the morning you open the tent door or walk out of the hut and the world either shines with the brilliance of freshly-fallen snow or all you see is freezing sleet driven by a howling wind. If time is short and the way known, walkers set out in these deplorable conditions dressed in their waterproofs, hoods drawn tightly around faces, shoulders hunched into the wind, barely a word being spoken until they reach shelter. For those unfamiliar with the terrain, staying put is the best option.

Du Cane Gap is less than six kilometres from Du Cane hut. Descending the southern side the gap towards the Narcissus River, the occasional view is to the distant, curved finger of Lake St Clair. All around, the land is clad in dark, cool temperate forest and appears to fall towards the lake. It is still a long way off but the lake shines steely-grey under a sky now the colour of lead. In the forest I come to the still-yellow timbers of the new Windy Ridge hut. It is only a few years old, built as a replacement for a predecessor lost to fire. Eventually, those fresh timbers will weather into the grey that characterises all the huts in these mountains.

Eucalyptus forest dominates around Windy Ridge and it’s for a break. I nibble at scroggin and take out the map to check the distance remaining to Narcissus hut. I notice that the higher country, over to the east, contains the Orion Lakes, northernmost of a string of medium-sized lakes that occupy rolling terrain that ends in the escarpment forming the eastern shore of Lake St Clair. And, just as I did about interesting-looking landscapes off to the side of the Overland Track in the north, I wonder about making a journey into this country at some time. Is this intention, I wonder, or just wistfulness?

I make good time down through the forest. The track is dry, the walking easy and gently downhill. The snow continues to drift down but it is not heavy. Constant movement keeps me warm and I speed down this section of trail, my pack lighter now that most of the food and fuel has been consumed. Soon, ahead, through gaps in the trees appear the button grass flats at the northern end of Lake st Clair.

The track flattens and spills onto the soggy flats. Here, track workers in years gone by have corduroyed the boggier stretches by laying sapplings across the trail. The corduroy can be slippery so I moderate my pace and watch my step—this is no place to sprain an ankle. Narcissus hut is not far now.

I have had a special feeling for these flats ever since setting eyes on them seven years ago. Why? I don’t know, they are just common button grass flats and scrub. Maybe it is the memory of when I first traversed them… the button grass glistening with freshly fallen snow and the glitter of moisture, or perhaps it is the wide sweep of the landscape to the ridges that enclose it, flattness edged with the vertical. I recall a day, similarly cloudy and wet, when the button grass was side-lit by a late afternoon sun that highlighted even small details and turned the plans a vivid yellow against the grey of the sky… and of my friends strung out across the plains as they moved along the track, figures in a landscape.

I come back into the present and the knowledge that this will be my last night in the park. I experience misgivings that my journey will soon end. Would I have been better to spend the night at Du Cane or Windy Ridge hut? Probably.

Narcissus River… a ribbon of fast flowing water stained black by tannin leached from vegetation and soil. Without the narrow bridge it would be impassable at this time of year when melting snow is draining from the peaks and plateaus. This small but substantial river flows at a steady pace and is deep enough for there to be few rapids.

Across the footbridge… and there, in the near distance above the banks of the stream is the greenish cladding of the hut. Narcissus is a well-used cabin. It offers a convenient overnight stop for hikers headed up the side trail into Pine Valley and on to the high plateau of The Labyrinth beyond. The hut is less than a kilometre from the shore of the lake.

The hut on the Narcissus River stands among the tall eucalypts not far from the edge of extensive grasslands. A welcome sight in cold, rainy weather.

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It is late afternoon when I push open the door. The hut is empty… I thought it might be as it is still too early in the season for most walkers to be in the mountains. Within a few weeks, though, the hut will be in constant weekend use with walkers laying out sleeping bags, the roar of stoves, the dank odour of wet clothing hung up to dry, belongings scattered across tables and muddy hiking boots clustered by the door.

Water gathered from Narcissus River, I make a final meal then clean up and walk to the door to look out on a landscape on which a fine evening rain falls like a shifting grey curtain. The weather has brought a closeness to the evening in which horizons are limited and the land blends into a mistiness that comes with the fading of the light. It is still quiet as all evenings have been on this journey and I enjoy the experience of simply being there, in this hut, looking out onto this landscape or as much of it as I can see, hearing the burble of the nearby river and… and just being. Despite the weather this is a wonderful landscape, one evocative of this island’s spectacular interior. Some may call the scene miserable but I call it special.

Memories of past excursions come to mind… images and sensations peculiar to particular places are relived. I savour the feeling of longing familiar to last nights on other walks in other mountains… a feeling of satisfaction with being in a place mixed with a sadness at being soon to leave it. There is an anticipation of the enjoyment of dry clothes, fresh food, hot shower and warm bed mixed with disappointment at the ending, temporary that it might be, of life on the trail… of the simplicity of life on the trail… of walking, cooking, sleeping, rising with first light, a quick breakfast, cup of hot tea then setting out and getting into your stride and traversing distance.  I think those of poetic bent describe such moments as bitter-sweet.

A thwarted journey

Autumn 1973. It was our first Easter in Tasmania and it is wet. We had driven to Derwent Bridge the previous evening and stayed in a national park service hut. In the morning I was happy to see a thin layer of snow on the ground—what a great introduction to this island, I thought. My only previous encounter with snow had n=ben when driving from Tumbarumba to Jindabyne across the snowy Mountains in the spring of… when?… 1969?

