Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Distorted View: Cradle Mountain valley view in a safety reflector

In geologic time, nothing much happens in Australia. The continent has remained flat, dry and unchanged since at least the time T. Rex roamed the planet. This means, among other things, that Australia severely lacks mountains. Ask an Australian to point you to a mountain, and he will indicate some quaint slope that reminds you of the hills you once sledded in grandma’s backyard. “Highest peak in the state!,” he’ll say proudly.

The few mountains that do deserve the title “mountain” are more on par with American’s Appalachian range – gentle, ambling – than they are with the Rockies, which boast severe, jutting peaks and alpine summits.

To craggy-mountain deprived Australians, the iconic Cradle Mountain represents the apex of Tasmanian wilderness. Every place has its “must-sees.” Cradle Mountain was such a place.

Frequently, these tourist must-sees are a bit of a disappointment. A relatively nice but modest attraction is hyped by local tourist centers. Then it is exaggerated by guidebooks, merchandizing, and overly-enthusiastic locals. Eventually this modest attraction becomes mythologized, deified, glorified. Its reality inevitably disappoints.

Visitors to Australia will eventually find themselves hearing well-meaning but over-zealous advice from locals like “Oh, yeah, I reckon you just gotta see the giant Koala at Wangabululah,” without realizing that a large fiberglass marsupial isn’t actually that interesting and maybe best viewed in postcard format.

We had seen endless variations of Cradle Mountain in brochures, photo galleries and on artist’s easels since before we arrived in Tasmania. I have become wary of can’t-be-missed places, but we went nonetheless. It is a “must-see” after all.

Unlike other Australian national parks which tend to be bare-bones, Cradle Mountain National Park resembles American-style national parks: copious parking lots, waddling crowds and short walks undertaken by 95% of visitors, who amble from the car to the nearest designated photographic lookout. But the crowds become refreshingly sparse if you are willing to walk more than a couple hours into the park. Since watching waves of tour buses disgorge an endless stream of doddering package tourists isn’t really my favorite pastime, I decided to stroll for three hours to an A-frame cabin called The Scott Kilvert Memorial Hut. I would base my day trips from there. There is something appealing about staying in a rustic hut in the woods, miles from the nearest electrical outlet.

The trail began easily enough, skirting the peacefully-named Dove Lake before ascending our first mountain, Hanson’s Peak. The trail proceeded upwards, sometimes alarmingly so. At one point I found myself clinging to a long section of chain that had been bolted into an impressively skyward piece of granite.

Let me take a moment to say one thing about this piece of trail work. Australians in general, and Tasmanians in particular, are not subject overstating the difficulty or danger of a trail. Go to a national park in America, and you’ll probably find handrails around the parking lot and warning signs cautioning hapless vacationers about the serious dangers of gravel walkways . Australia does not have a handrail somewhere unless you are really at risk of a perilous three hundred foot drop from a cliff. So a chain on a trail like this is significant.

Shrouded in the distance are the twin crests of Cradle Mountain

Paula was not feeling as comfortable with the trail as I was, so I somehow ended up carrying both of our packs up the heftily chained section. My backpack was in its normal position on my back and hers sat slung by one strap under my arm. My right hand grasped my walking stick; the left hoisted me up the chain one awkward lurch at a time. At one particularly large and crucial step up, I found myself actually grunting with exertion, something I can’t remember ever doing before. The scene looked silly, but I reached the summit, where I was greeted with my first expansive view of the landscape.

Paula makes it look easy. Maybe it's cause she isn't wearing her pack!

The Ice Age – actually, several ice ages – factored heavily in the formation of the park’s wilderness. Glaciers stripped the park’s sheer dolerite spires and gouged the countless lakes, tarns, cirques and moraines. The ice ages created a bizarre alpine environment where one might reasonably expect to encounter mountain lions, marmots and bears. Instead, one meets growling Tasmanian devils, tank-like wombats and duck-billed platypus.

Stop off at a tannin-stained glacial tarn.

As a rule, Tasmania’s weather is fickle, and owing to its towering topography, weather in the Cradle Mountain area is downright unpredictable. As we walked to our hut, the wind blowing against the mountain was forced straight up the dolerite columns. The moisture in the air, which reaches the dew point as it rises over the sheer cliffs, churns into a cloudy vapor. Each dolerite column becomes a smokestack with the clouds seeming to pour forth like an industrial version of nature. Now and then a dazzlingly vivid snatch of blue sky appeared behind the broiling cloud-enshrouded mountain. All hype leading us to this mountain, and all the doubt I felt about this park was forgotten. I watched and watched.

