Listen to David reading this piece:

Heritage restored

Warners Track in Tasmania was built by farming pioneers in the 1890s in the Meander locality of northern Tasmania to provide access from Jackeys Marsh up to the alpine summer grazing pastures of the Central Plateau. It followed the old Aboriginal migration route and, before the highway was built through nearby Golden Valley, was the main transport link from the region around Deloraine to the Midlands and then on to Hobart, and even to Queenstown on the West Coast.

The track follows a narrow break formed by Burnies Creek in the dolerite cliffs of the Great Western Tiers from the valley floor in Jackeys Marsh less than 600 meters above sea level to Pine Lake at 1200 meters. Its upper section includes intact drystone walls supporting the switchback path through subalpine Myrtle Beech forest with some ancient remnant Pencil Pines, one of the endemic dwarf conifers characteristic of the Tasmanian alpine vegetation that has been so depleted by bushfire since the arrival of Europeans.

In 2010, volunteer work by locals from the Mountain Huts Preservation Society restored two bridges high up in the subalpine part of Warners Track, which is all part of the Great Western Tiers Conservation Area under the authority of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service.

This story is about how I, almost accidentally, was responsible for saving Warners Track from being destroyed by two D9 bulldozers in 1983.

Connection to Jackeys Marsh

The context for this story begins in 1975 on a plant collecting expedition through northern Tasmania with Bill Mollison. We visited friends of his at the Teapot Commune in Jackeys Marsh and discussed the campaigns to save the old growth forests that were being clear felled for export pulp with the sawmills getting the pick of the best trees for sawn timber.

The activists at Teapot and Thancoupie, a sister commune at nearby Meander, were not the typical middle class baby boomer back-to-the-landers. They were ex-Sydney printing industry unionists who, in response to the destruction of old growth mixed eucalypt rainforest at Mother Cummings Peak, used their skills to create and distribute the four-page A4 brochure “Woodchip laughs at you! all the way to the bank”. In my opinion, it was one of the most sophisticated pieces of environmental propaganda that marked the early years of ‘The Fight for the Forests’ (which is now drawing to a close with less than wonderful results).

Two years later I moved to Jackeys Marsh to extend my personal permaculture self-reliance journey in ecological hunting, gardening in a harsh climate, and living without power or telephone. I was caretaker at what locals called a hut, what today would be a cute tiny house. It was built by one of the back-to-the-land couples on a shared ownership property that followed the Teapot communards in the resettlement of the Marsh after the local farmers had abandoned it in the 1960s for places closer to civilisation (with reticulated power and phone). Like Lorinna further west along the Great Western Tiers, Jackeys Marsh became one of those places where the newcomers were creating communities based on new values, rather than being a few freaks amongst multi-generations of socially conservative locals.

Marshian Males

By the time I moved to the Marsh, the Teapot commune was no more and many of the first wave had already left for places closer to civilisation. I found myself one of five lone males in their respective huts pursuing their own style of frugal self-reliance. Occasionally I joined some of the others for more indulgent Marshian male activities. One of those was the hike up Warners Track with ex Teapot communards Dave Griffiths and Jim Deghand for a sumptuous Summer solstice/Christmas all-day feast at Pine Lake. (Dave was a self-taught woodworker/cabinetmaker while Jim was a pioneer in the recovery of traditional dyeing, spinning and weaving skills whose work became part of the great Tasmanian arts and crafts revival). We left early in the day, after a joint to increase the intensity of appreciation of the climb (and the appetite for the contents of our full backpacks).

The 600m climb above the private land ran through regrowth forest logged in the 1950s, which I understood had destroyed the lower parts of the 1890s track. Once on the intact switchback track, the grades were good and steady and gradually the eucalypt overstory was replaced by a tunnel of increasing squat subalpine Myrtle Beech. We crossed the then still intact bridges made from Pencil Pine logs. Despite the drop in air temperature, we accelerated as we came out of the forest onto the dwarf alpine ground cover vegetation for the last kilometre to arrive at Pine Lake sweating. We dropped our packs and clothes for a naked dive and short swim in the icy waters of Pine Lake. We lay on the cushion plants of the lake fringe to dry in the sun of a perfectly still day before unpacking the feast. The rest of the day until the solstice sunset behind the Walls of Jerusalem was taken with eating, drinking, the odd joint or two and storytelling. I remember the slow careful walk down the switchbacks of Warners Track in the gloom with empty backpacks and full bellies.

I don’t remember whether I walked the track before or after that memorable Christmas lunch, but Warners Track remained one of the highlights of my years at Jackeys Marsh that included organising the Jackeys Marsh Down To Earth Festival in 1978 and the formulation of my theories about the origins of mixed eucalypt rainforests that I documented in ‘A table of many stories’.

