A Choir of Waves

South West Cape Walk, Part 2

Tim takes in the wild south-west coast at New Harbour 

They say 24 hours is a long time in politics. Which just proves how little bushwalking has in common with “the art of the possible” (as von Bismarck defined politics).

For us 4 hours – the time it took to trudge, wade, grumble, leap and muddle our way from Melaleuca to New Harbour – felt an eternity. With our packs at their heaviest; our feet at their tenderest; the weather at its most recalcitrant; and the daylight waning, it felt like bushwalking had become the art of the impossible.

I’d been trying to play the optimist card all day, reminding the group how beautiful the destination would be. Would there be mud, they’d asked early on? I’d pleaded that it was about 15 years since my last visit here. But yes, I did have memories of “a bit of mud” towards the end of the day’s walk.

As we hit the worst of that “bit of mud”, the promised hail came. Jim was almost gleeful, in an Eeyore kind of way. The rest of us pulled our rainhoods tighter and trudged on.

Memory is a fickle beast. Both precious and daunting memories are subject to the attrition of time. One particular fragment of memory chose to reactivate just as we started to hear the roaring of waves on the shore; just as we’d begun to grin at the nearness of our camp. I confided to Lynne my recollection that there was a scrub band guarding the beach.

“What’s that?” she asked innocently, trying hard to keep both energy and optimism intact. I explained that my vague memory of it was that we had to push through some “jungle” before we’d get to the beach. “And then it’s still a kilometre or so along the beach to our campsite.” I’m not sure I heard Lynne’s response but, bless her, she kept going. And so did everyone else.

At about 7pm we broke through the “jungle” – which actually wasn’t that bad – and stepped out onto New Harbour beach. We were greeted by a bedraggled and grizzled looking group of walkers who had occupied the easterly campsite. “It was more sheltered from the wind here” they told us “although there’s lots more room at the next campsite.” I would have taken this as a territorial hint had I not recalled that the next campsite was far superior to this one.

Lynne arriving at New Harbour as day fades 

We left the group to their dinner, and immediately had to work out how to cross the fast-flowing freshwater lagoon. Both Jim and I still had dry socks: something of a badge on a walk like this. We walked as far seaward as possible, and found the shallowest crossing point. The wet-socked ones were less worried, and soon we were all over and lumbering up the long beach towards home.

And what a home it would prove to be. New Harbour is a vast, wide bay held in the embrace of long, south-trending rocky headlands, all set about with hills variously wooded or buttongrassed. This evening, as must often be the case, wet and fresh winds were conversing loudly with long sets of waves, while oystercatchers, gulls and plovers strutted, flew and trotted along the strand.

Amid all this wildness it was oddly comforting to find a set of wooden steps leading from the beach to our campsite. There, sheltered under a dense stand of native laurel trees, we found plenty of fine tent-sites. We used the last of the day’s energy and light to set up tents and get dinner cooking.

Camping beneath native laurels at New Harbour 

And after that? How blissful was it to be horizontal, dry and warm inside a tent, and to be sung to sleep by a loud choir of waves? Worth the pain is my answer.

Back to Cradle

[Savouring the summit of Cradle Mountain, Tasmania]

Recently I returned to the summit of Cradle Mountain. It was partly in the spirit of getting back on my horse, although the proverbial dog returning to his vomit could be another way of looking at it.

Last October I fell off the mountain. Or at least I slipped and fell off a part of the mountain, somersaulting backwards down a snowy chute for a few frightening seconds. You can read about it here http://auntyscuttle.blogspot.com/2009/10/cradled.html

But March is a very different time of the year to October. I often tell visitors that autumn is Tasmania’s most reliable season. So the plan to spend the March long weekend at Cradle Mountain with my wife Lynne and some of my mainland family looked good on paper. That was until a rogue low pressure trough began slouching across Bass Strait towards us. It looked as though card games, eating and reading might be our only forms of exercise.

But you’ve gotta love the fact that Tassie is a relatively small meteorological target. I’ve seen cold fronts mysteriously slip beneath the island, or just softly caress the south-west, and leave the populated parts basking. And ugly low pressure systems can sometimes wobble dangerously off the east coast, yet hardly land a precipitative punch.

