The Not-So-Plain Plains: Part 3

There’s a problem trying to have a grandpa nap when your bushwalking companions are so darned interesting! As I lie in my tent after our long day of off-track walking, I’m hoping to have at least a micro nap before getting up to enjoy an afternoon and evening in our beautiful forest. But Tim, Merran and Libby are having a fascinating discussion, just within earshot. My curious mind usurps my tired one, and I lie there enjoying the chatter. I’m occasionally tempted to call out with my 2 bobs worth, but I refrain. Instead, after a small rest, I emerge from my cocoon and join the others.

[Resting, but not asleep]

Tim is setting up the tarp over our kitchen area, and I lend my lack-of-expertise to the exercise. Part of the reason for camping inside the forest is that showers and strong winds are forecast some time later. So we welcome the idea of a dry area for cooking and relaxing. Tim continues to tweak the tarp for some minutes, flicking some paracord over a branch, tightening a couple of knots, tautening a corner. Finally he exhales in satisfaction and sits on his camp chair under the tarp. We all do the same, feeling we’ve earned some downtime.

 

[Merran, Tim and Libby being interesting!]

We converse sparsely but comfortably as we feel the peace of the forest settling on us. If “Tim’s” forest had a grandma myrtle, this forest has both the matriarch and the patriarch of all pencil pines. We are truly in awe of these giant pines; older, taller and less scathed than any we’ve ever seen in our long years of walking in the Tasmanian highlands. They stand just metres from our tents, surrounded by their kith and kin, as well as a myriad other green and growing things. Wendel Berry, reflecting on the forests of his Kentucky farm, wrote “in the stillness of the trees I am at home.” We can only say amen to that.

[Green - and brown - peace inside our forest]

The weather holds overnight, although cloud cover is thickening as we breakfast. We stick with our plan to explore more of the area. This time we start by walking the width of our special forest. Thick layers of brilliant green moss and variegated brown leaf litter muffle the crunch of our bootsteps as we pick our way north. We emerge from the forest into what feels like bright daylight, and climb a small hill which looks down to a wide tarn. One shore of the lake is fringed by sphagnum and pencil pines; the other is rockier, and favoured by sparse eucalypt growth. 

[Pines on one side, eucalypts on the other]

As we circumnavigate the tarn, light rain begins to fall. We pause to put on rain gear – the first time on the whole trip – then continue exploring the lakeshore. We stop in a wide grassy section on one side of the lake, and can see plenty of animal traces such as pads and droppings. We conjecture that this would have been an ideal hunting ground for the palawa Aboriginal people, with hiding places such as rocks and trees adjacent to the grazing ground.

[Contorted pencil pine beside a tarn]

We now walk west for some time, and the rain showers come and go. There are no tracks, but we gladly follow wombat pads, as they can provide a route of sorts, given that wombats generally avoid the thickest scrub. There is a caveat however: these squat creatures are rather better than humans at walking under bushes. 

 

And now we draw close to areas that we walked through yesterday, but decide we’ll vary our route by making for a particular valley that the other three visited a few years ago. Bizarrely on that trip they came across a completely intact board game of Trivial Pursuit in the wilderness. We wonder if we can find this needle in a haystack again. Both Tim and Libby are sure they recognise certain landmarks.

 

[A fruitless pursuit down valley towards the plateau's edge]

They wander all over the place in what looks a rather brown’s-cows fashion. But despite their efforts, they can find neither the exact location nor the game. Perhaps the “0.5%” has come back to finish the game, and then taken it home again. Disappointed by this fruitless pursuit, and by the continuing showers, we walk quickly down to the southern lip of the Februaries. There we pause for lunch, in the shelter of some dolerite slabs. 

[Overland Track peaks from the edge of February Plains]

[Red seed heads of mountain rocket]

Between showers we catch views south over The Pelions and the Cathedral Plateau. But a cold, whipping wind and increasingly sharp showers make lunch a hurried affair. We’re soon off in the direction of the Tarn of Islands, knowing that not far beyond that we’ll find the stillness and peace of our home forest.

 

[Time to head for our forest home!]

Back “home” the wisdom of both a forest camp and a good tarp become clear. We fit neatly beneath the tarp, and sit sipping a warm drink to the sound of wind shooshing through the trees. Some of the younger trees sway and creak excitably as the strong south-west wind sets in. At ground level we only feel occasional wafts of wind. Even the patter of rain on the tarp is softened by the overhead umbrella of trees. 

 

It’s April, and with our part of the planet tilting away from the sun, afternoon soon morphs into evening. Likewise afternoon nibbles meld into dinner. There’s a moment of meal envy for Libby, who hasn’t had much time to prepare dinners before the walk. But she’s made up for it by providing generously in the cheese department, King Island blue, no less! At the end of the day, no-one will go to bed hungry.

The Not-So-Plain Plains: Part 2

It’s blissful being horizontal at last, snug in my sleeping bag. The quiet of the forest is a balm, and as sleep hovers at my door, I turn over in my bag. Suddenly my body is gripped by a series of excruciating cramps. Everywhere from groin to toe spasms, and I can barely keep from screaming. As I writhe about, swallowing my squeals, I think desperately of crawling the 50 metres to Tim and Merran’s tent to seek medical advice! 