I was with my partner and a group of people from the Hobart Walking Club. A week’s supply of food in our packs, we were ready for a speedy dash along the Overland Track. Neither of us knew what we would be in for, what to expect; it was to be a bit of an adventure in a new place. What we had not counted on was the weather.

The rain came straight down, large, heavy drops, persistent, cold, continuous. Neither of us had ever experienced such cold. Our hands were numb as we pulled up the hoods of our black, oiled cotton parkas to ready ourselves for the walk along Lake St Claire’s western shore. Being fresh from the mainland and not expecting to encounter weather quite like this, and certainly not snow, neither of us had bought gloves or mittens. Geoff Morley, the quietly spoken but experienced leader of the walk, told us to use our spare socks as gloves. It worked and feeling slowly returned to stiffened, frozen fingers.

On that first day the forest sheltered us from the worst of the weather. It was soggy underfoot and boots and socks were soon saturated. In Tasmania, tracks that become waterways when it rains, we soon discovered, and this was the usual state of affairs in Tasmania’s mountains.

By late afternoon we were sloshing across the flats towards Narcissus hut. The experienced walkers knew that the early snow and rain would raise the level of the creeks along the route and make the track muddy, slowing us down. Snowfall would likely intensify as the temperature fell, slowing us further, especially in crossing the high passes. Altogether, the prospect was for a cold, wet and arduous trip. Narcissus hut was as far as we got; the group decided to turn back the next morning.

After that early frustration, walking the Overland Track was firmly on my agenda, I just had to be patient and await the opportunity. That came two or so years later when Ian Wright, a bushwalker who later went into the adventure equipment business in Hobart, organised a trek through the park. Our party numbered 13 and over the five days we spent on the Overland Track we enjoyed good if mainly overcast weather. I was not to know that my next venture into the park would be a solo traverse.

In the forest, by the lake

We greeted each other when we met as is the custom in the mountains. They were a small group, just three, heading north either to Narcissus hut or the Du Cane Range. The first people I had met since Cradle Mountain, they were several hours out of the Derwent Bridge trailhead; I was four and a half days out of Cradle.

Intermittent rain and snow continued to fall as morning became early afternoon. Just as I had thought of climbing Cradle on my first day, so on my last day in the park I briefly entertain the idea of skirting Mt Olympus, the flat-topped range that parallels Lake St Clair on its western edge at its northern extremity and taking the track along its western flank. Sometimes, you get these last-day bursts of foolish bravado. This was probably nothing more than an excuse to prolong my time in the mountains, but sanity prevails and I continue along the lakeside track. The western side of the mountain is exposed to the weather and would be boggier that here, in the forest. Not that it would have mattered; my feet were already soaked, cold and verging on numbness.

It is sheltered and quiet in this cool temperate rainforest where the tall Nothofagus dominate. High above, wind whips the crowns of the trees but down here, in the half-light of a dull day, it is still. Drops and the occasional cascade falls from the trees and the cold water runs down my back. It is a toss-up whether it is better to walk with my hood up or to leave it down—one way you overheat, the other you are deluged by cold water. The track runs with several centimetres of water and I try to avoid the deeper pools.

Part way along the lakeside track, Mt Ida projects like a mini-Matterhorn above the plateau on the eastern shore, the opposite side of the lake to where I walk through the rainforest along the Overland Track. And, here where the track opens onto the shore is tiny Echo Point hut. I stop for lunch in a grey landscape.

Some years before, we spent a Saturday night here with Cameron—a young man who was to become a ranger and develop an interest in Buddhism—and Hobart friends Dennis and Pam Elwell. Dennis had brought a black sausage with him and he gave me a piece to try. Sort of dry and strangely flavoured, I commented. Then he told me what it was made from and that was the first and last blood sausage I have eaten.

A small an modest structure of vertical board with a galvanised iron roof just a few metres from the shore of the lake, Echo Point hut accommodates six or so, more if they sleep on the floor. It serves mainly as a lunch stop, being too close to the roadhead for overnighting except when walkers arrive early enough to start walking well before sundown. In those circumstances, Echo Point provides the destination for an early start next day.

Perhaps it is being here alone that reminds me of meeting another solo walker at this same place some years ago. Our party was heading into Pine Valley, as I recall, then up into The Labyrinth. We came across him setting up tripod and camera to take a photograph of Mt Ida. He explained that, because of his odd hours working as a fireman, he had no choice but to walk solo and had come to enjoy the solitude. Fit looking, with shaven head and wearing the type of red-checked woolen shirt popular with bushwalkers of the time, he seemed an independent and self-contained sort of character though at the time I though solo walking to be a risky business.

On the shore of Lake St Clair in the Nothofagus forest, tiny Echo Point hut offers shelter to those on the lakeside track.

Echo Point hut is about five hours from the trailhead. The remaining kilometres pass as I stride out on this last leg through the forest. Somehow, I seem to go faster along this stretch and soon the end of the trail is near as I pass the junction where Rufus River flows below the foot bridge to empty into the wind-ruffled lake.

