A Long-Awaited Reunion: Part 3

When I was young, some car owners opted to buy eye-catching two-tone cars. A rich uncle had a very fancy two-tone Ford Ranch Wagon, with fetching brown sides, and a custard coloured roof. Today confirms that our walking group has turned into a two-tone model.

This starts to become clear while we’re discussing our walking options. The forecast is good, and climbing Tasmania’s highest mountain, Mt Ossa, is high on some agendas. Yesterday’s more adventurous quartet has Ossa and maybe more in mind. I start thinking of them as the “brown” side.

[Small falls between Pelion Hut and Pelion Gap] 

On the “custard” side, Lynne has never ascended Ossa, and would have been keen. But … yesterday’s work on her knee wasn’t a miracle cure. She will still have to nurse it a little, and I plan to stick with her today. Jim was up Ossa with me in 2017, the most recent of many ascents we’ve made. On that occasion we had the best conditions we’re ever likely to see. During our descent we talked about whether we’d ever do it again. We weren't sure then, but when he’s asked if he’ll go today, Jim simply says “Nup”. The “custard” side is firming. Brita then declares that she’s not a summit person, and with Ossa not on her list today, the score becomes Brown 4, Custard 4.

[Our 2017 summit experience on Mt Ossa] 

So the Tims, Merran and Libby are going up to Pelion Gap, then on to the top of Tasmania. TimO adds that he’s never been up Mt Pelion East, and I see that “can I do two summits?” glint in his eye. Jim, Brita, Lynne and I reckon we’ll go as far as the Gap, and then see how we feel. Our two-tone group at least agrees to be back in time for pre-dinner nibbles and drinks together on the grass beside our tents.

[Buttongrass heads and coral fern] 

Part of Brita’s coaching of Lynne is that she could try shorter steps, not striding out too much. A corollary of that is that she should go at her own pace. So the brown team leaves us in their dust, as we custards climb towards Pelion Gap in a more leisurely fashion. One of the advantages for me is more time to photograph, which also means more time to really notice the intricacies of the forest and woodlands we’re walking through. Jim and Brita stay with us for a while, but eventually they firm up a plan to walk past the gap, and up to the side of Mount Doris.

[A small grove of Pandani near Pelion Hut] 

[Celmisia - alpine daisy] 

Lynne is walking a little more easily today, but there’s still some pain, and she stops every now and then to stretch her hamstring. Eventually we top out on Pelion Gap, just as Jim and Brita are about to depart from there for Mt. Doris. 

[L to R: Peter, Lynne and Jim at Pelion Gap]  

Jim is keen to show Brita what he calls “The Japanese Garden” on the side of Doris. It’s a relatively level section of an otherwise steep route. Bright green carpets of cushion plant are interspersed with other ground-hugging species, mini-thickets of scoparia, and slabs of lichen-daubed rock. Little runnels and pools of clear water complete the picture: a perfect little natural garden.

[Sunburst on forest detail] 

Lynne reckons this is as far as she should come today, so we farewell the others and sit down to our lunch on the gap’s platform. Afterwards, with our new-found appreciation of walking slowly, we stop often. It proves as good for the soul as it is for the knees. We take the time to find small delights, and to smell the … well, not roses, exactly. It’s things like the pungency of sassafras, the tang of lemon boronia, and the earthiness of buttongrass. And there’s also that indescribable scent you get when you lie amongst all that is breaking down on the rainforest floor, as you try to photograph a King Billy pine that towers above everything.

[King Billy Pine trunk and forest floor] 

Meanwhile back at the “Japanese Garden”, Jim and Brita are surprised by TimO. He’s already been up Pelion East, and in Jim’s words is “looking knackered”. He pauses for a drink, and wonders aloud whether he really should “give Ossa a crack as well”. Politely ignoring Jim’s advice, he sets off towards Ossa. Jim and Brita shake their heads and head in the opposite direction. Jim gets back to Pelion only a little while after us, and lets us know TimO’s apparent plan, and that Brita has gone off for a swim near Old Pelion Hut. Within the hour Tim D, Merran and Libby are back, sounding upbeat after their ascent of Ossa.

[Flower heads of Billy Buttons] 

When everyone has recovered a little, we gather again at the delightfully grassy tent site, a little above the hut. The left-overs from the heli-pad party are reinforced with more cheese, and some extra wine is found. Our gathering looks like a product placement for Helinox chairs, as four of us sit comfortably above the grass in our “Zero” chairs. 

[Nibbles while waiting for TimO & Brita] 

It’s a warm and gentle early evening, and as currawongs pipe in the closing of the day, we’re happy and grateful for many things. All we lack is the presence of our friends TimO and Brita. We’ve got well into the bhuja and cheese, and have started the wine, when a very weary looking TimO traipses down the track from the gap. Almost simultaneously Brita comes up from the side track that leads to Old Pelion. Our group complete, we settle into hearing the varied stories of our party members. As I listen I can’t help thinking what a fine two-tone model we are!

Thoughts from the Overland Track: Part 2 - Currawongs

If I were to find myself in a deep, dark dungeon, and was striving to recall one sound that would lift my mind into clear, bright skies, I would choose the call of the currawong. And not just any currawong: it would have to be Strepera fuliginosa, the black currawong, found only in Tasmania.

It’s early afternoon, mid-November, and the currawong’s kar-week, week-kar call welcomes us to the start of our Overland Track trip. It is a sound that locates me in the Tasmanian highlands as surely as a café accordion and a man saying ooh la la would land me in France. But just as the French might equally be arguing football or discussing Proust, so the currawong’s claxon call is far from its full story. Or so we will discover.