Forest Festival Drought and Fire

In February 1983 I was back in Tasmania and visited the Marsh to participate in the first Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival. All but one of the other lone males were still resident but there was also a bunch of new settlers consolidating the alternative and environmentalist culture of the valley. That festival was the place where I first articulated my forest theories to residents, activists, foresters and rainforest ecologists.

I had never before seen the Marsh dry in summer. Normally the harsh winter frosts gave the valley pastures a dried-off look, but in summer they were always emerald green. On a bush walk on tracks up above my old residence with Su, Kimon and Jody, we saw six tiger snakes in a few hours, more than I had seen in my two years living in the Marsh. The swamps that provided their staple food of frogs were mostly dry and they were all out on range hunting lizards and other prey that were not so affected by the drought. The ‘82/83 drought affected Tassie as badly as Victoria, even if there were not the catastrophic fires. However the threat of fire was a key issue for the authorities and the festival organisers. On the last day of the festival a fire started in the adjacent Huntsman Valley and quickly spread by northerly winds up the escarpment through the regrowth forests below the sandstone escarpments and beyond into the subalpine Eucalyptus delegatensis forests growing on the scree slopes below the dolerite cliffs of the Great Western Tiers. Su and the kids had to be back in Melbourne for the start of school so I drove them to the Devonport ferry and returned to the Marsh to see how I could help the locals get organised to defend their properties.

The story was that some of the local rednecks had lit the fire to put the wind up the greenies, but the authorities were treating it very seriously given the difficulty of fighting the fire in such inaccessible country, even if the weather was benign. Normally a fire burning in the subalpine zone would go out overnight but the peat soils were so dry it was continuing to burn underground.

Jackeys Marsh Fire Brigade

I joined forces with Phil Parsons to form an impromptu Jackeys Marsh Fire Brigade helping the festival organisers and other residents to better prepare their very fire vulnerable properties in case a westerly wind drove the fire on the lower slopes from the Huntsman into the Marsh.

Phil was one of the originals from Thancoupie who had written and printed ‘Woodchip laughs at you’, and over the succeeding decade had, from my perspective, gone further than any of the other back-to-the-landers I knew, in adopting the character and demeanour of the socially conservative rednecks, including working as a farm labourer. I remember him as a steady, sensible, quietly spoken, solid character. I confidently told the residents that, although the forestry authorities might be our enemies in logging the forest, we had common cause in fighting the fires and if the fire threatened their places, then the Forestry Commission and Tasmanian Fire Service guys would be there to help. What the residents needed was to do the prep work to make their places more defendable.

Phil and I based ourselves at Sean Cadman and Rosemary Norwood’s property, which was closest to the fireground. Sean and Rosemary were back-to-the-landers who arrived in 1980 and are still in the Marsh as hosts of the renowned Forest Walks Lodge. We had my recently rebuilt Toyota Stout truck and some borrowed firefighting gear. During the first day, my confidence about the capability of the authorities began to progressively evaporate. Sean and I were scouting the location of the closest spot fire when a young forester (with a ponytail) drove up the drive, lost! He was ‘bossing’ (in charge of) this section of the fire and had a photocopy of part of the 1:100,000 contour map. We pulled out our colour copy of the 1:25,000 contour map with more detail to show him where he was, where the fire was and how there was an overgrown logging track that could be opened up to provide vehicle access for attacking the fire while the weather was favourable.

Next we met one of the local bulldozer contractors who was on standby and he told us the authorities had two D9 bulldozers working with their own supervisor creating a firebreak along the boundary between the private and public land roughly along the 600m contour level and that they were planning to backburn the whole mountain face. This news was alarming on a number of levels. The contractor had a radio so he knew what was happening but neither me or Phil or any of the residents were in the information loop. Secondly, if the D9 dozers came around the back of Sean’s, that would destroy his gravity feed water supply line from a gully with thick Myrtle Beech rainforest.

Most concerning was the idea of backburning the mountain instead of getting up and putting the fire out. The conditions were so dry it was conceivable the fire would increase in intensity and jump the dolerite cliffs up on the central plateau where the peat soils were so dry they could burn. The central plateau of Tasmania is the largest glaciated landscape in Australia with thousands of lakes, wetland and peat bogs that form a giant sponge at the head of the southeast-flowing rivers including the Derwent. Some of the most fire vulnerable ancient vegetation, including the Pencil Pines, would be lost in any major fire and it might be impossible to extinguish until major rains did the job. We asked the local contractor what he thought. He was as sceptical as we were, but wasn’t about to question his paymaster.