A side track climbs to the Mt Hugel-Mt Rufus circuit from here, up beside the rapids to deposit the walker on the ridge joining the two peaks. This was another track once taken, one where, on the ridge above the treeline, our party encountered a large, black tiger snake that was reluctant to get out of our way. On that trip, we pitched tents by the tarn at the Mt Rufus campsite. By early morning it was blowing a gale and the sides of the tent were pumping in and out with the gusts, ending each expansion with a loud and ominous thwack. At two in the morning the tent became airborne and I was left, in my sleeping bag, looking up at a sky full of stars.

Tomorrow—the city, civilisation… Hobart. A reluctant return yet a welcome one. For it is always like this after a long walk—the prospect of homecoming, the promise of warmth, dryness and fresh bread and at the same time a reluctance to leave the mountains.

Walking is a fine time to daydream and I recall when, driving home from weekends in the mountains, we would stop at Lucy’s milkbar on the outskirts of Ouze, a small town on the river of the same name. Here we savoured hot chocolate milkshakes and burgers. Lucy was a portly, friendly woman used to serving cold, smelly and hungry bushwalkers. She did not hesitate when, so the story goes, Des Shields jokingly asked for a hot sardine milkshake.

Reflection – figure in a landscape

I have this vision as if seen from above. It is the Spring of 1980 and I am a figure alone in a vast landscape, pack on back, crossing Pine Forest Moor. I do not know where this image comes from or whether it has some special meaning. Were I metaphysically minded I might interpret it as presaging a change of life that would come with the decade just starting… a vision of myself walking into a new life far from the cold but beloved mountains of Tasmania.

Maybe that is to read too much into it. My journey was, after all, just a few days alone in the wilderness, a sojourn without company, a transit of Tasmania’s central highlands at a time of year that brings out few walkers. It was not that I sought escape from others—I like bushwalking in good company—it was just that, for whatever reason, a solo walk seemed a good idea at the time. I also knew that it might well be the last opportunity to undertake such a journey, for life’s circumstances were changing and, like the wind that ruffles the surface of Lake St Clair,  winds of changing were beginning to blow through my life. Was my  solo journey my way of saying farewell to those mountains that had stirred my imagination, brought me out in all weathers and produced this feeling of deep affinity with them?

I had been lucky—lucky with the opportunity to make the walk, lucky with the weather, lucky to find solitude. I was less lucky that this was my last walk in Tasmania’s mountains. Soon I would pack my bag and head north in a reverse of the journey I had made nearly a decade before.

Early summer, 1980…

“Here, take hold of this”. Peter leans out and offers the end of a length of nylon climber’s tape to Robert. “Pass it to Keith”.

Keith takes hold of the tape and shakily steps onto the ledge of sloping dolerite. Holding the tape gives him a sense of security that is completely false. The slanting ledge he steps on to is only a metre wide but it drops away into what looks like an airy abyss. It is this that has spooked him.

Mt Anne summit, the highest point in South West Tasmania.

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A long, steep climb

It is a long, steep climb to the summit. The walk starts where a dark brown, tannin-stained stream flows past the carpark. This is the place for a long, last drink. There will be no more water until the summit plateau is reached.

The climb starts. Muscles hurt and breath comes in short gasps until we get into the rhythm. Over the years the passage of walkers boots has incised the track into the grassy slope. We follow it automatically, head down, not noticing how quickly we gain height. A stop for a break reveals the party well above the carpark and we look out over the Lake Pedder impoundment  to the ranges beyond. And what ranges they are, here on the edge of Tasmania’s South West wilderness. The long, jagged carvings of glaciers long gone, they emerge from grassland and forest, their upper slopes of brown rock rising above the treeline and baking in the summer sun. In winter, those ridges and peaks are covered in snow, but today winter is far off and as we climb we feel the trickle of sweat on forehead and chest.

We are in our element, those making up this small group. We are habitués of the mountains, travellers of this island’s wild places… some of us have made tiring journeys together before and here on this steep track we feel as at home as we have on so many tracks before. None of us, however, know the significance of this day.

Mt Anne Plateau, the broad ridge that leads to the summit, is part of a complex structure that radiates from the central pinnacle. Walking is easier here, above the tree line. We cross the rocky ground and stop at a remnant snowdrift that has somehow persisted through the warmer months. This we slide down, making loud yahoos to express our exuberance at being in the mountains this warm, early summer day. We do not slide too far, however, as the bottom of the snow slope is perilously close to a vertical wall that falls hundreds of metres to a lake far below. We move on and, at last, reach the scree that abuts the summit cone. Here the scramble starts… first there is a notch to get over, then a traverse of the slope to the troublesome ledge where Peter’s nylon tape gives Keith the false confidence he needs to continue.

Looking down to the climbing ridge from the scree slope.

Final pitch

It is now a short scramble up a series of stepped ledges to the summit, the few, flat square metres of dolerite that constitutes the pinnacle of Mt Anne, highest peak in Tasmania’s South West.

As is often the case on this island, summer has brought calm, warm weather. It is as if the season has settled into a relaxed, wound-back lassitude before the onslaught of the winds and sleet of Autumn. The sky is clear apart from puffs of scattered cumulus and the air is still; there is the quietness that comes with the isolation of a summit. All but Wendy take off their shirts to feel the sun soak into their skin. Peter stands, shades his eyes with his hands. He squints and looks northwards. He is silent for awhile as he surveys the horizon and then speaks to nobody in particular.