Today’s steep, scrubby, off-track walking has caught up with me. Despite taking magnesium – a good prophylactic against cramps – my 70+ year old body is letting me know there’s still a price to pay. I sit up, pull the toes of one leg towards me, and get some relief. When I do the same with the other leg, the cramping worsens. I try relaxing, stretching, sipping water, sitting up, lying down again, breathing slowly: any and everything. But for the next several minutes nothing gives me much relief. Eventually the cramp storm passes, and I lie breathless and uneasy on my left side, not daring to turn over. I just wait, hope and pray for sleep to come.

 

And eventually I do sleep, if a bit fitfully. In the morning I manage to crawl out of the tent and walk to breakfast with relative dignity. As we sip our cuppas and exchange tales of our night, I learn that sleep has eluded others too. Tiredness is no guarantee of sleep. I share my cramping episode, hoping to persuade Tim to keep our ambitions for today’s walk “realistic”. He seems solicitous … but I’ve seen that look before. He has plans, and the best I can hope for is that I won’t be left too far behind.

[Mt Pelion East peaks out behind Tarn of Islands]

Day packs filled, our first order of business is to visit the nearby Tarn of Islands. Merran has struggled to remember its name, and we amplify the confusion by playing with its name. First it's “Lagoon of Rocks”, then “Lake of Hills”, and finally the supremely silly “Pond of Thousand Island Dressing”. The tarn rebukes our folly by being both comely and large. It not only allows glimpses of some of the mountains of the Overland Track, it also (naturally) contains several miniature islands, some topped with small pencil pines. Even its small details are fetching. 

[Small details on the shore of the tarn]

If Tim’s agenda for the day is full, it is also flexible. He first dangles before us the opportunity to visit what he calls “my forest”. He describes a small forest that he’s camped in which has all three species of Athrotaxis pines adjacent to one another. We’re intrigued enough to consent, and we’re soon walking off in its direction. But on the way there’s an unplanned surprise. I catch sight of what I suppose to be a golden, sphagnum-covered rock, maybe 100m away. But as I look more closely, the rock moves! We all stop to watch. Is it a wallaby hunched over grazing? We’ve seen golden wallabies in the highlands before. When it moves to where we have a clearer view, we can see it’s a large golden wombat.

[The large golden wombat]

The day is fine and clear, though there’s a good breeze blowing across the low scrub. Fortunately it’s coming from the wombat towards us, so the animal hasn’t heard or smelled us. For some minutes s/he wombles slowly in our direction, grazing and picking at bits of grass among the coral fern. We watch entranced, photographing, videoing and exchanging quiet expressions of awe. None of us has seen a wombat as blonde as this. Were it a lion, we would undoubtedly describe it as golden. It moves within a few metres of us before I inadvertently knock my camera against its case. The small sound startles the wombat, and it gallops away from us. It’s hard to believe that a 30kg barrel-shaped, low-slung quadruped would be capable of such speed, but they have been clocked at over 40km/h; only a little slower than Usain Bolt! Our quiet bubble burst, we laugh and babble about this amazing sighting.

[Inside Tim's forest]

And now Tim must feel that “his” forest can only be a let-down. It isn’t. Although it’s younger and much smaller that our “home” forest, it is instantly appealing. For a start it has that rare combination of all three pine species – pencil pine, King Billy pine, and laxifolia (a hybrid of the other two) – immediately adjacent to each other. It also has some impressive “Grandma” myrtles, very old Nothofagus cunninghamii that reach high into the forest canopy. They also beautifully exhibit what is known as canopy shyness. Such trees, often of the same species, leave a continuous gap or channel between each other’s outermost leaves. It reminds me of that almost electric shyness I felt when I first wanted to hold a girl’s hand. 

[Canopy shyness in myrtle trees - photo by Libby]

The reasons for this botanical shyness are probably multiple, including to reduce mechanical pruning of each other when wind moves the branches, and to limit the spread of leaf eating invertebrates. But trees are as mysterious as they are remarkable, and the more we study them, the more questions we have.

 

It’s now lunchtime, and we find another reason Tim is so fond of this forest. At its grassy edge we sit in the sun, sheltered from the keen breeze, and look out over the plains. The humps and bumps of the foregeround are covered in scoparia, sphagnum and dozens of other hardy, low-growing plant species. We know the weather is not always as benign as it is today. In the distance, in the lee of small hills, we see pockets of gum trees and pencil pines. Tim spreads his arms towards the wide horizon, and assures us he’s never seen another soul out here. We tease back: “Not even one of the 0.5%?”

 

After lunch we continue our slow wander back, though Tim being our leader, there’s a diversion first. He takes us further west to where he had earlier found what he thought was the original boundary marker of the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park. We find a large rock cairn on a knoll overlooking the Forth River valley, some 600m below us. We pause and salute those who surveyed and ultimately protected this wild country.

