Narcissus and the Fire-Dragon

[Fungi and lichen on a sassafras trunk] 

Every trip has its backstory. They just don’t usually feel as earth-turning as this one. Normally it’s where to go; who can come; whether we’re fit enough; and who’s providing transport. This summer all that was deeply overshadowed, quite literally, by bushfires.

They began in late December 2018, when dry lightning strikes ignited several fires in the Tasmanian highlands. In what is starting to look like the new normal, thousands more lightning strikes occurred on January 16 and 29. I watched a 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 started by the dry storms continued burning for weeks, along a vast front. By early February 2019, over 40 fires had burnt around 200,000 ha, almost 3% of Tasmania.

There’s a more personal slant to the story. By January 4 the Gell River fire in the central south-west had grown into a monster. As it roared down the Vale of Rasselas, a vast smoke plume spread westward, 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.

[Smoke 'erupts' behind kunanyi/Mt Wellington] 

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, injured around a thousand, and razed 1300 buildings. If fire struck here again our plan was simple: get out early. Twice 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.

If that wasn’t unsettling enough, we were deeply troubled that the fires were burning through the heart of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area. They tore through wet highland forest and lapped up to the achingly beautiful Lake Rhona. All the while the weather stayed relentlessly hot and dry, the usually wet westerlies tight-buttoned and sober.

Fire sped east and south, igniting the ridges leading towards Mt Anne and its irreplaceable King Billy pine forests. They raged across buttongrass plains and up the slopes of the iconic Western Arthur Range. They menaced the majestic Gondwanan forest on the flanks of Mt Bobs, with half an eye on Federation Peak itself. They crawled across the Central Plateau near Great Lake, taking out some pencil pines, cushion plants and cider gums.

[A map of some of the 2019 fires, courtesy https://firecentre.org.au/] 

These are just some of the places I know personally. Hundreds of other precious wild places were burning at the same time, not to mention the forest and scrub fires that were threatening – and already destroying – homes and properties in the Huon Valley to the south-east. Up to 700 firefighting staff and hundreds more volunteers employed firebombers; helicopters; temporary irrigation systems; chemical fire retardants and just plain elbow grease to try and limit the damage.

It was in this context that I chatted with a couple of friends who are both senior fire managers. After talking about all that was being done to try and douse the fires, one simply added “Pray for rain!” I said I would, adding that if it helped I would even do a rain dance. (Not a pretty sight, we agreed!)

Gallows humour aside, I was deeply despondent, but also angry. It felt as though my heart country, those wild and wet places that are refuge for the wonderfully strange vegetation of old Gondwana, was under brutal assault. At the same time it seemed our political leaders were actively refusing to acknowledge that this – and the mass fish kill in the Murray-Darling; and the unprecedented bleaching of coral in the Barrier Reef; and the newly minted record hot/dry January all over Australia – resulted from climate change. And not the slow and incremental change we might have expected, but sharp and damaging change.

I did pray for rain, and I also planned to get out there – somewhere, anywhere – to feel the wilderness beneath my feet; the clear air in my lungs; and just perhaps to hear the whisper of Gondwana again.

With many of the usual tracks closed because of fire risk, we ummed and arred in the lead up days to our walk, trying to settle on somewhere we could still go. And then, of course, it began raining: beautiful, long, soaking wet rain. Where we live we had around 40mm overnight, with the promise of more to come. We could hardly complain, but the wet forecast further restricted our options. Be careful what you pray for!

[Our group shelters on the Narcissus Hut verandah] 

So, on a wet and windy Saturday, five of us finally found ourselves on the ferry trip up leeawuleena/Lake St Clair. Our far-from-adventurous destination was Narcissus Hut, just a few hundred metres from the ferry jetty. It’s not exactly the heart of the wilderness, but as we lugged our packs from the jetty to the hut, it felt good to hear the currawongs call, and the dollops of rain on the roof, and the whoosh and scratch of wind in the trees.

