We first saw them soon
after leaving our camp site beside the Franklin River on our start
towards the Frenchman's Cap. In those days it was not usual for us
to meet another party when in the bush in Tasmania. When we overtook
a man in a blue serge suit, a collar and tie, and brown calf shoes,
picking his way tentatively and unsteadily, because of the weight
and ill-balance of his pack, over slippery saplings that corduroyed
a boggy stretch of track, our mood became a little tarnished. We
spurred on, vouchsafing him little more than an affirmative when he
enquired if he were on the track to the Frenchman. Other members of
our party had seen two more rather similarly clad individuals on
another branch of the track. We were not elated at the idea of
sharing our mountains with people who wore the wrong clothes, and
packs that could only have been put together by novices. We wondered
if they were on their way to the Jane River goldfields beyond the
turn-off to the Frenchman, and hoped they were.
One of them carried a
shot-gun for protection against snakes, of which they seemed
unusually apprehensive. None of the three was very sure of where or
how they were going, or whether they would get there. These things
we discovered after we had passed and re-passed each other a couple
of times during respective halts for lunch.
We made some rather caustic
remarks among ourselves upon the unsuitable array of camping gear
and tinned foods we saw spread around them as they rested, and
bathed their already blistered feet in the clear, tea-coloured water
of the Loddon River. The collars and ties had disappeared, but in
their city waistcoats, with shirtsleeves and trouser-legs rolled up,
the three still made incongruous figures among the ferns and mosses
of the river growth.
We next saw them two nights
later when we stood round our fire in the early dusk of a myrtle
forest on the borders of Lake Vera, waiting for rice and tea billies
to boil. Rather white and weary, they stumbled into the small
clearing where we had made our camp. Tasmanians have a rather
unfortunate habit of responding to most situations by saying
nothing. We went on standing round our fire in silence while the
three, visibly impressed, asked us in hushed tones if they might
camp beside us. We — graciously, I hope — permitted them the freedom
of the bush, and — the billy boiling — offered them tea, then
relapsed into our former wordless state. The three went to bed
scarcely raising their voices above whispers.
FOREST MAGIC.
Relations between the two
parties underwent some forest change in the night, for next morning
we were more like one group of people than two. We learned that the
three were from Melbourne, and had never been in the bush before;
and even began to distinguish them as individuals. The one with the
gun, who was so nervous of snakes, and whose brown shoes had
offended us, was the most urban of the three. He had only come
because of his friendship for their leader, a dark, slim young man
of twenty-two or three, who, like all leaders, was the- one in the
party with the most enthusiasm, imagination and intelligence. It was
he who had conceived the whole idea of this trip, and forced the
others to come. Having seen a photograph of the Frenchman in some
Government tourist advertisement he had been fired with the desire
to see it in reality. The third was the most uncouth of the three,
and we wondered at his presence among them. He had a rather
vacant blue eye, and dumbly did what the others told him. All three
were factory workers.
It seemed that the first
must start back that day, for by the time he reached Melbourne his
holiday would be ended. He was reluctant to make the journey alone,
so his companions, their leader decided, would go part of the way
with him to see him on to the easy Jane River track. They would
return to Lake Vera that night, and follow us to the Frenchman next
day.
Later, while we dallied
high in a mountain cradle, among clear pools set in rounded banks of
bright green cushion moss and clumps of silver badger grass, we
spoke of our fellow-travellers. For them this was an adventure into
the unknown. They came, as we felt people should come to mountains,
not to "bag" them, or "do" them, or even to conquer them. The
mountains had beckoned, and they had followed the call—all the way
from the factories and streets of Melbourne.
This pleasant dawdling was
followed by a night which I think none of us will forget. The full
moon rose and suffused everything with an unearthly beauty. We sat
beside the dark water of Lake Tahune, deep in a bowl among
surrounding walls of quartzite, and gazed sometimes at the pale,
reflected rock mass of the Frenchman and Venus, a single point of
light, shining from the surface of the water, sometimes at the great
white overhanging dome itself. We knew how rare it was to be in the
perfect place at such a perfect moment. The Frenchman is more often
than not torn at and blustered upon by winds, hidden by blizzards,
or lost in mists and driving rain. This beautiful, still mood was
only a rare interlude among many stormier ones. Knowing how brief it
was likely to be, we wished our Melbourne friends were there to see
it so, and to climb the mountain with us next day.
It was as if the mountain,
for a short time, were spell-bound, for the following morning was as
still and clear as the night before. As we climbed higher, with the
sparkling quartzite grating sharply under our nailed boots, we grew
more elated, and grateful to the gods of the mountains for allowing
us this perfect day. On the very summit we moved about a little
restlessly, unable at first to adjust ourselves to this complete
attainment of our dreams.
