By road & track…
A walk into history
The Waterworks to Fern Tree track is a walk from Hobart to a small village on the flanks of kunanyi-Mt Wellington that follows the route of the late-Nineteenth Century water pipeline works. The short and easy walk would be of interest not only to bushwalkers with a few hours to spare but to those with an interest in urban infrastructure and Tasmanian history.
ALL THAT REMAINS is a bit of stonework where the house once was and a few pieces of iron rusted by the decades since the fires of ’67 devoured the building and the rest of the farm— all that remnants of a life lived on this mountainside.
Wind the decades back and you can imagine McDermott sitting close to his pot-bellied stove here on the slopes of kunanyi-Mt Wellington as the winter winds funnel past and waft their chill in through gaps below doors and around windows.
I think people of the past were a hardier breed of human today’s. I imagine McDermott was well inured to winter’s snows and cold winds. How often through his years here on the southern slope of the mountain did he look up to see the summit clad in a blanket of snow? How often did he feel the iciness of winter’s cold, katabatic air masses flowing down the mountain’s flanks from its chilly summit? And how often did he look up at the eucalypt forest on dry, hot summer days and think about the possibility of bushfire? What did he think that summer day in 1967 when he looked up to see the forest being devoured by the worst bushfire to ravish the mountain in living memory? The story is that he stayed behind to try to save his animals and his farm.
That was a summer of terror but in his years living on his farmlet in this steep clearing on the mountainside, what a view he had. You can imaging him opening the door and stepping outside to look out, his eyes drawn down the forested ridges that enclose a narrow valley to the distant grey waters of the Derwent.
All that has gone. Standing there by the stonework and the scattered debris that mild December day, a stopover on our way from the Waterworks to Fern Tree… standing there in the clearing where once McDermott’s farm had been raised questions for me… question I couldn’t possibly answer… rhetorical questions, though maybe they are more than that because I do want to know how people lived where there are now only ruins or mere hints of their presence. Who were they? How did they related to the bigger world beyond? How did they derive a living from their surroundings? How did they live with their isolation?
A summer walk
We haven’t gone far when I stop. What’s that? What’s that sound? There it is again. It is not another pademelon, we had seen one lower down and they do not make a sound like this. I tread quietly and there, just off the track is an echidna ripping into a fallen tree. It is after the ants and bugs that make up its dinner. On seeing me it curls into defensive position, taking on the shape of a ball of long, sharp spikes. I stand quietly taking photographs. The echidna realises I am not a threat, unrolls to retracts its spikes to contine probing into the wood where its long sticky tongue will harvest the ants.
We are on our way to Fern Tree, a small village perched higher on the shoulder of the mountain. We left the Waterworks, a series of water storage dams that feed Hobart’s water supply and that is a popular place with picknickers and runners, walked up a steep fire trail and on to McDermott’s farm site only a short time ago.
The Waterworks to Fern Tree walk is an easy three kilometre each way along a well-maintained walking trail thorugh eucalyptus forest. It is a steady ascent to Fern Tree. With the late Nineteenth Century water pipeline bringing water from higher up the mountain—the works came into use in 1881—the track forms part of the much longer Pipeline Track that takes you further into the steep mountain vastness. Where the pipeline bridges a gully as an aquaduct made of sandstone blocks adds a point of interest for the engineering-and-history-minded. Those features make it more of a historic walk than simply a bushwalk.
Onward. Stopping occasionally to check out some plant or other, Fi tries out a plant identification app she recently downloaded. It makes a correct identification two out of three times. Bushland species are in full flower now.
Reaching Fern Tree, there is the old timber Anglican church with its steeple which, I think, is long out of use. The day is warm, January being the height of the southern summer, so we decide what would be in order would be a glass of cold beer, condensation dripping down the sides of the glass as we sit outside in the shade of the verandah before setting off on the return journey.
Past the bushfire brigade station we walk, across the road and up to the hotel. There at the front door we stop. Closed Monday and Tuesday, the opening hours notice says. And today? Monday. We sit in the shade as another couple walk towards the pub where we deliver the sad news and watch an expression of disappointment spreads across their faces.
The return walk is downhill. We make much better time although we are in no hurry.
Reaching McDermott’s farm site I stand in the open, grassy clearing and look down across the steep land that steepens towards the city and the Derwent River beyond. I wonder about the life that McDermott lived here on the mountain. There is an interpretive sign that tells a little of his story but that is just the bare historic and biographic facts. What I wonder about is what it felt like to live here, what his daily farm routine was and what came into his mind that day in the summer of 1967 when he looked up to see the mountain’s forests ablaze.