Narcissus Hut is the poor relation of Overland Track Huts. Most who reach it are intent on going somewhere else: either home via the Lakeside Track or ferry, or up to Pine Valley Hut for more exploration of the national park. We – and plenty of freshly arriving Overland Track walkers – soon learned that the route to Pine Valley was shut. So quite a few walkers hastily re-arranged their plans; tried to change their ferry booking; or simply decided to stay a night or two at Narcissus Hut with us.

[Pademelon and mother near Narcissus] 

With the exception of Jim, who loves a hut, we’d set up tents on the nearby platforms. Still, it rained a lot, and Narcissus is a small hut. So with everyone cooking inside, we cooked and ate in shifts. It’s always interesting to hear what walkers have thought of their Overland Track trip, and we had a fine social time conversing with walkers from places as far away as Macau, Venezuela, Alaska, Taiwan, Canada and France. But it wasn’t quite the wilderness time we were hoping for.

So on Day 2, regardless of the wet forecast, we filled our day packs with all the necessary gear, donned our waterproofs, and headed off towards Byron Gap. Less than 10 minutes into the walk I could already feel the wildness doing me good. After 20 minutes on flat boarded track, we reached a track junction in wet forest, and turned towards the Gap. Starting from an altitude of around 700m, we knew we had a nearly 300m climb to reach there. But the narrow, winding track through tall forest beckoned.

[Ascending towards Byron Gap] 

I won’t say it was easy: it took over 2 hours to get to Byron Gap. But I must say it was sublime. No one in the group had been on the walk, and I’d talked it up with phrases like “brilliant rainforest” and “superbly uber-green, mossy and beautiful.” My apprehension at having over-sold the area quickly dissolved, and the sighs and soft words of appreciation told me it was working on the others too. Never mind that it was raining, it was a rainforest!! Better still it was a glad, green and growing one. And for now at least, it was safe from the fires that we prayed were being taught wet lessons from this stern and insistent rain.

[An ancient giant in the rainforest near Byron Gap] 

I wonder sometimes whether my love for these Gondwanan forests verges on the mystical. The sassafras, myrtle beech, King Billy pine, celery-top pine, fern and leatherwood of these forests are plants with links back to the supercontinent of Gondwana. They’re kin to plants found in other former Gondwanan places like New Zealand’s South Island and Patagonia. They are also completely unlike anything I grew up with. Yet before I’d met them I used to draw forests just like these: with green mossy tree trunks, bright glossy leaves, ferns and a carpet of fallen leaves everywhere. And always there were waterfalls … and probably fairies too.

[Libby soaks in the green wonders of the rainforest] 

This childhood dream was dampened by sweat, rain and some blood-sucking reality by the time we stopped at the un-forested top of the Gap. After more than a month of heat, drought, and a lack of victims, a legion leeches warmly welcomed us to their world. Between showers and glimpses of nearby Mt Byron, we had a restless and rapid lunch. After plucking off as many leeches as we could find, we turned around and descended back to where we’d come from.

If tiredness and a slight itchy paranoia took some of the gloss from the wonders, it was still as marvellous descending through the forest as it had been going up. That green glow stayed with us back at the hut, and well beyond.

[Rainbow reflections from Narcissus Hut]

Narcissus and reflections: I suppose they go together. After a month under the dire spell of a this 2019 fire dragon, my mind wandered into the territory of myth. Perhaps I was hoping for a brave St George to slay this dragon. Instead, among our political leaders at least, I could find only a weak and witless Narcissus. 

[Narcissus prefers his own reflection to the beauty of Echo: artist Solomon J. Solomon] 

In the original myth a beautiful nymph named Echo fell in love with Narcissus. But he did not return her love. Instead he became so enamoured of his own reflection in a pool of water that he gazed at it day and night, eventually dying for lack of food and sleep. And Echo, broken-hearted, wandered into the mountains, where she pined away until only her melodious voice remained.

I know it’s not just our leaders who are focussed on themselves. So many of us are enchanted by how fine we look reflected in the glow of the things we’ve created. But it's not just about us. While we're busy admiring ourselves, and pretending we are masters of all, the world of nature, like Echo – and perhaps also Gondwana – retreats into the mountains and begins to fade away.