We hauled in enough food to last nearly a week. I wasn’t sure how long we might stay at the hut, but on account of the unpredictable weather, it wasn’t unreasonable to plan for a few days of being shut-in. The last thing I wanted was to hike in, sit through two days of rain and then hike out again when supplies became exhausted.

As it happened, the weather the following day was perfect with enough cloud cover to stay cool but enough sun and blue sky to make the mountain photogenic. We prepared for a long day walk to the summit of Cradle Peak. During these walks I came to appreciate the many wonders of glacial alpine. The landscape is both fragile and resilient. Tiny plants and carpets of mossy groundcovers are easily destroyed when trod upon by hikers. Yet cumulatively these small plants anchor all the other life to the mountain. Without the mossy groundcover, the thin topsoil would vanish in a single storm. It’s fair to say that without these low plants, mountains would be rather sad mounds of bare rocks.

An old section of boardwalked trail is reclaimed by the moist groundcovers

On the third day in the A-frame cabin, we waited through several hours of persistent rain. From the hut’s thoughtful porch, we watched as drizzle transformed into deluge. Our hut, which had previously been on dry land, now seemed as though it had been built in the middle of a flat, wide creek. The drowned, over-saturated landscape drained to a nearby lake, and our hut was in the middle of the two.

The weather report said to expect periodic bad weather, so we decided to retreat to our car. We were well equipped to hike in the rain, and we had comfortable shelter and plenty of food. But given the likelihood of several days of impressive precipitation, there was hardly any point in getting cabin fever.

Sometime in the early afternoon, the rain let up and we made a break for the trail. In Colorado, it doesn’t rain very much and snowmelt isn’t, by definition, torrential until it reaches a river. I might have seen dramatic weather before, but the scene at Cradle Mountain captivated me. The timing of our departure from the cabin, it turned out, was lucky rather than informed. We could enjoy our lush, wet landscape without enduring rain falling on our heads.

In the distance, waterfalls spring from where there had been none the day before

As we walked up the valley and away from the cabin, the trail was transformed. Although it was the fourth time we walked along this particular stretch of track, it water altered it into a completely different place. From sheer, dry limestone cliffs sprung countless waterfalls. I don’t mean little gurgling springs came forth from the rocks. I mean raging torrents plunging nearly 400 feet at a stretch.

The calm tarns now overflowed with tannin soaked water. The small rivulets normally responsible for draining the boggy alpine terrain morphed into rapids. The lake where we had previously bathed was overtaken by the rising waters, which flooded its gravelly beach and bordering trees, and lent it a bizarre, eucalyptus-mangrove aesthetic.

High above Dove Lake on the difficult Face Track

We hiked for an hour, until we reached the saddle that joined three twisting ridgelines. The nature surrounding us was uncontrolled and raw. The pretty heather lands above drained rainwaters into the steep cliffs and glacial cirques below. Each gentle raindrop rushed roaring down the mountainsides.

Pedal to the floor and... nothing

No one likes breaking down in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, this was just an oil check. Our clutch gave out in a convenient parking lot.

I put my foot to the floor, pulling the gearshift out of overdrive and slowed for the wide turning truck ahead of me. I knew immediately something was wrong, though. The clutch was soft and the shifting was hard. My sense of touch sharpened as I tested the pedal again gingerly. Damn. In my mind’s eye, I ran the course of the hydraulic mechanism that made changing gears possible, searching for the fault. Realizing that I must have a leak somewhere in the line, I knew that I must minimize the gear changes, as each one could be my last. Not in a fatalistic sense, but at least until I got the car looked at.

We turned off the Bruce Highway and headed toward Airlie Beach, a part of the coast that is known for partying backpackers as much as sand or sea. We drew near to the outskirts of town and I spied the landing spot: a big American style suburban shopping complex. There was a grocery store, an autoparts store and two hardware stores. I knew at once it was my salvation.
I turned in on what would turn out to indeed be my last shift and coasted to a nice spot in the parking lot. I got out and was under the car nearly before the engine died down. And there it was: a pinhole sized breach in a rubber hose that was going to put an end to any further movement for the day. In fact, being Sunday, we weren’t going anywhere for a while as almost nothing in Australia is open on the Lord’s Day.

Having so recently come out of the outback, shopping malls (especially those lacking intoxicated people fighting out front) still held an air of wonder for us, so with nothing else to do, we went inside and passed the time in the air conditioned luxury that large retail developments provide.