“It’s very clear today. You can see a long way. There’s the Franklins” …he points towards a sawtooth range beyond the Pedder impoundment, off to the northwest. “There – over there on the horizon – they’re the mountains around Lake St Clair”. We follow his gaze to a series of bumps on the line of the horizon, faint blue outcroppings that that almost blend into the hazy blue of the sky. “You glad we came up?”, he says as he looks towards Keith.

“You don’t really need a rope to climb to the summit”, Peter continues. “It’s just a scramble”. True. But Peter is a climber and Robert is not. Peter’s scramble is Robert’s rock climb and Peter does not consider how the proximity of height – what climbers call ‘exposure’ – can be a psychological challenge to non-climbers. I know this from the time Peter introduced me to rock climbing. That was a sunny Saturday afternoon in The Gorge in Launceston. It was a minor wall, a slab only a couple tens of metres in height, but the vertical world was new to me and it took some getting used to. I sympathise with Robert and feel Peter’s comment is a little harsh.

An hour passes, maybe more. We sit in silence. Up here we seem separate from the landscape of mountain and plain that unfolds below us but at the same time we are a part of it. I look around… Peter nibbles at the food he has brought, his thinning, wispy blond hair hanging down over suntanned skin and blending with a beard equally wispy… Robert, thin face wrapped in thick dark hair and beard, gazes into the distance… Wendy, a few years younger than the rest of us, appears lost in her own thoughts. Keith just sits quietly. Being together on the summit has become a solitary experience.

I think about the journeys I have made with Peter… caves like Khaza Dum and Croesus, ski touring along white ridges where the light reflected from the snow so strongly it hurt your eyes, summer hikes into the Walls of Jerusalum. There was a shared social life in Launceston… Friday evening meetings of the Northern Caverneers in a cafe in town, a fine excuse to enjoy a meal and each other’s company, dinner parties with friends and, once, a drive over to the east coast where we stopped at the pancake restaurant at the top of Elephant Pass.

Peter, I recall, has a reputation as a womaniser, meaning he finds it hard to keep his hands off females who he finds attractive. That’s quite a lot of them, unmarried well as married. .. he’s not that particular. A married man… his wife is a school teacher and is well aware of his waywardness… he eloped for a week or so with the pretty blonde wife of a private school outdoor education teacher. “That lasted until they ran out of money”, his wife told me. That made sense because she is the source of regular income in the relationship – Peter’s working life can best be described as piecemeal. He sometimes teams up with a diver friend to do inspections of piers and the like, and he has worked with surveyors, but there’s little by way of continuous employment. Peter’s attraction to females is something that will bring complications in future, several times over.

Shifting my attention from Peter, I see below us the artificial lake of the Pedder impoundment… to the south the jagged ridge of the Western Arthur Range… eastwards the distant, forested country over towards the Picton. This truly is magnificent country and to sit here on the warm dolerite looking out on it brings a calmness to mind and body.

The ascent to the summit involves a rock scramble.

Long walk shortened

As recently as the early-1960s it took days to walk to Mt Anne. Now it is just a long day to the summit and back thanks to the road driven into the wilderness to service Lake Pedder’s hydroelectric station.

A change like that brings a different comprehension of the mountains. Older walkers tell tales of epic trips to get here. It is easy to imagine them struggling through the wet forest towards Mt Anne, their uncomfortable A-frame packs heavy on their shoulders, boots squishing along the muddy trail, stopping now and then to remove leeches from their legs with salt or match.  If you had the chance in their lifetimes you could take aside people like Jack Thwaites and Jim Brown and listen as they related stories of journeys no longer possible, journeys before this vast wilderness was penetrated by roads, journeys the memory of which is fading with their passing.

Other ranges more distant in the South West, rugged chains like the Eastern and Western Arthurs, still have an allure of isolation and distance. This, too, is in part a legacy of those older walkers, the men and women who pioneered Tasmania’s wilderness from the 1930s to the 1950s. Hidden in their memories and too-seldom documented are stories of expeditions into country still unknown in their youth, of trails trod by few, of unclimbed peaks, broad button grass plains and unvisited lakes. They lived in a time when exploration was still a possibility, though one quickly fading. Theirs’ was the freedom of wild country trodden by few. I fear their stories will be lost.

Same mountain, different time

Early summer, 1977…

“Turn that thing off or I will throw it out the door!”.

It is around midnight when the voice booms from the sleeping mezanine of Mt Anne’s tiny, High Camp hut. A small, steep-roofed building of stone erected by bushwalkers in the 1960s, it is the only hut on the Anne range and the only refuge when the weather comes in. Situated where the grassy slope of the climbing ridge makes the transition to the scree slope leading to the summit plateau, the hut nestles on a scrubby ledge.

The angry voice belongs to Les Linsell, a school teacher of tough, wiry build, tanned, weathered face and bushy, dark beard. At this time of night, at any time of day or night, his is not a voice to challenge.