Father to the Man

Has he been caught unawares, or is he posing? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d struck a posture for the camera. Perhaps I’m being harsh. After all he’s not yet familiar with these ancient Gondwanan forests. And that look – he is gazing up with a mix of deep contemplation and awe – is a fitting response to the total sensory embrace of a Tasmanian rainforest.

[In a Meander Forest, 1982: photo by KM] 

All these years later he still feels it. I know because he is me. A 28 year old me, a me flying free of the gravity of now. But  still me.

It’s 1982 and a different world. He has no internet and no computer (they’re for mathematical types, and he’s not one of those). His television is of the smallish, black and white kind, like his sheep dog.

He loves his wife and his wee daughter. He doesn’t yet know he’ll have two more children, and that they’ll go on to have children of their own. Being a grandfather is vastly far from his mind, even if it will be as unexpectedly full of marvels as stepping into that forest. No, right now he is freely swimming in the green timelessness of that Meander forest.

How to respond to that 28 year old me? Do I frown and judge; do I condescend; or do I just smile and leave him to his thoughts? If I’m tempted to pick on him, I might start with his naïve beliefs. A Christian AND a conservationist? Isn’t that two lost causes in one unlikely combination? I could suggest he’s a fan of Saint Jude, the patron saint of such things, but his theology doesn’t yet have that bent.

[The grandeur of growing things: inside a West Coast rainforest] 

It might be easier to stick with superficialities. For instance could I resist sniggering at his “hippy” looks; his long hair and Cat Stevens beard? And what’s with the hand-knitted beanie and hand-made, checked woollen shirt? Is it solidarity with the poor? Or is he inventing the “bogan” look before its time? Sure there might be an economic imperative too. I see hints of penny pinching in his army surplus trousers and cheap japara/oilskin rain jacket. But trousers tucked inside red socks? Really?!

While this is flitting through my mind, I realise I may have it all wrong. If, as Gerard Manley Hopkins had it, “the child is father to the man”, the same surely holds for the young man and the older man. That inverts the whole situation for the present me. If anyone is going to be “fatherly” towards the other, then it is the younger me who should be having words with the older me.

If he speaks to me of forests and other wild things in Tasmania, I will speak of my ongoing love and struggle. Struggle against that which would diminish the wild; or belittle it as a minor issue. If he speaks of my faith or of my relationships, the same two words will come up again: love and struggle.

[Love's a beach: Lake Rhona, Tasmania] 

Because these things are hard, and they matter. The “stuff” that so often dominates the now – houses, cars, clothes and gadgets – will fade away. But the grandeur of growing things; of abiding love; of a questing spirit, things of which any Creator could be justly proud, these will remain.

Getting away from the pull of the present must be good for you. Certainly the younger me has passed on a few pearls, and has more to teach me yet. Still, I might pass on tucking my trousers into red socks.

A Walk in the West: Part 1

[A welcome glow!] 

In a climate where it rains almost continually for nine months in the year, mere pack tracks through a boggy soil are not in the best of condition, almost every step taking you up to your ankles in mud, and repeatedly you sink down to your knees in the sludge.

So wrote a reporter in Melbourne’s Argus newspaper during an 1895 assignment to the mines of Tasmania’s Dundas area. Given the hype associated with mining in Tasmania’s west at the time – and the fortunes won and lost on mere rumour - you’d expect to take even weather and track reports with a grain of salt.

But the anonymous scribe’s descriptions proved accurate enough during our recent trip into the area. The forecast had been reasonable a week or so out, but the west coast had reverted to its default position by the time we reached Queenstown. Showers continued as we wound around the curvaceous roads north of Queenstown. We reached what had once been the mining town of Dundas in time for lunch.

The map had led us to imagine we’d see remains of at least a school and a recreation ground. The 1:25 000 Dundas map even had a “post and telegraph reserve” marked nearby. Instead we found not one single building or ruin, only unmarked roads and tracks, a disused gravel quarry, and a lot of rainforest. Rain started afresh as we got our gear out of the car.

[Tim and Jim: on the right track] 

Kitted up in full rain gear we crossed the Dundas River on a log and wire bridge and started our two hour ascent up old mining tracks. Our destination was Fraser Creek Hut. The hut seems to have begun life in the early 1930s as a temporary building supporting King Billy pine milling in the area. Miners used it in subsequent decades, but it was as a Scout hut that it most recently came into its own.