On top of that, we realised the decision making was happening without local knowledge. In my naivety I assumed that the fire boss would have at least one of the old timers who worked those forest slopes in the 1950s to guide their work. The local contractor we spoke to didn’t know the territory as well as we did. It seemed that us young hippies were the local knowledge.

Confrontation and Co-operation

We heard the D9s approaching so Sean and I decided to act. Heading down his track we walked into a swath of cleared ground more than 30m wide in front of the machines, much to the confusion of the supervisor. He radioed the District Forester who was bossing the whole operation that included 100 men, several fire tankers and trucks, four dozers, a spotter plane and helicopter. The District Forester arrived, and so did several of the contractors and workers who all gathered around in the fading light to see what these long-haired hippies were on about.

I decided that I could challenge the system without the risk of payback that Sean or Phil might be subject to as local residents. I explained the collateral damage to the water supply at Sean’s and then questioned the need for this giant swath, saying that we had heard of plans to backburn the mountain. The District Forester was “old school” and being challenged by a young greenie in front of his workers and contractors must have been a bit much at the end of a long day. Through gritted teeth he agreed that was one option being considered. I asked if he understood the implications of a fire getting into the peat bogs of the alpine plateau. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “What would you know about firefighting! Nothing. Right. Nothing!” he roared in my face and stormed off. The contractors stood around in stunned silence. They had never seen anyone challenge the District Forester before. I remember feeling some sympathy for the man. He had a 100 men and machines tied up for a few days having achieved very little despite the good weather, because access to the firegrounds was so difficult, even those below the sandstone cliffs, let alone those burning in the scree slopes and peat soils above. He needed to get some results and free up the resources for dealing with multiple fires elsewhere in the state that all had the potential to turn bad.

At that point two men came forward out of the gloom and introduced themselves as from Associated Pulp and Paper Mills (APPM), the paper pulp company, theoretically enemies worse than the Forestry Commission people. They said that they would be bossing the fire the next day and would be keen to make best use of local knowledge. We explained our spontaneous local organising and that we were based at Sean’s. They suggested meeting there at first light. This rotation of personnel bossing fires was standard practise and because APPM owned private native forest further around the Tiers, they were major stakeholders in putting the fires out.

We got up early from our camp for breakfast in the smoky dawn and stood around as Forestry Commission, Tasmania Fire Service and APPM staff arrived and prepared for briefing. I listened in to a discussion between one of the APPM foresters (who had spoken to us the night before) and one of the Forestry Commission officers that the D9 contractors has been sent further west, given they had decided not to bulldoze Sean’s water supply rainforest gully. The forester said he understood there was a route up through the sandstone and the dolerite escarpments to the plateau where it might be possible to construct a control break and access route that would allow control of the fires spreading further along the Tiers. I joined in the conversation, asking if they knew what was along that route. No they didn’t – so I explained how that firebreak would destroy the switchback drystone walls of Warners Track and the ancient subalpine forest at the top. I also suggested the route was a wind funnel that could carry a fire to destroy the precious vegetation around Pine Lake.

They asked if I knew the territory well and I said not as well as Jim Deghand or other longer-term locals but noted that at the rate those machines work, they will have destroyed the Track before we go to Jim’s and get there. The forester said, “Oh well that’s what the helicopter is for,” and could I show him on the ground. I grabbed my camera, the helicopter landed on Sean’s front lawn, we took off, then 15 minutes later we landed on the cushion plants at the top of the track, getting a view over the highest spot fire along the way.

The forester and I had a gentlemanly discussion about sustainable forestry as we walked the switchback route down through the subalpine Myrtle Beech. As we left the intact section of the 19th century track and got into the regrowth forest from the 1950s logging, we met the D9s’ supervisor. Stretching out behind the dozers was a 50 metre wide break where every tree less than 1 m diameter and all the soil had been pushed aside (including into Burnies Creek) and the ground formed up to create a rough road that the fire tankers could use.

The forester instructed the supervisor to just make a big turning circle at that point. I marvelled at the skill of the drivers, the power of the machines being directed by such inadequate knowledge of territory and context and that my intervention had by chance just saved substantial heritage and ecological assets. If we had been half an hour later the machines would have destroyed much of the intact stone walls of the switchback track and would have been heading to level the massive rocks of the dolerite screen through the gorge and onto the plateau.

But that was just the start of a baptism of fire, so to speak, over the next few days, in how the public fire-fighting system works, and doesn’t.

Returning to Sean’s I found that an old farmhouse building on the valley floor (more accessible and less threatened by the fires) had been commandeered as a headquarters. Phil had been accepted as the local knowledge holder of the team in discussions and planning of the whole operation and had a dedicated phoneline allowing him to keep the locals updated. Progress!