This time the trough decided to linger over the flesh-pots of Melbourne, deluging the Victorian capital, denting it with golf ball-sized hail, and even stopping several sporting events (no mean feat in sports-mad Melbourne). In contrast the day that Lynne and I planned to climb Cradle stayed clear, warm and sunny.

Marions Lookout has to be climbed first, and there’s no way around it being sharp and steep. It’s good training for what’s to come once you amble across the plateau, past Kitchen Hut, and reach the face of Cradle itself. There’s no ambling after that – just one foot in front of the other, until it becomes one foot and one hand in front of the other.

I’m always in two or three minds when it comes to telling a first-timer what a walk or climb is like. Is it really helpful to tut, tssk and mutter things like “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” as they gasp and pant and beg for a stop? On the other hand, will your memory of the walk be at all accurate? In my experience, the answer is “rarely”. Time, rose-coloured glasses, and neuronal glitches often combine to make my memory hazy.

In this case, however, it had only been 5 months since my last ascent. And I had plenty of reasons to remember it vividly! Fortunately Lynne was feeling particularly determined, and my hints of dire boulder scrambling ahead didn’t dent her confidence. She was more interested in seeing where I had fallen – and so was I!

The absence of snow made the site of the fall both more and less dramatic. More, because the chute looked even steeper without its cushion of snow. Less, because the snow had been intimidatingly deep. We paused for the obligatory “here’s where you nearly lost me” photo, and then it was another couple of hundred metres of scrambling before we could celebrate summiting the lovely Cradle Mountain. For me it was ascent no. 5 (or is it 6); for Lynne it was a first. Her eyes bagan to water, I must report. And why not? It was a significant ascent for someone who had so often stayed behind looking after children while I was off on mountain tops.

We topped off a superb morning by having lunch, and then finding a quiet spot to simply lie down and soak up the wonder of it all. It was a much gentler surrender to gravity than last October. It was good to be back.

Back Again For the First Time

[Sun & moonrise over Mt Pelion East, Tasmania]

[Reflecting on a recent bushwalk in Tasmania's Pelion Range]

About 20 years ago I spent a week in the Pelions, a range of mountains that variously glowers, sparkles or hides itself above the centre of Tasmania’s Overland Track. In Mt Ossa (1617m) the range contains Tassie’s highest mountain, while Pelion West ranks 3rd, Thetis 13th and Pelion East 17th. It really feels like the roof of this rugged and rumpled island state.

This February I returned for another dose. For some of our party this raised some interesting philosophical questions. Is going back always a lesser experience than breaking new ground? Isn’t it “better” to see new places and find new paths?

We always seem to discuss this when trying to decide on walking destinations. On this one I tend to side with Heraclitus, who was supposed to have said

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

On my first trip here, I was in my 30s. My memory of the week was that we climbed everything in sight, and that it was more exhilarating than exhausting. But don’t trust my memory as far as you can throw it! Less than a week after returning from the latest walk to the same area, exhilaration is again winning the arm wrestle with pain.

The photos don’t help. They neatly remove the aches, heat, sweat, leeches, march flies and mosquitoes from the scene. But then they also remove the bird calls; the humorous banter; the taste of the food; the magic of clean drinking water; the rasp of the rock; the whisper of the wind; and the sheer quiet calm of the evenings.

Alright – yes! It was a brilliant return to the Thetis Saddle. And as the pain falls away the joy remains firmly seated.

It makes me somewhat glad of the limitations of memory, even of the limitations of the human condition full stop. Had I recalled the agonies of the earlier walk, would I have returned equipped with my older, dodgier joints? Or more broadly would I really want to know the future? Even the trivial near-future, like how knackered I will feel after climbing steeply through scrub for a few hours?

No, sometimes being tethered to time and subject to imperfect knowledge gets you further. Does that make me like the neuronally-challenged goldfish of urban legend? (As it swims around its circular bowl, every time it passes the same rock it exclaims: “ooh, what a nice rock”.) Perhaps … but overall I think I prefer going back again for the first time. Even if it is the same mountain range, after the last walk I am certainly not the same man!