Returning to Rhona (4)

Part 4: Wasting the Wilderness

Autumn 2011. Trip number 5 to Lake Rhona starts in the kind of summer weather we've not seen during summer itself. We cross a summer river, walk up a summer valley, feel the peat-bound heat of summer reflecting back at us fiercely. We climb that final summer hill and promise we'll slake our thirsts in the deliciously cool summer cup that is Lake Rhona.

Lake Rhona, with Reeds Peak behind. An idyllic scene, but the dead standing pines tell a story  

On every bushwalking trip I carry baggage. I don't mean the sort that fits inside my pack, but the emotional kind. On trips to Lake Rhona, the memory of the tragic loss of Lake Pedder is the heaviest of these, no matter how much I insist that Rhona and Pedder are completely distinct from each other.

I lost a sister to cancer at a tragically young age. To this day her now-adult daughters always remind me of her. That's not to say they don't each have their own unique and treasured identity. It's a simple acknowledgement of what gets caught in memory's net.

To walk through any part of the Tasmanian wilderness is to be reminded of its past: what it has lost; the threats it has faced; the threats it continues to face.

For me it starts with a loud absence: that of Tasmania's Palawa. In the 1830s escaped convicts, Goodwin and Connolly, reported seeing many Aboriginal huts in the Vale of Rasselas. Within decades they and their occupants had either died or been driven from the area.

Ironically the absence of their fire use opened the area to greater fire risks. Aboriginal burning was generally small-scale and out of peak season. Its main purpose was to clear localised hunting grounds. European burning was less judicious, and too often of a timing and scale that brought landscape-wide devastation.

Early on this was for exploration, mining and grazing. But later forestry burning had a huge impact too. Even Ernie Bond, who was not averse to burning his grazing grounds, was aghast at the effect of post-war forestry fires in the Gordon, Florentine and Rasselas valleys.

On my first trip to Rhona there was another piece of heavy "baggage". The summer before a hazard reduction burn in the Florentine had gone drastically wrong. The fire had escaped, burned through the Vale of Rasselas, and found its way up to a defenseless Lake Rhona.

The great majority of the stunning King Billy pine forest that lined its northern shore was burned and lost. Dead stumps still stand there today, the pines' residue resin keeping them preserved from rot, vertical but lifeless. Nature abhors a vacuum: eucalypts have largely filled the void, with just a few King Billys left alive to remind us of our folly.

A King Billy pine clings to life on the shores of Lake Rhona 

Meanwhile, back in autumn 2011. Exhaustion and a late arrival prevent us from keeping our promise to drink Rhona's cup dry. But on the way up we've also been discussing the touchy issue of toileting in this area. It has started us thinking about the quality of the water in the lake. By our back-of-the-envelope calculations, bushwalkers deposit around 1 000 "number twos" around the lake shore every year. This being an alpine area, we've learned that decomposition of solid waste is very slow. Essentially most bushwalkers here are "pooing in their own nest", to borrow some technical ornithological terminology!

Our inspection of the area immediately behind the campsite confirms some fairly squalid toileting practices. Solid waste and toilet paper are not hard to find. Some has been buried in shallow sand, an easy find for the wildlife. The presence of a bold - and very plump - native rat (probably Mastacomys fuscus) at the campsite has us speculating in a very ugly direction regarding its diet!

By mutual agreement our party has decided to walk the 100-200 metres out of the catchment area to do our "number twos". Another solution would be to use "poo tubes". This combination of biodegradable bags and large tight-lidded plastic "pots" (approx. 10cm in diameter) for storing and carrying human waste, is the ultimate "carry in, carry out" practice.

Lake Rhona water: as cool and clear as iced tea ... we hope!

Some find the thought of this as gross as considering the Rhona rat's diet. Many would prefer someone else take responsibility for removing their waste, hence the popular call for a fly-in-fly-out toilet to be placed behind Rhona's beach. Personally I hope we can learn from our wilderness mistakes of the past, and start to take a deeper responsibility for removing unnecessary traces from these wild places.

Returning to Rhona (2)

Part 2: Bonding with the Wilderness

Photographers and other poets call it the golden hour. It's that time of day, on and after sunset, when the light softens and dims almost imperceptibly, and the world begins to marinate in its receding gentleness.