[Tim and the boundary marker]

[Lake Rosa]

And then we actually start walking homeward, first via Lake Rosa, a shallow lake dotted with water lillies, then down a long, wide valley through knee-high scrub to the unnamed lake we’d paused at on our outward journey. Ultimately we complete a nearly 12km long figure 8, and return to our forest camp early in the afternoon. It has been a marvellous day of off-track walking, but I’m not ashamed to say that the lure of an afternoon nap soon takes me tentward.

The Not-So-Plain Plains: Part 1

How do I describe this place? I could try starting with the sound, or the seeming lack of it. Not that the forest is silent. Even in the dead of night there’s a faint thrum. Is it my own blood pulsing, or is it water softly whispering down the slope? The hoarse squeal of a squabbling possum briefly pierces the profound quiet. And when a strong wind arrives, the trees tut and shoosh at the interruption.

[One of the enormous pencil pines in the forest]

Might it be easier to talk about the light? Again I struggle. Even in the daytime the light is so low that an old light meter would scarcely register it. Yet it’s a darkness with shades and flecks, some murky, some hinting at an emerald shimmer. Just occasionally a beam of sunlight struggles through the foliage, only to retreat like a messenger at the wrong address. 

 

Then there’s what I can feel with hands, feet and face. My tent is pitched so close to a moss and lichen-draped tree trunk, that when I clamber out I can’t help but brush its damp softness. I can almost taste forest, unless it’s just its deep, damp-duff, pine-inflected scent.  

 

[Our forest campsite]

All of this might give the impression that I’m experiencing sensory overload. But no, it’s just how it is in a pencil pine forest, the type of forest we might all know and love, were we not so otherwise attuned. The type of forest that is becoming rarer as the decades pass, as heat, drought, neglect and fire take their toll. A fear of that might add to my deeply felt response to the forest. But whatever the rational explanation, this forest is simply one of the most soul-filling places I’ll ever visit.

[Starting on the Arm River Track]

But I should take us back to the start of the day, because places like this are inevitably hard won. And just getting here usually has its own story. I’d previously much enjoyed my two or three trips to the northern part of the February Plains, each time with Tim D. But for all its charms, the area shows many signs of human use and abuse, including intense fires, over-grazing and deforestation. In leading this walk, Tim must have decided it’s time we saw some less impacted parts of the Februaries.

 

We start on the Arm River Track, a formerly quiet track that has slowly become a much frequented short-cut to the centre of the Overland Track at the Pelion Plains. Most recently it’s also become the third day of some commercial trips on the Overland Track, following the loss to wildfire of a (private) hut and some trackwork in February 2025.

[Overland Track mountains, incl Pelion East and Ossa, from the Februaries]

There’s no disguising the uphill trend. We’re soon sweating our way up the long section of switch-backs that take up steeply up towards Lake Price, and our first mountain. Mt Pillinger is something of an outlier; not quite an Overland Track mountain, nor part of the nearby Cathedral Plateau. We cross the bridge over the Wurragarra Creek and pause for lunch in a grassy clearing off to the side of the track. 

[Mt Pillinger peeps out beside the Arm River Track]

[A pause near Lake Price]

Tim has been reassuring Libby that once we’ve left this busy-ish track, we will be heading off-track to the February Plains where, he says, “0.5% of walkers will ever go”. Libby, who’s very fond of remote and un-peopled wilderness, smiles and gives Tim a thumbs up. But as we’re eating lunch, a walker wanders up the Arm River Track. We give a friendly wave, and he comes off the track towards us, presumably just to say a quick hello. 

[Lunch near the Arm River Track]

We soon ask him where he’s headed, and are suitably shocked – and some of us amused – when he says “The February Plains”. We quickly explain why we’ve broken into sudden laughter. We share a bit of information on possible routes, and Ned (not his real name) walks off up-valley towards some formidable looking scrub. Before we’ve packed up from lunch he’s back, having found no way through the tangled bush. He asks if he can join us as we try to find our way up to the plateau. Shortly afterwards Ned must be wondering whether it’s the blind leading the blind, as our own “route” is very rough, steep and scrubby. We push uphill through scarcely yielding scrub for about 90 minutes before the slope finally eases, and the scrub becomes relatively thin. 

[... and the scrub finally yields]

We’ve been on our feet for more than 5 hours, nearly all of it uphill, some of it in gnarly scrub. Keen to find a campsite doesn’t fully express it! As we dump our packs to do a search, Ned says he'll keep walking. He’s wanting to camp as close to Mount Oakleigh as he can. Tim looks over the map with him before we wave “Mr. 0.5%” farewell, and start our own search in the vicinity of a nearby lake, one of the few in this area with a name. 

[Tim and Ned check the map]

After close to an hour, we eventually choose a large, thick pencil pine forest. There is a sunnier, more exposed lake-side camp nearby, but as we’re expecting strong winds in a day or two, we’ve chosen to have a protected campsite for all three nights. And protected it is, as well as hinting at being the above-mentioned soul-filling place. We’ll find that out later, but for now our order of business is simple: stop, set up camp, eat, sleep.

[Sunset and moonrise near our camp]