Walking the February Plains 3: Smurfing

If yesterday’s discoveries were unplanned, today’s will be deliberate - as long as we’re successful. From the cattle droving days of the mid 19^th century, we’re skipping forward more than a century to the final days of the marsupial skin trade. And we’re looking for what’s probably the final hut Basil Steers built. He is often considered the last of the high country snarers in Tasmania. 

 

The hut we’re hunting was built relatively recently, during our own bushwalking days, in 1985. It’s sometimes known as ‘Basil Steers No. 3’, but is universally nick-named ‘Smurf Hut’. Its construction was partly a protest against the government’s 1984 ban on snaring as a method of taking animals. Given that provenance, Basil built the hut in a hard-to-find location, towards one edge of the Februaries. (Honouring that intention, I will not reveal its exact location here.)

[Tim points the way, with Overland Track mountains ahead]

We set off quite early. The sky is predominantly blue, and the day promises to be warm. We by-pass Lake How, heading more or less south towards another lake. I naively assume it’s Lake Steers, which isn’t too far from our destination. It’s looking like a cruisy day. But not for the last time today Tim has to disabuse me of my belief. He points to some far-distant wooded hills, and tells me we’re headed towards them. We by-pass the unnamed lake, but still have to traverse some boggy ground getting across February Creek and its shallow valley.

[February Creek, with Mt Pillinger on the horizon]

Bit by bit we close in on those distant hills. Naggingly persistent feet manage this feat surprisingly well, although often at a cost. For an hour or more we’re high-stepping over knee high grasses and sedges. It’s not difficult walking, but it’s wearing. I’m encouraged when I finally see on Tim’s device that we’re closing in on the red dot marking the hut’s location. All the way I’ve been reassured by the fact that Tim has been to Smurf Hut before – hence the red dot. 

 

What I don’t realise until we enter some gnarly scrub is that Tim has never come to the hut from the northern Februaries. Rather he’s previously approached it from the Arm River/Wurragarra Creek direction. When you’re in bauera, tea tree and scoparia scrub, being told you’re “maybe 200m from the hut” isn’t as comforting as it may sound. After some sweat-inducing wading through said scrub, Tim concedes that we are too far west. We need to back-track. However we’re unable to stomach a complete retreat, so we choose a “tactical withdrawal", going diagonally uphill. 

 

We finally come out of the scrub into a pencil pine forest. This is promising, as Basil Steers and many other trappers/snarers preferred to use pines like these for building huts. Eventually we descend into the dim green of a myrtle rainforest, an even better sign, as Tim’s memory is that Smurf Hut is hidden deep in such a forest. And so it proves, as we eventually clamber down a small cliff, scramble over a series of mossy logs, and find the humble timber hut.

[Smurf Hut, with Tim outside]

Its name has always piqued my curiosity, but as we stoop to enter the hut, it explains itself. Everything about the hut is diminutive: the doorway; the size of the logs stored in the entryway; the height of the ceiling; the three wee bunks. It would be perfect for smurfs*. Indeed Tim and I agree it would be ideal for our friend Jim. Not only does he love a hut, especially one with a fire, but he is also – how shall we put this – a vertically-challenged man. The four foot long bunks would be perfect for him.

[Tim inside the diminutive hut]

We lunch outside the hut, soothed after our exertions by the cool quiet of the forest. After lunch I wander around the hut’s exterior. According to the late historian, Simon Cubit, the hut was never used as a skin shed, and certainly the walls show none of the signs of skins having been nailed there for drying or tanning.

 

We’ve learned lessons from our outward journey, and set off for our home lake via a less scrubby route. Although it’s still a long haul, all of it off-track, I’m pleasantly surprised to get back by mid-afternoon. While Tim soaks his hot feet in the lake I just sit back and enjoy being becalmed. Had we actually been sailing, it would have been a quiet afternoon. 

[Tim cools his feet]

There’s just the occasional puff of wind, and the lake is still enough to reveal one further secret. On the far side we can see the tell-tale ripples of a platypus at work. Occasionally it surfaces, bill, nose and eyes briefly visible before it dives again. I am in awe of these amazing creatures, not least because they’re one of only two egg laying mammals in the world (along with echidnas). I’m also astonished how they’ve managed to occupy this small lake that’s far distant from any other reliable body of water. I once watched a platypus toddle over land, and concluded it was unlikely to set any land speed records. Yet here they are, as they are in so many isolated lakes, tarns and creeks in Tasmania.