We hadn’t planned on staying the night in the parking lot, but we still needed to make dinner before we found a place to camp out, so we waited for the shops to close and then set up our stove. We had just pulled the last of our pasta dinner off when a very rude, angry and foul man drove up in a private security car. Without so much as uttering a terse greeting, he hailed us with language that might have chagrined a sailor. I looked at him for a while then went over to talk to him. Now, I have some experience dealing with people who are (or think they are) in positions of authority. Call it too much time at the building departments trying to get permits to put in solar arrays, but I figured I could get this guy to chill out.

Not so. Though I wasn’t really concerned about the guy, he was doing his best to appear very powerful, a sure sign of a weak hand. Still, in these cases, it’s usually best to let people like this persist in their delusions of strength if for no other reason than avoiding the extra wrath that comes with unmasking them by calling their bluff.

After our brief conversation- if you could call it that- to things were clear: Our car could stay but we couldn’t. We took our dinner 20 feet away to the public road and ate on the curb. Ahh, arbitrary rules.

The next day, I exhausted hopes of a quick fix given the sparse selection of tools on hand (namely an adjustable wrench, a micro-leatherman and two screwdrivers) and went in search of a decent, honest mechanic. As most car owners know, this is rarely an easy task, even in the best of times, but as fate would have it, our failing clutch had brought us to within one street of just such a mechanic. I put the car into low range four wheel drive and started it up in gear. The car chugged along at a constant and maximum speed of 4 kilometers per hour all the way out of the parking lot and over to the mechanic savior. And praise be to god, for the Nissan dealership had the part, and yea, the price was not too dear.

And we were up and running again.

Only when you are living on the road are you thankful for breaking down close to help.

Postscript. On the positive side of things, our mechanic recommended a great beach to camp at where there was practically no one around. Salvation! I swear that everyone in Australia wants to be your tour guide.

The greatness of the sea

The innocent ripples of the edge of the ocean. From here, it just gets deeper off into the horizon.

I have spent a lot of time by the ocean in the past year. Sometimes I am on a beach and often on a beach on an island, but as I sit here now, I am on a breach looking at an island. And I ponder: what is it that makes us like islands so much? I mean, although I am contentedly sitting here with all my camping gear and my four-wheel drive on a lovely beach, why do I feel the almost overwhelming urge to swim over? Am I trying to get away from being away? To be on an island is to be self-sufficient and also it is to escape from the world.

It is to have an existence where your world is very small. As if by some magic alchemy, the water creates a barrier over which the problems, stresses and distractions of the rest of the world cannot pass.

I stared at the sea yesterday when the tide was out. Here, the slope is so gradual that at low tide, the water is nearly half a kilometer out from high tide. Out nearly at the farthest boundary of my world was a lone pair of tire tracks that seemed to disappear into the calm waters. It gave me a crazy thought: what if I drove down into the water and kept driving until my car got stuck and then watched the waves come in and take it, washing the sand from under it as it slowly sank into unrecoverability. The thought made me shudder.

Driving the Camel on the beach on Fraser Island. We must use a tide chart to avoid the high water taking our car!

The sea draws me and terrifies me. I have floated on it with a snorkel in my mouth and a mask on my face and look at the pretty fish and coral. I have strapped tanks of precious air to my back and gone down a tiny fraction of the sea’s depth. I have waited for it to recede to collect worn pieces of glass and I have driven on the beach soon to be reclaimed by the water.
But I am not under any false illusions: if I were put out into the sea without any of my life-giving pieces of technology, I would not last very long. None of us would.

So maybe there is a connection between the sea’s ability to mute problems by passing over it. Maybe the petty fears of the day-to-day can not begin to compete with the total power of the deep water for humans. And over it we pass, cleansed by it’s magic.

And the sea will reclaim all. This wreck on the beach at Fraser Island, Australia was once a luxury steamer.

My 15 minutes in the sun

Averaging the sun exposure by spending an hour upside down.

When I was a kid and fifteen minutes felt like the day-after-never from now, I was pretty spotty in my sunscreen usage. It’s not that my parents or I were particularly negligent, but almost no one thought that the warming rays of the sun were anything but bliss. We would go to the ocean on vacation and it was nearly a foregone conclusion that everyone would end up with a nice, toasty sunburn with the peeling skin to be a much awaited conclusion to the suffering.
Now, just open any womens’ (or, increasingly, mens’) magazine and you might be forgiven for thinking that ‘sun damage’ is the world’s worst problem since nuclear weapon proliferation. There is SPF 70 chapstick, an unexaggerated five types of sunscreen appropriate to wear at any given moment, and probably even sun-blocking underarm deodorant. Slip, slop, slap became obsess, obsess, obsess and now I am afraid to be at the beach!