Meekly, those below obey and the noise stops. Wisely, they decide it is time to get into their sleeping bags. The offenders arrived at High Camp some time after our party and proceeded to play, very loudly and inconsiderately, on a boom box that they had lugged up the climbing ridge, audio tapes of doubtful sexual humour. Just why anyone would bother to carry such a thing up here is a puzzle, but people sometimes take strange things into the mountains. A case in point is the story of the climber and National Geographic photographer. The climber, knowing that the photographer would ask what he carried in his pack, had stuffed a large watermelon into it. This he nonchalantly unpacked when they stopped atop some peak and proceeded to eat it as if it were an everyday item carried by climbers. Such is the humour of mountaineers.

But that evening the offending group had broken the unspoken etiquette of the mountain hut. We lay awake in our sleeping bags, hoping they would realise that it was time to show a little consideration. They did not. Les acted. Peace was restored.

The summit, one last time

Early summer, 1980…

It was a simple trip, that one, a straightforward climb to the Mt Anne summit, a relaxing time slouching around on top and a rapid descent. The weather could not have been better, nor could the company. Most of those who ventured out were friends whose association was mediated by mountain, river and forest and, for some, by social life in town. Such durable relationships were, perhaps, something we did not fully value at the time. Sure, we liked each other’s company but we took each other for granted as constants in our lives. We though little of the future and of the changes life would thrust on us.

A fine day on Mt Anne summit in the summer of 1980. Peter takes in the view of the Pedder impoundment in its ring of mountains.

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That warm day on the summit was the last we would be together in the mountains. Unknowingly, it was the culmination, the finale of many trips we had taken as a group. Circumstances changed, new priorities appeared, relationships were fractured, people moved away.

After that climb, Peter would return to Launceston and continue to make a living in a variety of ways but, always, a life restless and unsettled. Eventually, his sometimes good, sometimes troubled relationship with his wife would end in separation. She would move south to a teaching job in a town near Huonville. Peter would find a new love and, later, would cross oceans in the forlorn pursuit of it. Years would elapse before he found a new what might have been a permanent partner but his tendency to be distracted by women would bring that to a sudden end.

Les Linsell loved to explore the widerness, whether with others or alone. The Franklin River was then hotting up as a conservation issue and Les was drawn to explore it. He bought an inflatable rubber raft, a ‘rubber duckie’ as they are known in Tasmania, and set off on the Franklin. Les became the first casualty of that river’s wild torrents.

Keith and Wendy stayed around the bushwalking, climbing and caving mileau in Launceston for awhile but, like the others, they too moved on. What had been a close-knit team was unravelling.

And the author? His work in the adventure equipment industry would soon come to an end. The following year would bring a new life far from the dolerite peaks of South-West Tasmania and the people in whose company he had enjoyed climbing them.

In the mountains—Peter (left), the author and Robert enjoy the sun of early summer on the Mt Anne summit.

In the good company of others we would trek into the forests and ascend to the mountain ridges for weekends or sometimes longer. Then, weary at the end of the day we would light a small fire and cook a meal together while enjoying the banter of fellow travelers in the wilderness. Next day would being much the same, only—weekend drawing to an end—we would not pitch tent and light another small fire, instead we would board a car and, in loose convoy, turn with regret back to the city, feeling hungry.

I remember Lucy too. She sated our hunger. A large woman somewhere in middle age, she owned the takeaway on the edge of Ouse. City bound after a couple days or more in the wilderness of the state’s south west, we would stop at Lucy’s for a toasted sandwich or hamburger and hot chocolate milkshake. Returning from longer wanderings in the wilds, how we would crave fresh bread, even if all we got at Lucy’s was sliced white. I doubt of there was any other type in town.

Remembering a fellow traveller is understandable, though remembering a fast foods takeaway and it’s owner is puzzling. Perhaps it was Lucy’s good humor and welcome when you walked in. Perhaps it’s the fact that a stopover at Lucy’s was something of a ritual for walkers. It’s not something that has bothered me until now.

I do recall the—probably true—story told by Des Sheild of how he once ordered a hot sardine milkshake from Lucy and how she went to fulfill his order. I imagine he promptly cancelled and opted for something less weird… never did get to hear that part of his tale. Des was a Queenslander who trained as a school teacher and who made the move south. Liking what he found, he settled in the state and quickly came to love it’s mountains and valleys through which he walked extensively. He had a slapstick sense of humor which he demonstrated frequently and was always bright, funny company.

We weren’t all that long out of the Vietnam war in those days and I recall Des saying that his brother had been a helicopter door gunner over there. Not the safest posting with the Green Machine but it was one he survived. Des missed the war, his marble not being plucked from the televised barrel of fate by some imagined important person, and so missing out on conscription into the Army and a tour of the Asian tropics.

Vietnam might have been winding down but another war was in the offing and I know that Des had a lot of sympathy for the wilderness lobby that was preparing to fight that war over on the Franklin.

Around that time, he got into a life changing situation with Catherine, a young woman who would occasionally appear on easier bushwalks. Catheine was a quiet and easy going, something of a calming presence then in the second half of her twenties. She wore her long, fair hair parted down the middle, but what was special about Catherine was the fact that she was an artist who produced wistful, atmospheric images in watercolor of mountains and rivers. Being a practical sort of person, sooner rather than later Des married her.

And That’s when I lost contact with him, or perhaps doing so was also due to moving to a small city in the north of the state to manage an adventure sports equipment shop.

