The Not-So-Plain Plains: Part 2

It’s blissful being horizontal at last, snug in my sleeping bag. The quiet of the forest is a balm, and as sleep hovers at my door, I turn over in my bag. Suddenly my body is gripped by a series of excruciating cramps. Everywhere from groin to toe spasms, and I can barely keep from screaming. As I writhe about, swallowing my squeals, I think desperately of crawling the 50 metres to Tim and Merran’s tent to seek medical advice! 

Today’s steep, scrubby, off-track walking has caught up with me. Despite taking magnesium – a good prophylactic against cramps – my 70+ year old body is letting me know there’s still a price to pay. I sit up, pull the toes of one leg towards me, and get some relief. When I do the same with the other leg, the cramping worsens. I try relaxing, stretching, sipping water, sitting up, lying down again, breathing slowly: any and everything. But for the next several minutes nothing gives me much relief. Eventually the cramp storm passes, and I lie breathless and uneasy on my left side, not daring to turn over. I just wait, hope and pray for sleep to come.

 

And eventually I do sleep, if a bit fitfully. In the morning I manage to crawl out of the tent and walk to breakfast with relative dignity. As we sip our cuppas and exchange tales of our night, I learn that sleep has eluded others too. Tiredness is no guarantee of sleep. I share my cramping episode, hoping to persuade Tim to keep our ambitions for today’s walk “realistic”. He seems solicitous … but I’ve seen that look before. He has plans, and the best I can hope for is that I won’t be left too far behind.

[Mt Pelion East peaks out behind Tarn of Islands]

Day packs filled, our first order of business is to visit the nearby Tarn of Islands. Merran has struggled to remember its name, and we amplify the confusion by playing with its name. First it's “Lagoon of Rocks”, then “Lake of Hills”, and finally the supremely silly “Pond of Thousand Island Dressing”. The tarn rebukes our folly by being both comely and large. It not only allows glimpses of some of the mountains of the Overland Track, it also (naturally) contains several miniature islands, some topped with small pencil pines. Even its small details are fetching. 

[Small details on the shore of the tarn]

If Tim’s agenda for the day is full, it is also flexible. He first dangles before us the opportunity to visit what he calls “my forest”. He describes a small forest that he’s camped in which has all three species of Athrotaxis pines adjacent to one another. We’re intrigued enough to consent, and we’re soon walking off in its direction. But on the way there’s an unplanned surprise. I catch sight of what I suppose to be a golden, sphagnum-covered rock, maybe 100m away. But as I look more closely, the rock moves! We all stop to watch. Is it a wallaby hunched over grazing? We’ve seen golden wallabies in the highlands before. When it moves to where we have a clearer view, we can see it’s a large golden wombat.

[The large golden wombat]

The day is fine and clear, though there’s a good breeze blowing across the low scrub. Fortunately it’s coming from the wombat towards us, so the animal hasn’t heard or smelled us. For some minutes s/he wombles slowly in our direction, grazing and picking at bits of grass among the coral fern. We watch entranced, photographing, videoing and exchanging quiet expressions of awe. None of us has seen a wombat as blonde as this. Were it a lion, we would undoubtedly describe it as golden. It moves within a few metres of us before I inadvertently knock my camera against its case. The small sound startles the wombat, and it gallops away from us. It’s hard to believe that a 30kg barrel-shaped, low-slung quadruped would be capable of such speed, but they have been clocked at over 40km/h; only a little slower than Usain Bolt! Our quiet bubble burst, we laugh and babble about this amazing sighting.

[Inside Tim's forest]

And now Tim must feel that “his” forest can only be a let-down. It isn’t. Although it’s younger and much smaller that our “home” forest, it is instantly appealing. For a start it has that rare combination of all three pine species – pencil pine, King Billy pine, and laxifolia (a hybrid of the other two) – immediately adjacent to each other. It also has some impressive “Grandma” myrtles, very old Nothofagus cunninghamii that reach high into the forest canopy. They also beautifully exhibit what is known as canopy shyness. Such trees, often of the same species, leave a continuous gap or channel between each other’s outermost leaves. It reminds me of that almost electric shyness I felt when I first wanted to hold a girl’s hand. 

