A Gordon River Journey: Part 1

... And Then It All Stopped

[The Gordon River, western Tasmania] 

First there’s the long drive to Strahan, then the equally long ride across Macquarie Harbour aboard “Stormbreaker”; the one a lurching test for the stomach, the other a slow, rocking transition to the wild. For a time the ketch’s skipper is even able to hoist sail and cut the engine. It could be any time in the last few centuries.

In fact it’s 2012: and the end of a long and full year. I’ve worked right up till the night before this ten day sea kayaking trip on the Gordon River. But as “Stormbreaker” drops us at our remote campsite and chugs off up river, the year suddenly slows to a stop. An enveloping, welcoming silence falls. We put up tents and tarps, chatter a little, arrange a communal area for the five of us, and generally settle in. Then we notice how occupied the silence is.

[Sailing into the wilderness on "Stormbreaker"] 

Wavelets are licking at the shoreline, the wind is shushing through the foliage, birds are jikking, chipping, caroling and chattering, bees and march flies buzzing and humming. This is no silence: it is a chaotic symphony, at once serene and frenetic.

I try to get my ear and eye in by identifying birds and plants. It’s one way to manage the massive transition from busyness to wild pause. We’ve chosen to be away from the usual Christmas rush. We will celebrate Christmas on the Franklin River, if all goes to plan. It’s made me feel disconnected from the swelling streets and shops of Hobart; the trickle of Christmas cards; the torrent of Christmas marketing. As much as I love Christmas, this year will be different.

“10 days sea kayaking on the Gordon River” I’ve been telling anyone who would listen in the lead up to the trip. In my own mind I’ve conjured images of long days paddling deeper into the wilderness – as perhaps we will. But our first full day starts lazily, with nearly as much time practising our favourite beverage preparations as our paddling techniques. (Espresso coffee made with beans freshly ground on a hand grinder sets an agreeable if unusual tone for a “wilderness” trip!)

[Gordon River vegetation in profusion] 

But our paddling time soon reminds us we’re on a wild river. We see no other soul, just wide, calm, coffee-coloured water, unfathomably deep; fringed by high banks and hills decked in wildly luxuriant vegetation. Huon pine, tea-tree, paperbark, native laurel, horizontal and myrtle all grow wildly and well in this water-soaked place.

A different Christmas or not, one plant above all is determined to put up its decorations. Tasmanian Christmas bush, aka mountain lilac (Prostanthera lasianthos), is fully in bloom all along the river banks. A tree that is otherwise inconspicuous can put on a spectacular display at this time of the year. Its deeply lobed flowers are a range of whites, if such a thing can be imagined. Some trees have flowers with a pinkish tinge, others a pale mauve tint, some the purist, luminous white. But all flowers here have purple throats.

[Christmas bush reflections, Gordon River] 

Large sprays of flowers on the trees are mirrored in the calm waters, strongly contrasted with the trees’ dark green foliage. At times winds cause masses of flowers to fall into the river. At first we see just the odd flower floating, four of its lobes catching the wind like a miniature Spanish galleon. 

[A lone Prostanthera flower "sails" the Gordon] 

Before long we see a flotilla, and then what looks like a whole armada setting sail across the mighty Gordon. If they conquer nothing else, they win our hearts, distracting us from the rhythmic work of paddling, bringing us a wonderfully wild Christmas gift. 

[Massed Prostanthera flowers]

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]