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Federation Peak, Southwest Tasmania

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(Continued from page 2)

 

Westward view from summit to the coast

We must have stayed on the summit for two hours and probably would have stayed there longer had we not seen the sky in the north turning black. We knew the sign all too well and wasted no time getting down. We met the M.U.M.C. party coming up Bechervaise Gully just as the first squall hit us and it has rained pretty continuously ever since.

 

Bechervaise Plateau seen from near the summit

At these times there's always a little doubt as to whether the chosen camp site is a good one, and we keep looking under the ground sheet at the platform of scrub we have built, to see how much water is below us. Our site is good but Barry and John have a river running through the centre of their tent.

We've been singing most of the night, each 'pair shut off in their tent feeling very close knit, with all this elemental world outside. This place is so forsaken by all living things, that on these two small plateaus of open ground below the Peak, surrounded as they are by baureu, scorparia and other dense scrub, we have seen no mammals, nor even any of their droppings.

 

Saturday 31st December

We got up at 5 o'clock in order to go back down Moss Ridge, but as the weather looked as though it might be good, we started at 7 o'clock for Hanging Lake instead. The route led down the Great Stone Chute, a tumbled mass of great boulders that provided a comparatively easy route through the dense scrub down to one of the Northern Lakes.

Round this lake of isolated loveliness, the Moss Jungle was the finest we had ever seen. Everything was completely covered with brilliant green moss which was saturated with water, every movement bringing a deluge down upon us. Apart from fallen timber which sometimes made platforms up to thirty feet high, the floor of the forest was reasonably open and though travel was slow, it was not difficult since we had no packs.

Our trip to Hanging Lake was not entirely sightseeing. Don and Trevor had gone there the previous day to pick up their airdrop and had hinted that if we came along, they might stack us on a feed. Hanging Lake, as the name implies, hangs. It is suspended some 3000 feet above sea level in a glacial cavity, a black mysterious pool. Don and Trevor were camped in the scrub just below it and after we had made a circuit of the lake and climbed Geeves Bluff, we shared some of the luxuries of the airdrop, for lunch.

 

Hanging Lake

Descending to Hanging Lake

On our way back, we searched for Ivor's trousers which he had somehow managed to lose. We had worn shorts in the Moss Jungle because it was so wet, and tied our trousers round our waists. His must have come undone while we were struggling through scrub or over fallen timber.

We tried to follow our route back but there was such a sameness about the Moss Jungle, that search as we might we could not find them. Loss of a pair of trousers in normal circumstances means little that is if you don' t lose them in Collins Street, but in S.W. Tasmania where weather, scrub and snakes are usual hazards, it can mean at least great discomfort and at the worst, injury or even death.

Back at camp, although it had rained intermittently and was still raining, we made a big fire with pandani, scoparia and the remains of a King Billy Pine and partly dried our saturated clothing before heavy rain drove us into the tent. Every time it rains heavily and we have to lie sheltering in the tent, the surfing gent gets all nostalgic about surf beaches. Tomorrow we will go to one, I've told him. “I've had this weather” he says, ”D'you know, it's rained every day on this trip.”

It's New Year's Eve tonight. People we know in Melbourne will be having all kinds of gay parties, but I for one am glad to be here. The rain is beating against the tent and I am writing this lying on my stomach, by the light of a candle, afraid to touch the walls of the tent lest water should leak in.

Today had been so well worth while.

Ivor's so very keen to get back, yet even he would not have missed that fantastic jungle - an untrodden, untouched, timeless world with only the dripping water from the moss and the occasional crash of a tree to mark the passage of time.

From Geeves Bluff, the views were even better than from the Peak and were made even more dramatic by the constant squalls drifting across, picking out the shapes of ridges with veils of rain!

 

Sunday 1st January

It has been pouring down all night and is still raining this morning. I got out of the tent at 7 o'clock this morning, after a cold breakfast of dried fruit, cheese and salami, but it was so cold and wet that I crawled back into my sleeping bag to thaw out a bit.

 

Luckman's Lead and in the far distance the Western Arthurs

As it had not improved by 9 o'clock, we started off down Moss Ridge. Keith and his party, the only ones now left on the campsite, are going back via Luckman's Lead, and were still in their sleeping bags when we left.

We reached Moss Camp at 10.30, and the cave made a welcome shelter. We made a fire, thawed out, and had a hot meal, then moved on down Moss Ridge, following the blazes we had made coming up. These were so useful that our time going down was only three and a half hours, compared with the nine hours it had taken us to climb up.

The weather, of course, contributed somewhat to this, it was so cold and wet that we did not stop once.

 

Cave on Moss Ridge on the way out - Ivor having a brew

We are now camped in the open button grass plains of the West Craycroft Valley, having cooked tea during the intervals between showers.

 

 

(Continued on page 4)

 

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