[A platypus walking overland]

After dinner I dig out some of my writing and read it aloud to Tim. On this walk, and earlier by phone, we’d been discussing some of my lock-down work about ‘the spirit of bushwalking’. It’s good to read it, albeit to an audience of one. It’s even better to discuss some of the knotty issues with someone who shares my perspective on walking and spirituality. Tim offers some helpful suggestions, and we toss around ideas, agreeing that there will be on-going discussions. I feel encouraged to keep working on it. Being detached from the everyday seems yet again to clear the mind.

 

Gradually the blue day morphs into a dark jewel of an evening, and our honest day’s walk helps sleep to come swiftly. When the light of our final day leaks into our campsite, it reveals a mirror-flat lake, enticing us out for an early start. We have one more item on our agenda: to pick up the trail of cairns from day 2, and see if we can follow the old February Plains Stock Route out.

[It's perfectly calm on our departure day]

After all our years walking together, I should be aware that Tim’s journeys of discovery are rarely short-cuts. But as I’ve also been bitten by the exploration bug, the two of us happily fan out and scan for cairns. We walk far further west than we would otherwise need to, but are rewarded by the discovery of a series of cairns heading north. We follow these to Sardine Creek, near which we find some remnants of droving days. We feel sure that we have indeed been on the old February Plains Stock Route. 

[Another cairn on the February Plains Stock Route]

[Old fencing wire, possibly from the cattle droving days]

But now it’s time to leave off being explorers and head out for a substantial – meaning not dehydrated – lunchtime meal. We cut down valley to pick up the old (locked) road that comes down the west side of the Februaries, close to Basil Steers Huts 1 and 2. We’ve been off track for nearly four days, so it’s strange to be moving fast on a solid surface. By the time we get back to the car, our feet are hot. But soon we’re driving off, and Tim announces a supreme idea. When he gets phone reception, he pulls over to ring his wife Merran. Without him even prompting, she graciously offers to make home-made hamburgers back at their place. Any aches and pains are so quickly eclipsed, that Tim and I do a happy little smurf dance before driving home. 

[A Smurf-blue sky bids us farewell]

* For those who don’t know, smurfs are fictional creatures from the mind of Belgian comic writer “Peyo”. Small, blue and human-like, they live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. 

The Urban Platypus

The world is astonishing every day. We, on the other hand, are seldom ready to be astonished.

Most weekday mornings I walk down a track beside the Hobart Rivulet on my way to work. I like to think I am observant. I feel the cooler air that drains off the mountain, down our narrow valley. I notice the variations in the water flow: sometimes a racing torrent, sometimes an ambling companion. I discern the changes in the weather, the seasons, the flowerings and fallings.

Yet this is my daily exercise, and I am on the way to work. So I do not dawdle. Most times I am listening to my iPod: sometimes music, sometimes a podcast. It is good brain fodder, but a distraction nonetheless. There’s a lot I must be missing.

[Hobart Rivulet flows from a cloud-shrouded kunanyi/Mt Wellington] 

One bright Saturday morning, I am taking my time. There's no hurry to get anywhere, I'm not counting this walk as exercise. Today I am really looking because … well, is it because I care to really look? Or is it because I have taken my camera, so I can take some photographs? On this occasion the two merge, and I am twice surprised – greatly surprised – by what I see as I walk.

First up is a tiger snake, the palest I have ever seen. It has an unusual light green hue, and a burnished blush amidships. There are clear cream coloured “stripes” hooping up to a back that never darkens beyond business-suit-grey. It’s the stripes that gave these snakes their name, although many – perhaps most – are not noticeably striped.

This one is a decent size, at least a metre and half long, and it’s moving quickly. I’ve been creeping along the rivulet bank looking for photo angles and must have startled it. That surprise is mutual, yet although the snake is only a couple of metres away, and heading in my direction, my desire to photograph it is stronger than any thought of retreat. The reptile makes the “photo or flight” debate academic. It finds a hollow in the stream-side rubble so quickly that my camera doesn’t even make it to eye level.