"Golden hour" commencing above Kunanyi/Mt Wellington 

The bushwalker, tired from a day spent upright and bearing a load, aims to have all chores done by this time. Dinner downed, tent ready, reclining as comfortably as the campsite allows, the walker nurses his or her beverage of choice - and is content.

Such is the scene at Gordonvale on our first family trip to Lake Rhona more than a decade ago. Down to four following the marriage of our eldest, we have taken about four hours to get here. The normally shorter trip has been complicated by some "navigational issues", and a slow, cautious crossing of the Gordon River.

But we are content as the slow summer twilight dims, and the peace of the forest nudges us towards sleep. It's then that a large flock of currawongs gathers in the trees behind us, unseen in the rising dark, but soon memorably heard.

A currawong's call has been rendered as kar-week-eek-kar or similar. It's also been likened to a bugle or a claxon horn. As I listen to the startling and rich vocal interplay of this flock I think these descriptions about as nuanced as saying a dog goes woof woof! No - it's as though an orchestra that's been playing Strauss waltzes has kicked back, let down its collective hair, and gone into an extended jazz improvisation.

Long, expressive, descending notes are traded between players, one to another to a third, before some other player introduces a multi-noted warble, which is gently countered by a tunefully muted squawk. This is no Darwinian struggle; no "look at me" grab-for-attention. This is relaxed, deep, expressive communication. Their conversation continues well after dark, filling Gordonvale’s already enchanting forest with a heart-lifting aural beauty.

Gordonvale is a story passed down through generations of bushwalkers. On my first trip here in the early 80s, I was told about the "friend of bushwalkers", the “Prince of Rasselas”, who once lived and worked here. As we approached Gordonvale that first time, I was struck by the incongruity of finding old fence posts, some with wire still attached, out here in the 'wilderness'. The main buildings that once stood here collapsed in the 1970s, but in the 80s an old out-building, some rooflines and many structural timbers were still evident in the slowly encroaching bush.

Then and Now: Walkers visit Gordonvale in the 1970s (left) and in 2011. Photo on left (M. Higgins, from "The South-West Book" eds. Gee and Fenton) shows the main house still standing.

The man behind the Gordonvale story was Ernie Bond. Between 1934 and the early 1950s he lived and occasionally thrived here on a 400 hectare property excised from this wild and remote country. He’d started Gordonvale as a joint venture with three other bushies, including Paddy Hartnett. The idea was to farm sheep and cattle, and grow other fresh produce to sell to the nearby Adamsfield mine. When the mine declined in the late 1930s, only Ernie stayed on, entranced by life in this beautiful setting.

An old out-building, still standing at Gordonvale in the 1980s 

Veteran bushwalker and Launceston Walking Club stalwart, Keith Lancaster, visited Gordonvale in its heyday.

It occupied portion of a fertile rise from which a forest had been cleared. The forest still existed on its western fringe and a fine stream, which rises between Mt. Wright and the Denisons at the rear of the forest, flows past the home. The house is a three roomed comfortable cottage with several attendant shacks scattered around. The garden includes a few fruit trees, raspberry canes, strawberries and vegetables. (Keith Lancaster’s “Mountaineering Diaries”, 1947) http://dveltkamp.customer.netspace.net.au/KeithLancaster/index.htm

Far from being the hermit some thought him, Bond was the well-educated son of a Tasmanian politician and business man, Frank Bond. Ernie was a big man in every way, 6 foot 4 inches in height, with a girth to match his enormous appetite. But it was his generous hospitality that consistently amazed visitors, be they snarers, miners or bushwalkers. Keith Lancaster records it this way.

The hospitality of this grey eyed, bearded giant has to be sampled to be believed! What he has done for the walking fraternity of this State is never likely to be surpassed by any other living person. He adopts the "give and go without yourself” policy and his door is always open to any visiting hiker.

It seems that no walker got past his door without being offered at least a cuppa, if not some wallaby stew and fresh bread. In season there might also be fresh strawberries and cream - the kind of food bushwalkers could only dream of - and there was always a large warming fire and enough stories to last well into the night.

The reign of "the Prince" lasted for close to two decades. But eventually failing health and his sense that forestry incursions into the nearby Florentine were changing the area forever, convinced Ernie Bond to leave his beloved Gordonvale in 1953. Before his death in Hobart, in 1962, he arranged to hand Gordonvale over to the Hobart and Launceston Walking Clubs for the ongoing use of bushwalkers. But the isolation and difficult access that were the appeal of the place also made its upkeep too difficult.

