Sunday 3 Sep 23
South Coast Track, Tasmania
Just inside the backdoor of Mr and Mrs Paton’s small unpainted weatherboard cottage was a blackboard. On it was recorded all the to’ing and fro’ing of the farm. Lambing tallies. Bales of hay. Eggs. Messages for each other. Dog dosing dates. Movements up and down the valley. Prices for bulls. Weather. And once CB radio arrived in the late 1960s, frequencies of those who used the technology. On cold Sunday evenings it was common for that tight little kitchen to be jam packed with neighbours and family. Neighbour Graeme ‘Butch’ Thurlow had a penchant for drawing light aircraft on the blackboard and from a very young age I would mimic his aircraft (mainly profiles) on the blackboard. The only rule for sketching one was that nothing else could be erased to accommodate the Cessna.
A million years later the memory of the profiles takes me back to something like this.
I’m transported back as I sit next to VH-EOX (Cessna) at Cambridge airstrip. A picket fence separates us from the flight line but that is all. We sit in the sun and do some last minute reading, get a weather update and check latest tide information. (The latter will become ironic in a week’s time).
It is a bluebird day, not a cloud in the sky. Five knot zephyrs remind us this is still the shoulder of winter. We have come to Cambridge to catch a flight out of here to Melaleuca, Australia’s most southern airstrip. There are two other trekkers booked in. We hope they are heading north or a day ahead of us – it’s always a bit special having the track to yourself. We took a call from Par Avion to say they could get us away early but despite us getting out here early the other two didn’t get the memo and turned up on time. We console ourselves with a reminder that we are not in a rush. We are very keen to get out there though. Let’s get cracking!
And crack we did. A laconic chirrup on sunset from a bird unknown outside the Nissan Hut is about all the sound here on sunset. Even the steady breeze is subdued by the grove of paperbark and tea tree (Melaleuca) in which the huts are clustered.Our fellow travellers have gone for a wall.
We flew out of Hobart in the ugly Britten Norman Islander at 1419 and were on the ground at 1500. Not a cloud in the sky, just shades of blue interspersed by hues of every tint stepping away to the horizon. Over the Western Arthurs, slide over a saddle, downwind leg across the lake, a turn and land. Silence. A bit more silence. Then surprise that after all the preparation we are finally here.
Before he flies off, the pilot points us at fresh water, hands over gas canisters previously paid for and supplied by the airline from a secure container alongside the airstrip. And then pointed at the huts where we drop our gear then go for an explore while it is still light. (Sun dropped behind the range at 1730. It’s 1800 now and we still have evening light by which to write but not for much longer. Six other day visitors have come out on a morning flight and spent the day here exploring the tracks and the small museum. Astonishingly this place was home to multiple little communities over the years but the specific focus was a tin mine. It’s a bit hard to imagine this place being dug over for tin. At one stage Australia’s only tin smelter was here – and we are talking about the 1960s and 1970s. Tin and copper = bronze. Think all things nautical and the market makes sense. To my surprise there are signs of ongoing residence here too. Do people still live out here? It seems they do.
Where the paperbark drops away from the water we can see across pools of water, reeds and some button grass to hazy ranges in the far distance. But for most part the views are interrupted by scrub. The quartzite rock is poor in nutrients and the most fertile ground is found along the creek lines. Everything else is very open. Fires have been through here some time back and peat and heather no doubt take some time to recover.
We have explored, cooked dinner (Thai chicken curry). Written up some notes, completed the diary, picked up water for tomorrow. The hut is now noisy – our two fellow travellers have returned from their exploration. They appear to be good friends and find each other highly amusing. So there’s laughter. Lot’s of noisy laughter. We have no plans for our start time tomorrow other than to get going as soon as decently possible. It’s far too early to go to bed so cards are on the table. I will get my butt whipped by the card master I am sure.