In recent times I’ve tried searching for Des and Catherine on the web and on Facebook, without success. It’s just this curiousity I have to find out how they fared in life. I imagine them happily hunkered down in some rural town, Des teaching and Catherine exhibiting her paintings and both of them sitting around the log fire on cold winter nights. But that’s an idealized image and you never know how life turns out for people… it’s something of an unpredictable experience pushed this way and that by the winds of change.

As for Lucy and her fast food establishment, I’ve never been back to Ouse. The last time I might have visited was after a group of us climbed Mt Anne, the highest peak in the South West, one hot summer’s day. I have no specific memory of stopping there that time but, come to think of it, I have no memories specifically linking Lucy’s with any particular journey into the wilderness…just a generalized memory of stopping off there on the way home. If it was that day, however, then it was significant in that that climb was the last time that that small group would be together as well as the last time I ate at Lucy’s, for after that walk we all went our separate ways.

Catherine’s painting did figure one last time. The woman of checked wool shirt and clunky boots had bought a painting from Catherine which she hung above her fireplace…an image in faded blues on the white of watercolour paper depicting Mt Olympus emerging from the mists. But, like Catherine, Des and Lucy, that painting has disappeared too, lost in a flash flood in far away Tennant Creek.

The conference was in Reece High School, just across the road from Devonport Community Garden of which we had a guided tour. The mayor of Devonport opened the conference and said good things. Devonport Council was a conference supporter.

At the Tasmanian Community Garden Network annual conference were (from left) local Greens MP, Christine Milne, telegardener Costa Geogiadis an the Network's Nel Smit from Eat Well Tasmania.

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It was good to go back to Devonport after decades of absence. A small city on the Bass Strait coast of northern Tasmania, it is not exactly a bustling metropolis and it retains that lonely air that you find in this part of the island. That comes from a perception of isolation thought it’s only 45 minutes flying time from Melbourne. The perception also stems from the presence of Bass Strait which, for Tasmanians, forms a psychological barrier with the mainland and helps them define themselves as somehow different to  those to the north over the grey seas. This forlorn feeling is especially noticeable as you stand on the small beach at the mouth of the Mersey and gaze out into the Strait… grey sea, grey clouds, grey sky and a feeling of distance from the big landmass to the north.

Attendees at the conference tour the Devonport Community Garden.

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That the city has a community garden speaks volumes of how the practice of community gardening has grown tremendously and spread far and wide across the continent. It’s quite a nice garden, there are allotments and a range of fruit trees and berry fruit vines — Tasmania produced superb berry fruit of many varieties. There’s a path that connects both ends of the community garden and the public can walk through during opening hours.

For the conference, the theme given to me was food security and I was one of four on a ‘mentors panel’ that started the event by making presentations and engaging in Q&A around the theme.

Others on the mentor’s panel were:

- David Adams, professor of Management in Innovation at the Australian Innovation Research Centre at the University of Tasmania and chair of the Tasmanian Food Security Council (part of the Social Inclusion unit of the Department of Premier and Cabinet)
- dietician and UTas lecturer, Sandra Murray, who looked at how Tasmania could produce the food types that would supply a balanced diet
- Jennifer Alden, CEO of Cultivating Community in Melbourne.

A Sydney-based telegardener called Costa Geogiadis opened the event and stayed for the two days. Turns out he lives close by us here in Sydney city east and I had a bit if a talk with him although, not having a TV, I have never seen his program. We agreed to catch up in Sydney.

A local politician, Christine Milne (Greens), did a talk and stayed for the whole first day.

Of great interest were the displays at the conference — the local, organic fruit and vegetables and the displays of different organisations.

Community gardening and social inclusion

It was good to met the Social Inclusion commissioner, David Adams, who heads the new Tasmanian Food Security Council. The council will develop a food policy which looks like it will promise support to community gardens as well as social enterprise. Professor Adams seems to understand the problems associated with the grants system and talks of investment instead. Net Smit, who works with Eat Well Tasmania and who is an Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network Tasmania contact, has been elected to the Tasmanian Food Security Council.

The good news is there is now a CSA (community supported agriculture) looking to start in the north west of the state. It’s amazing how the CSA idea has cought the public imagination these past couple years.

The crew and their new brickoven — The Source

Making fresh even fresher

In Hobart, we were warmly welcomes to a new citizen initiative called The Source.

This is a demonstration/training centre on UTas land in Sandy Bay. It’s on the side of a hill and in the distance you glimpse the wide Derwent estuary and the low hills of the Eastern Shore beyond. When I lived in this city some decades ago, urbanisation was only then starting its spread along that shore. Now, it’s progressed and, with the expansion towards New Norfolk along the highway beside the river on the northern edge of the city, Hobart is starting to sprawl. It remains a linear city, however, that follows the path of the Derwent and whose westward expansion is blocked by the bulk of Mt Wellington that stands high above the city.

The Source wholefoods setup features a strawbale and recycled timber food co-op building with gardens of vegetables surrounding it. People pick the vegetables they buy, making fresh even fresher.

The Source is housed in a purpose-built building of rendered strwawbale and salvaged timber. The building is surrounded on three sides by a cascade of food-growing terraces that descend the slope.