It continued to fall into disrepair, and today Gordonvale has all but disappeared. Walkers will probably notice a few rusting farm implements and old concrete foundations. The observant may even find the rhododendron and walnut trees that survive from Ernie's once vast garden.

A rusting plough and the encroaching forest at Gordonvale, March 2011 

But inexorably the forest and its creatures are reclaiming the land after its brief time in human hands. Perhaps that's part of what the currawongs tell each other every night from Gordonvale’s treetops. 

Returning to Rhona (1)

Part 1: The Vale of Happiness

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus propounded the doctrine that change was central to the universe. He encapsulated it neatly in his saying: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”

Returning for the fifth time to Lake Rhona in Tasmania’s south-west wilderness, reinforced the old Greek’s idea. Much has changed in the quarter century or so since I first visited this jewel of a place. But one of those changes actually meant we didn’t have to step in the river at all.

The walk to Lake Rhona used to involve crossing the Florentine and Gordon Rivers via the Timbs Track, before a two day slog up the invariably boggy Vale of Rasselas. The spectacular crag-enclosed, sand-fringed lake could only then be attained via a final steep trudge up a long morrainal ridge.

Lake Rhona: a jewel-like lake nestled beneath the Denison Range in south-west Tasmania

By the early 1980s the safe crossings, first a bridge, then a flying fox, had been swept away by floods. An alternative route via forestry roads through the Florentine Valley lead to a crossing of the Gordon that was somewhat less risky than the downstream crossing. Nonetheless in the 1980s I once crossed it in flood, with the waters chest deep. I’ll now plead youthful folly, as it’s not something I would care to repeat.

By contrast last week’s crossing of the Gordon was a simple dry-boot affair. A wind storm has brought down a massive eucalypt, which now spans the river very close to where we once waded it. Fifth time lucky, if only for the first hour of the walk. Because once you join the old track up the Vale of Rasselas, you are transported back in time to the boggy slog of yesteryear.

Negotiating yet another boggy section on the Rasselas Track

The odd name for this wild plain derives from Samuel Johnson’s 18^th century book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. It is a tale of a man’s search for the root of happiness. With liberal use of rose-coloured glasses, some colonial has dubbed this waterlogged plain a vale of happiness.

In the 1820s this was the sort of dragon’s lair that kept the early settlers in the east of Van Dieman’s Land safely separated from the convict settlement of Sarah Island in the west. The mountainous wilderness and treacherous bogs were supposed to create that reassuring buffer.

But in 1828 one pair of convicts, James Goodwin and Thomas Connolly, escaped from a pining party on the lower Gordon River. Goodwin's own account of their travels suggests that they crossed the Prince of Wales Range and entered the Vale of Rasselas near the Denison Range. They then went on via Wylds Craig to the settled areas of the east.

If this is true, it is a feat of “bushwalking” that would thrill the most hardened of today’s peak baggers. We walked through a fraction of that same territory at the same time of year as the two convicts. We had tents, sleeping mats, sleeping bags, food, torches and all the modern equipment that walkers consider essential. They had only the clothes they stood up in.

Goodwin was eventually pardoned, and went on to use his bush skills in assisting government surveyor John Darke to explore the very same area.

The “happy valley” may have been just that for the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. A valley mixing buttongrass plains with patches of forest, unfailing water supplies and nearby mountains, would have provided plenty of food and shelter, if you knew what you were doing. Goodwin claimed he and Connolly saw many natives in the area during their escape. And John Darke recorded bark huts in the Vale of Rasselas in his 1833 survey.

Later that century, railway became the favoured means for opening up country for exploration, mining and other uses. Extraordinarily, in 1898 the Great Western Railway Company proposed a route through the Vale of Rasselas and on to the west coast, using electric trains. A great deal of money was spent, but the proposal never went ahead, even if it did help establish the (now defunct) osmiridium mine at nearby Adamsfield.

As we sweated our way up the Rasselas Track on a warm autumn day, I found it hard to conceive of electric trains clacking by. But then the Tasmanian wilderness has always attracted more than its share of strange ideas and colourful characters.