To the west, between
mountains, was the horizon line of the sea —the southern Indian
Ocean. There the sky was dark with coming clouds, and we knew the
perfect day was near its end.
HIDDEN FRENCHMAN.
After nightfall, when it
was raining- steadily, from the shelter of our tents beside the lake
we heard voices. It was our Melbourne friends arriving. Some of our
party went out to meet them and help them pitch and drain their tent
and light a fire. They came back reporting that the two—the Leader
and his Henchman, as we called them—were very tired. They, and the
whole of their cumbersome equipment, were wet.
Next day, though we were
sheltered from the wind, the rain was heavy and incessant, and there
was nothing to be seen. This was the day the Leader had reserved for
climbing the Frenchman. We all spent it in our tents. The following
morning both parties were bound to return. Though we were full of
sympathy for the other two and regret for what they had missed,
they, or rather the Leader (for what his Henchman felt none seemed
to know or think important) appeared satisfied that the trip was
well worth while.
Our party was the first to
leave. It was still raining, and the Frenchman hidden, but not so
heavily as the day before. When we reached the lip of the bowl in
which Lake Tahune lay we looked down and saw the water half revealed
through swirling mists.
Late that afternoon, when
we were well past Lake Vera, the two overtook us where we sat beside
a creek, making a late afternoon tea. They passed us, heading out
into a long tongue of button-grass that led towards the Jane River
track, and soon disappeared in a rain and mist-laden greyness. Ten
minutes later we were following them; and were surprised when a
sudden lightening of the weather revealed the plain—glisteningly
olive-green and orange-brown—completely devoid of human figures.
TRUE LEADER.
While we were wondering
what had happened we almost stumbled upon the two where they
crouched, hunched up, among the big tussocks of button-grass. Before
they had formed the words we knew what had happened—snake-bite. The
Leader had his boot open and blood flowing freely from where he had
cut his foot with a pen-knife. His Henchman knelt beside him with a
white face, one end of a puttee dangling ineffectually from his
hand. Strangely enough, they had asked us that morning what to do in
such a case. Before that, they had not the most elementary idea. The
Henchman seemed uncertain how to make a ligature. The men of our
party quickly applied one, the Leader, though a little shaken,
remaining the calmer of the two. The snake, a big one, he said, had
bitten just where his boot had broken open and there had been
nothing to protect him.
The best thing seemed to be
to make for shelter in a hut on the Jane River track a mile or so in
the opposite direction from ours, where miners sometimes camped on
their way to and from the gold-fields. Two of us went on to find it,
start a fire and prepare coffee, while the others followed with the
patient, carrying his pack and helping him along. It was soon so
dark that we had to let our feet find their own way along the track
by following a stream of water. When we were off it we stumbled knee
deep into boggy holes between the buttongrass.
We found the hut beside a
river, and by the light of a match saw something of the state it was
in. We threw out the worst of the old boots, socks and discarded
clothing; and, everything being wet, started the fire with bits of
brushwood from the bunks. The fireplace was in an open end of the
hut, and rain came down and damped our bits of kindling while we
tried to light them. However, long before we heard the others
arriving we had a good fire going, for, luckily, in those parts much
of the wood burns both green and wet. Coffee was made by the time
the over-tired and bedraggled party arrived. They were cold and wet
to the skin. The packs of our Melbourne friends were double their
normal weight, because their blankets, and everything else in them,
were soaked.
We warmed our patient as best
we could with fire and dry sleeping bags and coffee, and talked
cheerfully of all the people we knew who had been snake-bitten and
were none the worse. The ligature was duly loosened at intervals
and, after he had been fed and rested, his colour became better, and
we began to feel sure that he was not going to suffer serious
effects from the bite; in fact, we suspected that the snake had
struck part of his boot first and wasted much of its poison on that.
We admired the calm, matter-of-fact way he took the whole affair.
Even in that predicament he remained the Leader, and told his
Henchman what to do.
By some time after midnight we
were all dry, and our Melbourne friends' blankets as well. Somehow
or other each found a place to
lie down and sleep. .
By daylight the interior of
the hut was so unprepossessing that we preferred to breakfast in the
light drizzle outside. Our patient seemed quite well except for a
stiff and painful leg. He decided to rest it for twenty-four hours
and do the last stage of the journey next day As they were now on
the well-marked track, and seemed all" right, we left them, saying
quite an affectionate farewell to the men we had earlier looked at
so askance. Such is the effect of shared experience in the bush.
Later we heard from the
patient that he suffered that day rather badly from headache and
sickness, but was quite fit to travel on the next day. |