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Over at one end of the site is a new brick oven in which pizzas were in preparation for lunch that mild, mid-Autumn day. Notable in the garden crew working that day was David Stevens, veteran Tasmanian organic gardener. He was working on the compost system and explained that compost was something he likes being associated with. Wherever you find urban food growing in Hobart, you are likely to find David.

While in Launceston at the other end of the state we revisited the extensive allotments of the Punchbowl Community Garden in Punchbowl Reserve, where it marches over dip and hollow colonising the slope for edibles. This is a garden of large allotments, far larger than what passes for allotments in Sydney. These are family-size. If you don’t know where the garden is, you might have to explore a little until you uncover it on the slope above the forested area where families picnic in the lower part of the reserve.

Staff at The Source Wholefoods are food-savvy and organised.

Shelves of fresh fruit and vegetables at The Source Wholefoods store in Hobart.

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Once, Deloraine was a typical Tasmanian country town, a stopover for visitors on the way to the mountain walks of its hinterland. Now, demographic change has brought the opening of small cafes and art galleries… not as densely packed as those of some arty-oriented country towns on the mainland… they do not dominate here and Deloraine retains those service business, little shops that provide the day-to-day necessities.

Down by the weir, we were attracted by a woman collecting something from the ground below the bright yellow foliage of a deciduous street tree. Curious, we went over to see what she was doing. Collecting chestnuts, she said, holding out handfuls of the big brown things. So we joined in and collected them too, some fallen ripe to the ground, others still hanging from the branches.

The fruit and leaf of the chestnut.

Walking up the hill to check out what appeared to be Deloraine’s only Art Deco commercial building (two level Streamline Moderne, for aficionados of the style) we wandered into a fruit shop to check out what was being sold, a strange habit we have acquired over the years. Lady of the Snow apples… never heard of them, so we bought a couple to try… a smallish but crispy, sweet fruit.

That wasn’t the only thing that caught our eye.

Strange looking apple, Fiona said, holding up a firm-skinned, red fruit, oval shaped and pointed towards the bottom. But, no, it’s not an apple, the shopkeeper said. It’s a Spreyton pear. We explained to the shopkeeper that we had not seen a pear like this before, and she explained that it was a local variety, Spreyton being a small town on the Bass Highway not all that far from Deloraine.

A Spreyton pear, a local variety.

Our visit to the island state to attend the conference, we realised, had turned into a tour of edible gardens and species.

Good people

Tasmania is this sometimes strange place given to throwing up truly innovative people. Bill Mollison comes to mind — yes, on the way back from the icy summit of Mt Wellington with its gale force blasts we drove down Hobart’s Strickland Avenue where all that permaculture stuff began over 30 years ago in Bill’s house. Going down that winding road, I recalled reading in Bills autobiography, Travels In Dreams, how the powerful bushfires of 1967 burned down from the incinerated forests of Mt Wellington into the Avenue. I recalled, too, other notables from this island —  the actor of the 1930s, Errol Flynn, and writer Christopher Koch.

Tasmanians, of course, are a creative bunch and it is to Nel Smit and her fellow organisers that thanks go for organising a superb community gardeners’ conference, one that took community gardening further into the realm of food security.

Then there’s the graceful Hannah Maloney from Hobart, dressed in her stylish but earthy clothing, who gave perhaps one of the best introduction to permaculture talk I have heard. And Nick, a doctor active with TransitionTasmania, too… it was good to sit in on the transition team’s meeting.

And then there’s all the others, too — far too many to name even if I could remember all of their names.

The Good Food Future was a good conference truly done good. Thanks Tasmanian community gardening crew!

The market has become something of a tourist attraction but this has not deterred local people from shopping here. Walk the alleys between the stalls and you find local food, local arts and crafts including photography, seeds and more. There’s fresh fruit and vegetables, soft and sweet Bruny Island fudge, Gillespie’s fizzy ginger beer — another local product — and the products of local craftspeople who specialise in working with Tasmanian timbers, as well as sellers of unique clothing and second hand books.

Development with authenticity

The Tasmanians have taken advantage of one of Australia’s still-intact heritage streetscapes. Three to four storey stone buildings, once warehouses where goods from the nearby wharfs were stored, have been repurposed as art galleries, cafes, bookshops and other enterprises specialising in Tasmanian-made. For the bibliophile, there’s The Hobart Bookshop situated in Salamance Square, behind Salamanca Place. It’s a crammed place with narrow aisles selling new and second hand books where the staff shelter behind a counter so encroached by books that it seems more like a barricade.

Gillespie's Ginger Beer, a local beverage.

The alleys, streets and Salamance Square behind Salamanca Place are a labyrinth populate by small shops with intriguing products. Strangers to the city might find them a somewhat confusing network to navigate, however this merely adds to their charm and interest.

Although the link is not made, the old warehouses stand as testament to the prominence of the sea in Tasmania’s history. As an island and as the second place to be settled in Australia’s European history (Hobart is a mere few years younger than Sydney), the sea and shipping have been crucial to the development of the state. Take a short walk from Salamanca over to the docks to see some vintage ships, including tall ships and a few engine-powered. There are even operating fishing boats that tie up at Constitution Dock, something unique for most city centres.