Our friends hunt for 6 foot long sandworms with these discarded shark carcasses. But, safety first! Remember to wear your long pants, long sleeves, wide brim hats or balaclavas and half gloves!

This brings me to my main point. I don’t know what to do at the ocean anymore. I am in Australia, a country with what seems like ten miles of beach per citizen, and so this dilemma is not exactly a trivial matter. A day’s group discussions might be titled something like: “do we eat breakfast at our beachside campsite now, or after surfing?”

Seriously, I am at the beach a lot. The other day I decided that since I have been living on the beach for so many months, I can’t properly say ‘I am from the US’ for now. Like a haiku that defined a life in it’s simple essence, I would have to say: I am from the beach, I skip the tides. I watch to sea, I eat the sand.

But this little slice of zen goes nowhere in addressing how often reapplications of ULTRA DEFENCE WATEPROOF SPF 40 sunblock should occur. And just how paranoid should I be about the risks to an unprotected arm experiencing withering blasts of UVB radiation while walking to the toilet?

In short: What do we do at the beach now?

Among other things, we sometimes use beach junk to erect shade structures.

We arrive at the beach and instead of bouncing from the seat and running headlong into the pounding surf with just my boardshorts, I have to consider, plan and pack mainly keeping in mind the sun. Is there a free tree to go under for shade, or do I need to bring an umbrella? Do I need waterproof sunscreen, or do I use the cheaper stuff that comes off in the water? And should I put that sunblock on here and further delay the beckoning beach, or be exposed unprotected for ten minutes to the sun, god forbid.

I want to go body boarding, but I have to think, ‘has it been at least fifteen minutes since I put on my sunblock yet?’ And if I do go into the water, how long should I stay in until I scamper back to the shade to re-apply? After all, everyone knows that waterproof sunblock never is, right?

Only YOU can prevent forehead wrinkles. Paula is maximizing the sun-protective benefits of these UV-blocking sunglasses.

The Lemur Accord

One of the members of the "Star Earth Sanctuary" and her teepee.

“Yeah, just google the Lima Accords. Yeah, L-I-M-A, like the city. It was in, oh, I reckon, the seventies that all the big countries got together and decided that Japan was gonna make the cars, Australia was gonna do tourism and mining, China was gonna do the industry, and all that. America, too, but I can’t remember what they were gonna do…” the man trailed off. I had been listening to him talk about various hippie conspiracy theories for about half an hour now.

He does not have dreadlocks, but he is playing a guitar with scraggly ponytail and a short, geometrically inspired beard. Behind him, an odd mixture of stoners and uptight family vacationers from the coast coexist in a free municipal swimming pool. It seems that access to a place to swim is a universal human right in Australia. I am in Nimbin, Australia’s answer to Humboldt County, California enjoying a picnic by the pool with my friends and anyone else who shows up to the picnic table.

His friend, Frank, reminds me physically of my own good friend, Frank. I first saw him in the park and swimming pool and I thought he was perhaps a county authority making sure the tourism wasn’t getting too out of hand. He had on unironic camouflage pants and had a rare short hairstyle, almost a crew cut that one doesn’t usually encounter in a drum circle. Even his mood and mannerisms remind me of Colorado Frank as he is considerate of other people, doesn’t interrupt or spout on when you aren’t listening anymore like most others in attendance. I tell him of the resemblance and say that my friend Frank was a navy pilot when Australian Frank and the hippie go nuts. It turns out Aussie Frank was the youngest pilot in Australia when he was a kid, can you dig it?

That's right, we ended up staying with this crew and putting up a back porch with them.

Ten minutes go by and I overhear a younger hippie girl talking to Paula. She is midway through recounting a similar New World Order scheme to Paula that I have just heard from the hippie when, and I shit you not, I hear her say “…yeah, it’s called the Lemur Accords, like the animal. L-E-M-U-R, and it was, gee musta been around the time of.. aww, which one was it… I think maybe Abraham Lincoln when they all got together and decided they were going to…”
A long, rare, silent moment passes and finally she points to my jerry can and says, “is that creek water?”

I stare blankly, not knowing what to answer.

“Because if it is tap water, I can’t drink it and I would really like a drink right now.”

I tell here that it is, in fact tap water and she wanders off under a tree.