[Canopy shyness in myrtle trees - photo by Libby]

The reasons for this botanical shyness are probably multiple, including to reduce mechanical pruning of each other when wind moves the branches, and to limit the spread of leaf eating invertebrates. But trees are as mysterious as they are remarkable, and the more we study them, the more questions we have.

 

It’s now lunchtime, and we find another reason Tim is so fond of this forest. At its grassy edge we sit in the sun, sheltered from the keen breeze, and look out over the plains. The humps and bumps of the foregeround are covered in scoparia, sphagnum and dozens of other hardy, low-growing plant species. We know the weather is not always as benign as it is today. In the distance, in the lee of small hills, we see pockets of gum trees and pencil pines. Tim spreads his arms towards the wide horizon, and assures us he’s never seen another soul out here. We tease back: “Not even one of the 0.5%?”

 

After lunch we continue our slow wander back, though Tim being our leader, there’s a diversion first. He takes us further west to where he had earlier found what he thought was the original boundary marker of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. We find a large rock cairn on a knoll overlooking the Forth River valley, some 600m below us. We pause and salute those who surveyed and ultimately protected this wild country.

[Tim and the boundary marker]

[Lake Rosa]

And then we actually start walking homeward, first via Lake Rosa, a shallow lake dotted with water lillies, then down a long, wide valley through knee-high scrub to the unnamed lake we’d paused at on our outward journey. Ultimately we complete a nearly 12km long figure 8, and return to our forest camp early in the afternoon. It has been a marvellous day of off-track walking, but I’m not ashamed to say that the lure of an afternoon nap soon takes me tentward.

The Not-So-Plain Plains: Part 1

How do I describe this place? I could try starting with the sound, or the seeming lack of it. Not that the forest is silent. Even in the dead of night there’s a faint thrum. Is it my own blood pulsing, or is it water softly whispering down the slope? The hoarse squeal of a squabbling possum briefly pierces the profound quiet. And when a strong wind arrives, the trees tut and shoosh at the interruption.

[One of the enormous pencil pines in the forest]

Might it be easier to talk about the light? Again I struggle. Even in the daytime the light is so low that an old light meter would scarcely register it. Yet it’s a darkness with shades and flecks, some murky, some hinting at an emerald shimmer. Just occasionally a beam of sunlight struggles through the foliage, only to retreat like a messenger at the wrong address. 

 

Then there’s what I can feel with hands, feet and face. My tent is pitched so close to a moss and lichen-draped tree trunk, that when I clamber out I can’t help but brush its damp softness. I can almost taste forest, unless it’s just its deep, damp-duff, pine-inflected scent.  

 

[Our forest campsite]

All of this might give the impression that I’m experiencing sensory overload. But no, it’s just how it is in a pencil pine forest, the type of forest we might all know and love, were we not so otherwise attuned. The type of forest that is becoming rarer as the decades pass, as heat, drought, neglect and fire take their toll. A fear of that might add to my deeply felt response to the forest. But whatever the rational explanation, this forest is simply one of the most soul-filling places I’ll ever visit.

[Starting on the Arm River Track]

But I should take us back to the start of the day, because places like this are inevitably hard won. And just getting here usually has its own story. I’d previously much enjoyed my two or three trips to the northern part of the February Plains, each time with Tim D. But for all its charms, the area shows many signs of human use and abuse, including intense fires, over-grazing and deforestation. In leading this walk, Tim must have decided it’s time we saw some less impacted parts of the Februaries.