Best of all, Salamanca Place’s repurposing has been accomplished without making it tacky. All too often, historic precincts are ruined by being overdone and by selling low-grade, low-quality junky products. They become charactertures of themselves and, in doing so, lose any authenticity they might once have had. Not Salamance Place.

Salamanca's old warehouses, with Mt Wellington dominating the city in the background.

Finding local foods

Having an interest in the way that cities can increase their resiliency through developing an industry based on foods that can be grown, processed and marketed locally, I naturally gravitated to the food sellers. At the Salamanca Market, market gardeners are grouped together although food sellers are found throughout the marketplace.

One of the market garden stalls at Salamance Market, loaded with vegetables and culinary herbs.

Here, like the Evandale market near Launceston in the north of Tasmania, the dominance of Asian faces suggests that the market gardens that feed the city are dominated by immigrant families or their descendants. This accords closely with the Sydney experience where not only Asians, but Lebanese and others feed the city with much of its fresh produce.

Let’s hope that the Hobartians don’t follow the example of the NSW government and plan to pave and build over the gardens that feed its people.

Exploration by foot

Despite being promoted in tourism literature, Salamance Place is worth a few of your hours or more when you’re next in Hobart. Find it adjacent to the city centre and just to the west of the city’s watefront.

Travel by foot remains the best way to explore a city and Salamanca Market can form the starting point for a walk that takes you into the nearby residential precinct of Battery Point.

For those with an interest in architecture, the Georgian buildings are sure to be an attraction, however there are buildings from other periods too. It’s not a long walk and there are side streets to explore as well as Arthur’s Circus, a ring of Georgian houses around a village green. Continue through Battery Point to the shores of the broad Derwent for the long view down the estuary and, when the weather is right, to feel the wind and to see, in your imagination, those nineteenth century clipper ships tacking their way upriver to the docks, then, after unloading, sailing north to China to load up with tea for the English market all of a world away. Battery Point’s main street has a number of cafes clustered at the Salamanca end.

A seller of seed of vegetables and flowers at Salamance Market.

Standing again in Salamanca Place’s busy Saturday market, you look up to the ramparts of Mt Wellington that so dominates this southern city, then your gaze returns to the line of old stone buildings and the busy scene surrounding you. Then you realaise that one of the ideas you will take away is that the Hobart local foods scene is an active and innovative one that, even by itself, is an asset to the people who are fortunate enough to live here.

Fresh produce on a stall. Many of the products at the market are labeled as 'local food', 'home grown' or 'no sprays'.

A rare find these days — milk in glass bottles.

TO JUDGE BY THE SIGNS on farmer’s market stalls, food grown locally seems to be something of a specialty at Evandale market. A recent visit disclosed sign after sign on a number of stalls advertising the localism of fresh vegetables, herbs and fruit.

Some stallholders sell organic fruit and vegetables although these are not certified organic, leaving it to the buyer to decide whether or not to trust the seller. Like Sydney’s urban fringe farmers, most of those selling at Evandale are from non-English speaking backgrounds, mainly people from Asia.

If you come here at the right time of year, look for the stallholder selling heaped, overloaded punnets of Tasmanian berry fruits, including delicious redcurrants, strawberries and raspberries. At any time of year there are jams made from local fruits, Tasmanian honey and other bottled preserves.

An island set up for locally produced food

Tasmania, as an island with a decentralised population (approximately half, around 200,000, live in the capital, Hobart; around 70,000 occupy Tasmania’s second city, Launceston; the remainder are scattered through Penguin, Burnie, Huonville and lesser centres), is ideally suited to the development of small, family owned farms that could feed its population centres with perishables, dairy and other foods. In comparison with the mainland (the rest of Australia, that is) the soils are fertile and the island is well-watered. Occupying a cool temperate climatic zone, a wide variety of culinary herbs, fruit and vegetables can be produced, as well as dairying and fisheries including the fish farms that are already established. The good news for orchardists is that there is no fruit fly in Tasmania.

Evandale market features several fresh food stalls.

Evandale is not the only source of fresh foods available from weekly markets. Tasmania’s renowned leatherwood honey, so-called for the leatherwood tree that the bees harvest and that grows in the cool temperate rainforest, is readily available. A local apiarist was found enthusiastically selling his product at Exeter market in the Tamar valley, approximately 20 minutes drive north of Launceston, not far from the popular Exeter Bakery.

In Hobart, too, food localism is a selling feature with stallholders at the Saturday Salamanca Place markets having notices advertising ‘local grown’. ‘No Spray’ was also noticed on products.

Finding Evandale

Evandale markets are open every Sunday morning. A charge of 20 cents is made for entry.

Evandale is about a 20 minute drive south of Launceston. Follow the highway past the airport and watch for the turnoff sign.

It is an old town and those with an interest in history and architecture might like to walk its streets to view the Georgian buildings, both domestic and commercial. The town also has a number of antique shops, art galleries and, for the hungry, cafes.

Tasmania's soils grow tremendous potatoes. Here's some freshly dug.

Evandale is no the only market near Launceston. Here, Fiona buys localy made jam at Exeter market, north of Launceston in the Tamar Valley.

How Tasmanians buy potatoes.

Local product for local eating. All cities and towns should be able to feed themselves with perishables and other foods grown locally.