The weather is clearing after early showers, and currawongs are cavorting in the early afternoon sun. After the initial pack-settling climb, we pause at Crater Lake. A currawong hops up for a close inspection of our packs. It is all swagger and golden-eyed defiance, the large cutlass-like bill betraying its piratical attitude.

A curious black currawong sizes up my pack near Crater Lake, Tasmania

I casually warn the first-time walkers not to leave their packs unguarded. These intelligent and inquisitive birds have learned a few tricks, including pack-invasion. The two Dutch girls in our party look unconvinced: they’ve already heard enough drop bear, yowie and tiger leech stories in Australia to make them wary.

I click off a few portraits of the handsome pirate, then turn to concentrate on the grunt up Marions Lookout. The currawong’s call remains our occasional companion, along with its other “calling card”. These are its casts, odd-looking pellets that are somewhere between ugly red scats and huge, deformed raspberries. The casts are in fact undigested food, particularly pinkberries (from Leptecophylla juniperina), regurgitated by the birds.

A currawong's cast, full of partially digested pinkberries. (Photo courtesy of Alex Dudley)

Pelion Gap is the next place we actively notice the "pirates". Wooden platforms have been built here to manage this high traffic junction, where walkers wanting to climb Mt Ossa or Mt Pelion East can leave their heavy packs. Since they've learned their special trick, the currawongs have transformed the platform into a seasonal galley.

On a busy day there may be more than forty packs left at Pelion Gap for hours at a time. And the trick? Currawongs have learned to use their beaks to unzip packs. Once the pack is breached, the birds probe for any and everything they take a fancy to. Walkers have lost food, money, even passports to marauding birds.

The defense is to either cover your pack with a groundsheet - as the commercial groups usually do - or turn your pack onto its zips so they are minimally exposed. The three of us preparing to climb Pelion East do the latter. But when we come back, we learn that even this might not be enough. The top pocket of Tim's pack has been breached, and his mobile phone has been lifted!

After a quick search of the scoparia bushes, he locates the phone. Luckily it's still in its zip-lock bag, and undamaged by the scudding showers that have swept the Gap while we've been summitting. We can only suppose that the currawong grew tired of waiting for a signal and chucked the phone. As I said, a smart bird!

Thoughts from the Overland Track: Part 1 - Mt Pelion East

[part 1 of a series of reflections on a November walk through Tasmania's Overland Track]

Mt Ossa and the rest of the Pelion Range from the slopes of Mt Pelion East

Pelion Gap, at an altitude of 1126 metres, is the high point of day 4 on the Overland Track. It is a place more exposed than most to the wild weathers that made, and continue to make, this high and rugged area what it is. My rule of thumb – that there is always snow in November in the highlands – holds true today. Showers turn to flurries of sago snow as we sag down at the Gap.

It’s been a constant hour and a half trudge up from the Pelion Plains, but the promise of fresh bread from a friendly commercial guide has drawn us on. We top the bread with homemade raspberry jam, cheese and other delicacies. The heavenly taste brings internal sunshine even as the next snow shower swoops over the Gap.

Four members of the group think better of our earlier plan to climb Mt Pelion East. That leaves three of us to don extra layers, including gloves and overpants, before we continue up the mountain. I’ve been here twice before, but it is hard to resist the short, sharp ascent up what looks an impossibly steep summit ridge.

My hazy recollection, that you walk straight towards the nipple-shaped summit before skirting left then ascending from that side, proves accurate for once. But as we start to clamber up the final steep band of dolerite, sago snow engulfs the mountain – and us. We shelter behind some pillars, the sago piling up like tiny styro-foam pellets at our feet. We are in no danger. This is a half-hearted sprinkling of snow that will melt within the hour. But it does make me wonder what it would have been like here 12 000 years ago, during the last Ice Age.

Waiting out the snow showers, Mt Pelion East

Back then the confetti of snow at our feet would have been several hundred metres thick. And we would have been waiting a couple of thousand years for it to melt, giving the slowly flowing snow and ice ample time to grind away the bulk of Pelion East. The peak itself is a nunatak, meaning it stayed largely above the deep snow. But its flanks, exactly where we are standing, would have been buried deep. The brutal and relentless mass of ice would have gouged away most of the mountain side. Later that day we will find glacial erratics – large boulders carried and dropped by the moving ice – peppered throughout the Pinestone Valley.

I am sobered by the thought that Aboriginal Tasmanians were here during that whole age. Without the likes of boots, down jackets, Gore-Tex, polar fleece or ruck-sacks, and carrying only fire and essential tools, they ranged throughout this whole area, leaving their own “erratics” in the form of quarries, middens and all manner of other artefacts. The Pelion Plains and similar open buttongrass areas are probably the largest artefacts of all: the result of aeons of systematic Aboriginal burning.

The snow soon stops, and we scramble the final few dozen metres to the summit. Tim is in his element, reminded of foul-weather scrambling during his years in Scotland. Rose, from the Netherlands, is just thrilled to be in such a wild and elevated place.

From the summit we can see for a hundred kilometres or more in every direction. Across Pelion Gap is Mt Ossa, the state’s highest peak. For a short while the snow showers have cleared its bulky eminence, as they have the other mountains of the Pelion Range: Mt Pelion West, Mt Thetis and Paddys Nut. The wind too has dropped, and it looks like we will have at least five minutes to enjoy the summit before the next shower. On a day like today that is more than we could have asked.