Sean had convinced the other APPM forester that the fire closest to his property burning below the sandstone escarpment could be accessed by opening up the old logging track and that it was considered safe enough for us to mark the route if we could do it in half an hour. I remember Sean and I bashing our way through the dense regrowth that covered the logging track tying plastic tape as we went until we were within sight of the flames and then retreating. That afternoon the local contractor opened the track with his D4 dozer and over the next three days a tanker and team of firefighters worked to encircle and then extinguish that largest of the lowland fires.

On the payroll

It felt like we were getting somewhere, but the real opportunity was the news that a high-altitude firefighter from the Tasmania Fire Service and an experienced tree faller from down south would be arriving to tackle the higher altitude fires via a route that Sean knew up through the sandstone escarpment. We were informed that since the weather situation had remained stable, there were opportunities for the local residents, with the experience and capacity, to join the firefighting. We put the word out and the next day there were half a dozen Marshians ready to get on the payroll and become official firefighters.

We were frustrated to find the command headquarters locked so we couldn’t even phone while we waited to see what the deal was. Eventually the pros arrived and to our dismay we discovered the District Forester was back on the job bossing the fire. Phil went to join them in the farmhouse for a pow wow. I remember one of the younger foresters saying, “Sorry Phil, Commission officers must be briefed first” and gently closed the door in his face. I remember Phil fuming but maybe it was my own anger, and embarrassment with my peers standing waiting in the open paddock to see what the deal was. The officers, including the guy from Tasmania Fire Service, trouped out after a while and got into the waiting helicopter for an inspection.

After they came back, the District Forester addressed Phil in his sergeant major demeanour: “Have these men all had experience in firefighting?” ignoring that one of us was a woman. Phil said yes, even though it was stretching the truth, and the forester introduced Nick Gellie as the high-altitude firefighter who would need four volunteers to work with him and his tree faller on tackling the fires in the subalpine forest and the rest of us could join the main crews on the lower slope forest fires. We would all be paid for our time and would be under the command structure of the Forestry Commission. Finally we were being valued, or maybe they had just worked out how to stop us being a problem for the system.

Dry Firefighting

We also found out that none of the previously employed firefighters were keen on the high-altitude firefighting, bush bashing and rock climbing to get to the fire, which was well beyond where any vehicle could go, to tackle the fire without water. In our estimation, most of them were older and overweight rednecks so we thought it amusing that the system needed to rely on some feral local hippies for the job. We all joined the other workers on the bus going along the track to the main fireground and from there Sean led to where we could scale the sandstone cliffs to start the trek to the fireground on the subalpine dolerite scree slope I had seen from the helicopter the previous day. The fireground included widely spaced E. delegatensis and Myrtle Beech of modest rather than gigantic dimensions growing in peat soil over ancient scree of fist to boulder size rocks. In a normal season the peat soil would be moist throughout summer and, far down below the rock field, water would be running. This year it was all dry and the humidity overnight was not enough to extinguish flaming fallen and standing dry trees (all probably killed by fires early in the 20th century, if not the previous one).

The tree faller tackled any standing burning trees near the edge of the fireground while Nick schooled us in using the McLeod fire rakes to create a break around the slowly creeping fire by clearing all of the organic matter down to a mineral soil. That required digging away all the peat down to the rock, since in most places there was no mineral soil. We created breaks at least a meter wide to interrupt the fire spreading slowly in the peat. Occasionally there would be a flare up in some shrubs and we would have to race to extend our break to avoid the need to abandon one line and start another. Without water, it was not possible to extinguish the fire in the peat. The water we carried in our packs was precious for keeping us hydrated. For three days I remember being enthusiastic working in this special landscape with a team directed by our capable leader. On one occasion where the tree faller got his chainsaw jammed falling a flaming tree, I remember how quickly he released the bolts and cast his machine aside to leave the bar in the tottering tree. After it crashed to the ground, he retrieved the bar and chain and continued. It was all in a day’s work.

I also remember a Myrtle Beech tree with perfectly intact unburnt bark and foliage, but digging at the roots discovered that this several hundred-year-old tree had almost certainly been killed by the underground fire that had cooked its roots. Seeing the gaping holes where peat soil turned to ash exposing the rock scree, allowed me to make sense of my previous exploration of Mt Wellington rock scree where burnt out Snow Gum stumps were perched atop boulders with no soil in sight. The great fires of ‘67 that raged over that mountain and down into the Hobart suburbs had obviously incinerated a great depth of peat soil that once blanketed those boulder scree slopes. At that altitude, the recovery would take centuries, if ever, to rebuild that moisture-holding blanket. I remember feeling vindicated rather than alarmist in my concerns about backburning the mountain.