[A bright autumn morning by the Rivulet] 

I tell Lynne, who is up at track level, and she suggests, rather strongly, that I join her there NOW. She has been startled by a snake once before in this vicinity, while cycling down the multi-use track. She tells me that “her” snake was a decidedly darker individual than the one I have described. Given the ample bush and fresh water along the rivulet, it shouldn’t surprise us that snakes would favour such a place. As with so much of our wildlife, we see far less than is actually there.

As though to prove that point, surprise number two happens just minutes up the track. A man and a woman are standing stream-side, engrossed in watching something. As we join them one quietly says “platypus”, pointing to what could well be an animated stone in the water. The remarkable creature is maintaining its position by swimming against the flow. As we watch it dabbles and ducks beneath the water, intent on finding the invertebrates that are its staple diet.

[Which is rock, which is platypus? Click on the image to expand.] 

How startling it must have been for the first Europeans to come across this monotreme. Surprising enough that a mammal should have a duck-like bill, webbed feet, a beaver-like tail, a venomous spur; how much more surprising when they discovered that it also laid eggs and yet suckled its young? It broke so many “rules” of natural history, that a sample sent to England was at first dismissed as a hoax. Scientists pored over its ill-preserved body looking for the join marks.

[A full-grown platypus, around 50cm from bill-tip to tail]

We stare, photograph and ogle for fully twenty minutes more, hardly less engrossed than any early explorer, or than the first time we saw a platypus. Here, only a couple of kilometres from the centre of Hobart, is a phenomenon of the natural world, an evolutionary rarity, insouciantly going about its business. Astonishingly it’s probably here or hereabouts every time I walk by; every time any amazing creature walks, jogs, rides, flies, hops or slithers by.

On a River of Words

Apparently there is no official collective noun for a group of writers. Among those proposed, I’m rather taken with a block of writers. Apart from its delightful play on words, it proves perfectly suited to that sub-set of writers I find myself amongst. A bush-block of nature writers sounds pretty well perfect to me.

 Some of the writers viewing Russell Falls in Mt Field National Park

That said, I’m not sure the word will die of over-use. Writers are more lone wolves than herd animals. Most of our work is done alone and in our heads, which at times can be filled with our howls. That’s all the more reason to get out and enjoy the occasional gathering of writers, such as last weekend’s workshop in Tasmania’s Mount Field National Park.

Under the guidance of visiting US writer and ecologist, Dr Robert Michael (Bob) Pyle, twenty-something Tasmanian nature writers really did go bush to work on the craft of nature writing. Dr Pyle, who is based in Washington State, is both a world-renowned butterfly expert, and a prolific, award-winning nature writer.

Bob Pyle scans the Russell Falls Creek for a platypus 

Water, in all its forms, seemed a thematic thread for the day. Outside we heard it, felt it, smelled it, tasted it, saw its effects in the forest all around. Inside we reflected – itself a water-inspired metaphor – on what we were experiencing.

Using “river of words” exchanges, Bob Pyle got us writing and sharing, initially through brief exercises, later through more complex challenges.

He reminded us that while a reporter reflects, a poet refracts. As a trained ecologist Pyle is used to accurate and factual reportage. Many of his works are scientific guides. And he quotes fellow lepidopterist – and famous novelist – Vladimir Nabokov, on our obligation to “attend to the individuating details”.

But that attention to particularity, for the nature writer, leads on to a strong identification with place: what Pyle calls a “rooted companionship with homeground” (borrowing from Oregon poet Kim Stafford). In turn that leads to a sense of obligation to connect with the audience about that experience of place, something which can only be refracted through the individual personality of the writer.

I would risk summing it up like this:  Give me the facts by all means, but also let me hear just a little of that howl in your head.

It’s not something everyone can pull off, but you know it’s worked when you read it, or hear it read. I wish I’d written down Bob Pyle’s words inspired by his first sighting of a platypus. It happened during the workshop, while we were walking beside Russell Falls Creek. From memory he rejoiced in the platypus’s oneness with the flow, as it disappeared downstream after his “nano-sighting”.

Perhaps this longer quote from “Wintergreen”, a book of his essays (published by Sasquatch Books), will reveal more of his style. As something of an arachnophobe, he writes this about spiders.

Spiders, as one learns, enhance one’s life even if one is not an arachnologist. Of course they consume flies and other bothersome insects in large numbers; but consider their beauties too – such as the crosslike pattern on the backs of the big female orb weavers so common hereabouts. Need so much as a word be written about the beauty of webs in the morning, in a misty place so generously hung about with them? Their short-lived lambency so perfectly reflects the nature of light and substance in a land where the distance from dead gray to brilliant silver is an angstrom or less, where form and formlessness mingle intermittently in the mist.