We were to be hosted by Terry Reid, retired park ranger and Scout leader, and an old colleague of mine and Tim’s. A Queenstown local for many years, Terry, along his brother Peter, and Zeehan Scout leader Roger Nichols, was heavily involved in the hut’s restoration from the late 1970s onwards. They learned how to split King Billy palings, then passed on some of those skills to Venturer Scouts and other students. The palings were used to restore the hut’s walls and floorboards, and it became a base for those learning wilderness expedition skills.

[Fraser Creek Hut]

Our ascent towards the hut followed a steep 4WD mining track, which soon narrowed to become an even steeper walking track. Although the showers persisted, the ever-changing beauty of the rainforest did its best to distract us. A few routed signs assured us we were on the right track. One marked “Carbine Saddle” was accompanied by a helpful sign saying “Chocolate Stop”. Falling rain didn’t make obeying that a fully enjoyable task, but we did our token best.

[Anyone for chocolate?] 

After the saddle we hoped for, and were blessed with, a downhill track. It led to a creek crossing, helpfully sign-posted with names that would mean more to us in due course. We followed a track that had a remarkably symmetrical set of climbing “steps”, which we guessed were the foundations of a tramway used in mining and logging. Water flowed down the track, but at least there were no knee-deep bogs. Not long afterwards piles of cut logs stacked beside the track gave us the strong hope that we were nearing the hut. Smoke swirling through the sodden forest was the clincher. And we were just in time for afternoon tea!

Terry, Jess and Mel had come up a day ahead of us, and as we stumbled into the hut we were relieved to find the fire going and the kettle boiling. Once we’d got our (very) wet gear off, we relaxed by the fire, downing a cuppa or two as Terry introduced us to the hut.

[Tim and Terry chat inside the hut] 

If there is a timber as fine and versatile as Tasmania’s King Billy pine, I’d like to meet it. With the fire light flickering on the pine-lined walls, the hut exuded a honeyed warm glow. Once we had food and wine inside us, the memories of the sodden walk were banished. Talk flowed, the fire was stoked, and for now there was no better place to be in the world.

The Wild Wet West

[Scenes from Tasmania’s West Coast]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Forest scenes from western Tasmania] 

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Morning, Tarkine rainforest, western Tasmania] 

Keeper of the Secret Stars

[the beautiful star-shaped flower of the sassafras tree]

[More invertebrate surprises from the Tasmanian forests]

Flowers are supposed to be obvious. After all their job is to attract pollinating insects or birds, a story as old as the birds and the bees. But sometimes the show is less about being showy, and more about being smelly.

In the case of the sassafras tree (Atherosperma moschatum), smelly is an unkind and inaccurate adjective. Find yourself among sassafras at the right time, say early spring in Tasmania’s wet forests, and you may be treated to a feast of fragrance.

The first time I caught the scent I had no clue as to its origin. It took an old time bushie to point out the source of the rich scent that had my head reeling. Sassafras flowers are found on the underside of branchlets and are often hidden by the leaves. Or at least until they fall, and spread a carpet of beautiful creamy-white, star-shaped flowers that light up the forest floor like a night sky.

Sassafras trees, which are found in rainforest from Queensland through to Tasmania, have another secret. They have an intricate and intimate relationship with a butterfly, to name names the Macleay’s swallowtail (Graphium macleayanum).

This member of the Papillon family – the only one found in Tasmania – has stunning green, black and white markings, and two distinctive black “swallow-tails” at the base of its wings. Its flight is jittery and jagged, its wings ceaseless except when briefly stopping to sip nectar. The female lays its eggs on the underside of sassafras leaves, which the resulting green, hump-backed caterpillars then eat. When the larvae pupate, the pupae are often suspended beneath the same sassafras leaves.

The close and cosy relationship turns full-circle when the butterflies emerge and feed on the nectar of the sassafras flowers. They pollinate the trees in the process, paying back their hosts for bed and board, and ensuring that the secret stars will again fall from the forest in the coming spring.