The aim of this trip is to introduce two new awildland team members to the world of wild places. Blue and Yella are secondhand packrafts purchased months earlier. They have been waiting patiently in the garage as winter cold fronts have swept, one after the other, over the Tasmanian mountains. They’ve heard rumours of snow camping and frozen boots. They’ve seen the awildland team returning wet to the bones. They’ve glimpsed photos of white-capped mountains and ice-covered tarns. Now it’s spring. This is to be their maiden voyage. We choose something simple for this first adventure, and, it turns out something totally sublime.
We have the idea of launching the packrafts onto Lake Belcher and/or Lake Belton in Mt Field National Park. These large lakes are tucked in a deep valley beneath the Rodway Range and Florentine Peak in Mt Field National Park. Despite the park’s popularity, this walk gets relatively few visitors (by Tasmanian standards). The track is notoriously wet in parts. There’s an old hut at Lake Belcher but we have also heard rumours of nice campsites at Lake Belton.
For me, this trip is also about the seasons. As well as a boat, I choose to lug a book along. A slim volume by Australian poet Shaw Neilson with a generous forward by Judith Wright whose craft I respect. And yet, I have not shared her enthusiasm for Neilson’s poetry. So I pack the book to give it a second go - after all, he writes a lot about Spring and it is just turned spring. Except it is 1 degree celsius as we start walking at 10am. There is low cloud swirling across Wombat Moor where we park the car. The mountains are still unsettled, they seem restless. Like they’re too stubborn to accept its time to change, or their saying we don’t buy into your European seasons for a minute. A fine layer of icy snow lies on the ground from a cold front that passed across the island overnight. The breeze is bitterly cold and as we slosh along the wet track, clouds come in then a fine, dry, sago snow begins to fall.
I love that we now all know how differently indigenous Australians dealt with ‘seasons’ compared to us European invaders. By different, I mean sensible. They lived intimately with the land and used different flora and fauna to mark changes in seasonal weather. Still, in Tasmania, spring was/is spring. While knowledge of Aboriginal seasons in this state is limited, due to the extraordinarily destructive and confrontational history with colonists, some knowledge survives.
“Tasmanian usage derives from, and relates to, a northeast Tasmanian indigenous population. Their seasons were as follows, with the European-based equivalent months in parentheses: Wegtellanyta (December–April); Tunna (May–August); Pawenyapeena (September–November). Note that there are only three seasons rather than the four seasons in the European-based usage, and that the definition of Pawenyapeena corresponds exactly to the European-based season spring as used in Australia. The definition of Tunna cuts across the boundary of two of the European-based seasons, with its four-month period including the late autumn month of May plus the three months of winter. The remaining season, Wegtellanyta, is the longest, encompassing the three months of summer plus the first two months of autumn in the European-based calendar.
So, I tell myself it is still spring, the forecast will come good, as cloud thickens and the light snowy sleet peppers my raincoat. Sure enough, about half an hour later, when we reach the pass below Mt Mawson, the icy shower has passed. The ferocity of the previous night’s cold front, however, still surrounds us. The trees have been left completely transformed. The trunk and branch of the low, stunted snow gums, is plastered with thick ice. Their south-facing skin has taken the brunt of it and every leaf tip hangs with a long, droplet of water that has frozen solid in the moments before it could stretch to falling. As the sun finally emerges from behind the passing clouds it makes the trees appear like chandeliers. Spring has turned the lights on.
Another difference in seasons in Australia. The rainy seasons are in reverse from one end of the country to the other. Consequently, the track to Lake Belton and Lake Belcher exceeds it reputation as notoriously wet. The one good dry section, from the pass below Mt Mawson to the Humboldt River, is running like a small creek. We pick our way over small drifts of snow and can hear the roar of the river far below; fully swollen with a winter’s worth of rain. Despite the roar, the old crossing log on the Humboldt River is well above the water and soon we are floundering over and around enormous mounds of button grass and deep muddy wallows on the track to Lake Belcher. The less trafficked route to Lake Belton seems more appealing as it follows higher, drier ground. So we veer off at the obscure little signpost and the star picket with the tin can.
And what a choice. After 30-40 minutes of climbing and weaving along a vaguely marked route, we emerge onto a pretty plateau of tarns with mountains towering all around. We stop for a late lunch and pitch camp where we sit. The weather is coming good. So good, we launch the packrafts. Lake Belton is a dark mirror and the sky now is cloudless blue. A wedgetail eagle soars overhead, currawongs begin calling as evening slowly edges in. The tarns and lake sing frog sonatas.
The next day we wake early and paddle the length of Lake Belton under glorious clear skies. The snow dusted peaks of the Rodway Range tower above us. The water below us is ridiculously clear. After lunch, we switch things up by climbing Tyenna Peak, a boulder strewn pinnacle that is tough but rewarding. The views are vast; stretching west to The Thumbs mountains, Lake Gordon, then swinging south to take in Mt Mueller and The Needles, Tim Shea, Mt Anne and the Western Arthurs in the distance, the Florentine Valley below, Snowy North and Snowy South and Nevada Peak and right over the back to Mt Wellington and then, if I kept spinning 360 degrees, looking back into Mt Field National Park with the Rodway Range, Mt Mawson and Florentine Peak and our lake below.
It was a stunning spring day as we clambered and scrambled back down the huge boulders to our idyllic campsite, its frog song and the distant ripples of a platypus on the lake surface. So calm was the evening I couldn’t resist taking the boat out again - not so much to do anything, but to drift. I lounged. I would dip a paddle in every now and then. I stared through the clear water, I admired the silhouette of the high mountains. I loved the air, warm but cool. Then I came ashore, plonked down amongst the sticks and leaves and rocks near our tent and read Shaw Neilson and finally I got it. His sheer, child-like delight and love and welcome of Spring. After a long, true winter - grey skies, low fog, seeping cold, weeks of pizzling rain, days of heavy rain, bitter winds, cold toes that need to be nursed each night in warm hands, a weak and rare sun...then, days like this.
O Heart of Spring !
Oh that we could, as thee, rise from the night
To find a world of blossoms lilac-white
And long-winged swallows unafraid returning...
O Heart of Spring !
Spirit of light and love and joyous day
So soon to faint beneath the fiery Summer.
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