 

We start on the Arm River Track, a formerly quiet track that has slowly become a much frequented short-cut to the centre of the Overland Track at the Pelion Plains. Most recently it’s also become the third day of some commercial trips on the Overland Track, following the loss to wildfire of a (private) hut and some trackwork in February 2025.

[Overland Track mountains, incl Pelion East and Ossa, from the Februaries]

There’s no disguising the uphill trend. We’re soon sweating our way up the long section of switch-backs that take up steeply up towards Lake Price, and our first mountain. Mt Pillinger is something of an outlier; not quite an Overland Track mountain, nor part of the nearby Cathedral Plateau. We cross the bridge over the Wurragarra Creek and pause for lunch in a grassy clearing off to the side of the track. 

[Mt Pillinger peeps out beside the Arm River Track]

[A pause near Lake Price]

Tim has been reassuring Libby that once we’ve left this busy-ish track, we will be heading off-track to the February Plains where, he says, “0.5% of walkers will ever go”. Libby, who’s very fond of remote and un-peopled wilderness, smiles and gives Tim a thumbs up. But as we’re eating lunch, a walker wanders up the Arm River Track. We give a friendly wave, and he comes off the track towards us, presumably just to say a quick hello. 

[Lunch near the Arm River Track]

We soon ask him where he’s headed, and are suitably shocked – and some of us amused – when he says “The February Plains”. We quickly explain why we’ve broken into sudden laughter. We share a bit of information on possible routes, and Ned (not his real name) walks off up-valley towards some formidable looking scrub. Before we’ve packed up from lunch he’s back, having found no way through the tangled bush. He asks if he can join us as we try to find our way up to the plateau. Shortly afterwards Ned must be wondering whether it’s the blind leading the blind, as our own “route” is very rough, steep and scrubby. We push uphill through scarcely yielding scrub for about 90 minutes before the slope finally eases, and the scrub becomes relatively thin. 

[... and the scrub finally yields]

We’ve been on our feet for more than 5 hours, nearly all of it uphill, some of it in gnarly scrub. Keen to find a campsite doesn’t fully express it! As we dump our packs to do a search, Ned says he'll keep walking. He’s wanting to camp as close to Mount Oakleigh as he can. Tim looks over the map with him before we wave “Mr. 0.5%” farewell, and start our own search in the vicinity of a nearby lake, one of the few in this area with a name. 

[Tim and Ned check the map]

After close to an hour, we eventually choose a large, thick pencil pine forest. There is a sunnier, more exposed lake-side camp nearby, but as we’re expecting strong winds in a day or two, we’ve chosen to have a protected campsite for all three nights. And protected it is, as well as hinting at being the above-mentioned soul-filling place. We’ll find that out later, but for now our order of business is simple: stop, set up camp, eat, sleep.

[Sunset and moonrise near our camp]

Return December?

[This post was originally published in Forty South Tasmania, Issue 115, Summer 2025. I wrote it before the summer of 2024/25, but reproduce it here in response to the terrible wildfires that have ravaged Tasmania's West Coast for much of February 2025. I am deeply saddened that this is happening, and is likely to keep happening in future summers. One reality of climate change as we will experience it in Tasmania, will be the devastation of some of our irreplaceable fire-sensitive species.]

[A hazard reduction burn in nearby bushland]

Among Elvis Presley’s many gifts, the articulation of lyrics wasn’t foremost. That at least was my excuse for miss-hearing the title of his 1962 hit “Return To Sender”. I was sure he was singing “Return December”. And why wouldn’t anyone long for the return of the first month of summer, with its long days of sun, sand, cricket and, of course, Christmas? Back in my childhood it seemed impossible to be downbeat about summer. I gleefully anticipated the return of December.
 