Figure 6. Missing photo BN32 lost from the archives …”Nick Gellie, Annemarie, Sean and David” lunch at 900m asl”

But the reports of our friends working with the regulars on the lower fires were not so encouraging. While the work was less strenuous, the regulars mostly seemed more interested in watching the fires than putting them out. For the greenies it was a novel experience to be protecting the forest from the forces of nature. For the regulars it was just another day’s work: why bust your guts when there was no incentive to do so?

During a lunch break, we told high-altitude firefighter Nick about our experience over the previous days. He was shocked at the failure of the District Forester to make use of local knowledge because it was from young greenies, and insisted that when he got back to Hobart he would be reporting that to his boss in the Tasmania Fire Service. Our last day was a long and tough one to complete a full and effective break that Nick was confident would contain the fire in bad weather. We were done and the trek back was potentially a long one. We decided to head for the route down the cliffs to hopefully rendezvous with the bus picking up the workers on the lower fires.

We just made it and collapsed in the bus as the regulars packed up. Just as the driver was heading off one of the regular workers yelled to wait for a bit and we would get double time. I remember mild mannered Nick Gellie shouting, “Fucking get going, we are stuffed and had enough!” There was silence as we travelled down the now well-beaten track to the farmhouse command headquarters.

I don’t have memory of a debrief amongst the Marshians but I headed south a few days later to pick up celery top pine timber that was the subject of my essay ‘A table of many stories’. With the Stout truck half full of celery top pine, I came back to the area to collect some Myrtle Beech and Silver Wattle timber from the Meander sawmill before the ferry trip back to Melbourne.

I remember calling in to the Deloraine Forestry Commission office to pick up my pay cheque. As I came through the front glass door, I saw the District Forester talking to the staff person at the counter. Looking up and seeing me he quickly disappeared into the office behind. I left on a high with pay cheque in hand. It was like the state had just rewarded me for exposing dysfunction and incompetence in its systems and being prepared to put in the hard yards needed to protect fire-sensitive precious alpine vegetation. I assumed the word had travelled from Tasmania Fire Service headquarters to Forestry Commission headquarters and out to the Deloraine Office to ensure that those with local knowledge were involved.

Reflections

Some would point out that systems, and certainly technology, have improved greatly since the 1980s. Some might even say it was “just Tasmania” without a fully-fledged volunteer firefighting system. Ironically, rather than focusing on the dysfunction and unprofessional behaviour of those days and places, I now ponder on how the bureaucratised gridlock of today could never allow the creative response to circumstances. Even the District Forester’s decision to accept using local greenies for remote area firefighting that his regular workers wouldn’t do, reflects a flexible decision making process that is seen as impossible in today’s risk-averse culture.

I returned to Victoria in March ’83 to read the landscapes and hear stories from friends who faced fire, and dysfunction, in the Dandenongs, Otways and Mt Macedon while I, relatively speaking, had been having fun in Tassie. But that’s another story.

Three years later our son Oliver was born and he grew up hearing me recount this, amongst many other stories, from the past. I don’t know if it was a factor in him persuading his two mates on an around-Tassie bicycle trip in 2006 to tackle Warners Track as a route to the central plateau rather than following the road through Golden Valley. He reported it was a gruelling effort through thick regrowth (over the D9 firebreak track), fallen logs, collapsed bridges and alpine swamps. Thus it is comforting to read about the restoration in the following years by locals, including some connected to the pioneering families of the district who, not so long before us blow-ins arrived, practised a form of alpine commons management that can be found around the world in many cultures.

Finally I feel that, despite the apparent gulf between indigenous travellers of the past, the stockmen of the late 19th century and the back-to-landers of the 1970s, they all had a connection to country that, for the majority of modern urban dwellers is, at best, a packaged and mediated commodity.

Author’s Note

As with other recent writings, this story is supported by some photo archives and superficial research on the internet but without tracking down the characters mentioned to check the details. As such, it is storytelling from my memory and thus invites any additions, whether confirming or contradicting, which would enrich the story. My superficial research did not alert me to the fact that Jim Deghand died in 2022 so it is an appropriate afterthought to dedicate this story to his memory: Born 1942 Kansas USA, resident of Australia since 1970 and off grid resident of Jackys Marsh since 1974. A great craftsman and as I remember, happy alone with the bush, the repetitive meditation of his craft or, just as easily socially engaging and communicating his passion with others.

David Holmgren
Melliodora
Spring 2024