I grow more and more appreciative of spiders’ ability to disperse when I watch the rain of gossamer in summer; exodus of spiderlings ballooning wherever the breeze should take them.

[My thanks to the Tasmanian Writers Centre for organising the workshop, and to the Parks and Wildlife Service for hosting it. And special thanks to Bob Pyle for his inspiration and guidance.]

Life in the Fridge*

A harbor seal on ice, South Sawyer Glacier, Alaska  

They say firewood warms you three times: collecting it, splitting it and burning it. During the latest blast of wintery weather, while my thrice-warmed body relaxed by the fire, my curious mind was free to wander in comfort. It got to thinking about how other mammals deal with the cold.

A few years back we had the privilege of spending time in Alaska. Before you get mental images of snow and ice and polar bears, I should quickly add that we were there in summer, and in the relatively mild south-east. Except for the highest parts, the area is dominated by coniferous forest and intricate and rich waterways.

But it can still get cold, and the incredibly diverse wildlife of both sea and land has had to adapt to that. We were fortunate enough to see some of the amazing variety of mammals that live in and around Alaska’s Inside Passage.

Largest of all were the whales, mainly humpback, but also grays. The area is a hot-spot for humpbacks, providing both large amounts of food (krill) and vast sheltered waterways. Their protection against the cold water is two-pronged: fuel and insulation. Digesting food gives the body energy, and thus warmth. But the right kind and quantity of food also builds up a fatty layer (blubber) just beneath the skin. It can be up to 15cm thick, and keeps the whale’s body warm even in freezing cold water.

A mother humpback whale and calf in the Inside Passage, Alaska 

Steller sea lions and harbor seals use a similar tactic, building up layers of blubber that can account for up to 30% of their weight during winter. Both have extremely fat-rich milk, enabling their pups to quickly put on weight, including the all-important insulating layer of blubber. Although both of these pinnipeds have some hair, the hair has absolutely no insulating value.

Steller sea lions hauled out on a rock in Sitka Sound, Alaska 

That contrasts starkly with the defence against cold used by sea otters. We came across a raft of these charming aquatic mammals in Sitka Sound. They were swimming and resting in the kelp-covered shallows, occasionally surfacing with shell-fish, which they ate using their tummies as a table. We approached slowly, engine off, so as not to scare the skittish mammals. They’ve been hunted close to extinction, so their wariness is justified.

Sea otters dining in the shallows, Sitka Sound, Alaska 

Apart from fuelling themselves via a rich shell-fish diet, sea otters have the densest fur of any mammal. Hair density can reach an amazing 165,000 hairs per square cm, equating to hundreds of millions of hair fibres per otter. Only God is supposed to know how many hairs humans have on their head (see Luke 12:7), but scientists estimate a mere 150 000 in total. And that's if we've kept them all! 

Only one other mammal comes close to this hirsute sea otter, and that’s Australia’s unique monotreme, the platypus. Body fat becomes far less important to these creatures, as their dense fur traps air and excludes water, both of which keep the body warmer. 

On land we came across a mammal which uses yet another tactic to cope with life in the fridge. Bears, both Alaskan brown (or grizzly), and the black variety, live in south-east Alaska. We got uncomfortably close to the obligatory three bears, although in our case it was a momma bear and two baby bears (papa bear, thankfully, didn't show). Although the state of their fur and the amount of fat they carry are still important, bears also beat off the cold by hibernating through the winter months.

Interestingly, Australia's other monotreme, the echidna, also hibernates. In fact echidnas lower their temperature far further, and hibernate more deeply, than do bears.

Meanwhile there's snow on Kunanyi/Mt Wellington, and I’m carefully considering my cold-beating options. I'm not keen to add blubber, and my hair density only looks like heading south. While hibernation also has its attractions, I think I’ll settle for food (in moderation) and fire to protect me from the cold. That and the feathers that fill my doona and down jacket. I bless the geese that kindly loaned me those!


* When Alaska was purchased from the Russians in 1867 for $7.2million (about 2c an acre), it was derided by the press and many politicians as a waste of money for a useless “ice-box”.