How things have changed! Lately, I’ll confess, I’m close to dreading summer. It’s as though the very thing I’ve longed for has turned on me, like a beloved dog that suddenly bites. The source of much of this angst is bushfires. While summers in southern Tasmania have always come with the threat of bushfires, climate change has magnified that threat. Compared with late 20^th century figures, Hobart can expect to nearly double its number of hot days (maximums >30 °C) by the mid-21^st century. That’s an increase from 4 or 5 days per year to 8 days per year. At the same time our rainfall average is declining. 
 
Such conditions greatly increase the risk of lightning strike without rain, a phenomenon  more commonly associated with the drier, hotter parts of mainland Australia. Lightning has always been in Tasmania’s weather mix, but usually within rain-producing storms. Rain might continue to come with storms, but in warmer and drier conditions it will often evaporate before it reaches the ground. And lightning on dry bush is a recipe for disaster.

[Lightning strike photographed by me during a visit to Hokkaido, Japan]

This risk is not just a hypothetical future projection. Quite abruptly, since the year 2000, Tasmania has seen a sharp rise in the number of fires ignited by dry lightning. And these fires last longer and burn larger areas. Last century long-burn fires caused by lightning strike were a rarity. Now Tasmania has experienced such fires most summers so far this century.  

The summer bushfires of 2018/2019 serve as a startling example. They began in late December 2018, when dry lightning strikes ignited several fires in the Tasmanian highlands. Thousands more dry strikes occurred on January 16 and 29. I watched an animated simulation of the lightning storms as they crossed from north-west to south-east. It was as though a vast and merciless dragon was swooping and swerving across our island, breathing deadly fire, now to the left, now to the right. The fires continued burning for weeks, and by early February 2019, they had burnt around 200,000 ha, almost 3% of Tasmania.

 

Back in The Patch - our local bushland - we watched anxiously as one particular fire, the Gell River fire in the south-west wilderness, grew into a monster. As it roared down the Vale of Rasselas, a vast smoke plume spread eastward, piling high into the sky behind Kunanyi/Mt Wellington. An eerily murky pall settled over the city of Hobart for days. Nobody could breathe easy in any sense. It was a potent reminder that, for better or worse, the patch of bush we live beside is connected to the wild.

[A "cool' burn in our local bushland]

All day long we had the radio on, listening for updates, wondering if the fires would reach Hobart. We hastily worked out our fire plan, with southern Tasmania’s disastrous 1967 fires firmly in mind. That calamity claimed 64 lives, including some in our neighbourhood. If fire struck here again our plan was simple: get out early. Twice that summer we packed overnight bags and precious items. We photographed parts of the house interior, in case we’d need to remember what was replaceable. The irreplaceable would be just that.
 
We’re not the only ones threatened by fire. Looking at The Patch, I wonder how its other inhabitants can respond to a severe fire. How might they “get out early”? And even if a bushfire doesn’t come, how will the trend to hotter and drier effect the plants and animals here? 

[Where would an echidna find refuge in a wildfire?]

Of course all of this change to our climate doesn’t mean we’ll suddenly have uniformly hot, dry summers. We will continue to enjoy the endearingly changeable summer weather we’ve come to expect, including the occasional December snow on Kunanyi. But weather is not climate. Climate refers to changes over longer periods of time, and looks at trends in our weather. And it’s the trend to hotter, drier, and more volatile that is most worrisome. I ask myself whether this is a situation I want to leave to my grandchildren’s generation?
 
In that context my own maternal grandmother comes to mind. She was a wonderful, somewhat eccentric presence throughout my childhood. One of her quirks was a morbid fear of thunderstorms. When lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, she would quickly take herself off to her room. And there she would hide in a dark wardrobe, sitting on a chair she had in there for just that purpose, hoping the sturm und drang would be muffled by her frocks and coats. 
 
I could never understand her phobia, as I found a “good thunderstorm” quite exhilarating. But all these years later, and for entirely different reasons, I seem to be inheriting my grandmother’s feelings about thunder and lightning. I won’t be heading for the wardrobe, but I certainly wish I could parcel up a coming storm, and label it “Return to Sender”.