Text and photosCraig N Pearce

Shelf Camp waking up

The mysteries of a walk in the wild are legion. They are one of their most compelling qualities. What don’t I know I will discover? What misjudgements will force me to pivot? How much risk is involved in each known or potentially unknown mystery?

4 | Bushwalk October 2024

Interrogating and imagining a walk’s known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns is a necessary preparatory exercise in rigour and imagination before any multi-day wilderness adventure.

And then it becomes real. What we came for, every adventure’s – aspirational – Holy Trinity: surprises, revelations and inspirations (not asking for much, I know, but why go at all if not in anticipation of finding food for the heart?).

Unlike many walks, it was a known known, that of The Notch, which was the Mt Anne Circuit’s clear crux, by far its most difficult moment. It is brief, it is airy, it is confronting.

While the chasm’s northern side is a straightforward down-slide/up-scramble (depending on your direction), its southern side can surely only be described as a ‘climb’.

With a 20kg pack (I blame the camera gear), the necessary leap (of faith and fact) over a gap, then a vertical make-like-a-gorilla heave-ho up a slab of rock, this moment was firmly in the realm of adrenalin tsunamis. It demanded a laser-like focus on getting a series of small things right – e.g. no extraneous bits on the pack to get snagged, knowing where the hand and foot holds needed to be. And, most of all, being mentally in the zone and physically 100% activated to get the moves right. There was no fall-back option. Or, rather, the fall-back was all too clear: a 10-metre rock bottom plummet which, it was acutely obvious, would not end well.

“Well done,” said a young observer, an experienced climber I was to later learn, who was watching my progress. “Well done; not dead,” was what I think he meant.

At Condominium Creek with Mt Eliza beckoning

5

Looking back on Lake (or Fake as some like to call it!) Pedder as I'm climbing up to Mt Anne

7

My electrified body was glad to have a normal (comparatively speaking) track to follow for a while, with the journey’s most extreme mountain goating done, dusted and emphatically trauma-categorised. Lightning Ridge’s ragged dinosaur spine, however, down which I was soon to scramble after climbing Mt Lot, ensured my inner goat stayed fit and employed.

The Notch, Lightning Ridge, Mt Anne’s slabbed ramparts, assorted boulder field precarious ‘negotiations’ – there is being alive, and then there is being sensationally alive. On the circuit, these were those moments. And they were revelations indeed.

Wilderness ‘feel’

In the whole known/unknown etc space, Mt Anne is an interesting case study. The confronting Notch is more difficult to traverse than anything on the Western Arthurs, yet it’s just one brief point, whereas the Arthurs’ challenge is sustained over a much longer

duration (time and distance). There are tough points elsewhere on this circuit, but if you approached it from either end, up to The Notch and back, the track itself is do-able by most with a reasonable amount of bushwalking experience (being prepared for and able to cope with the vagaries of SW Tassie weather is another thing entirely. It must be a serious consideration in anyone’s risk analysis).

As for The Notch itself, in my case – solo, pack on the heavier side and not being the tallest of adventurers – having a rope to drag my pack up rather than using it as a danger-enhancer would, in hindsight, have been prudent. But I survived even if, on this walk, there are plenty of others who haven’t. So, all good. Right?

About half of the core 22km (without side-trips) walk is on constructed, trip hazard-free tracks, including steps and boardwalk. Most of the rest is on easily identifiable rough track,

The pillar of Lots Wife from near Mt Eliza

8 | Bushwalk October 2024

or cairned (generally reliable) rock traverses, which includes the side-trips I did to Mt Anne and Mt Sarah Jane (add another 3km). So not difficult to navigate. There are toilets at the two main camping locations of Tarn Shelf and Lonely Tarns, and camping platforms at the latter. Distance-wise, not time-wise, the track is never too far from a good quality gravel road.

Like the Arthurs (just down the road, BTW), we’re in the South West National Park, UNESCO World Heritage-listed wilderness. Tassie adventure mecca. Correction, just one of Tasmania’s adventure meccas. But Mt Anne, wilderness? Well, yes and no.

Because either end of the circuit (Red Tape Creek or Condominium Creek) is easily accessible, there are more walkers on this track than I am used to – this includes the pestilence of trail runners (they carry almost nothing and, if injured, would require the

nursing of a better prepared walker until help arrives). The presence of people doesn’t make it any more or less of a wilderness, of course, but it does impact on the wilderness ‘feel’.

And maybe the wilderness experience comes down to one thing, exactly that, ‘wilderness feel’. Which is going to be different for every person, influenced by their experience in the outdoors and tolerance for its challenges. And, really, who cares, from a walkers’ point of view, whether it’s formally defined as wilderness or not? I don’t. But I do care about the area being looked after environmentally. Which currently is not occurring to a satisfactory degree.

Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service Parks (Parks) has a ‘booking system’ for the walk which is not enforced. In reality, it’s an ‘honour’ system which is often not honoured. The Tarn Shelf and Lake Judd campsites are over-loved and under-resourced from an

Shelf Camp with Mt Lot looming behind

9

environmental protection perspective. There are some clear, logical fixes for Parks to do better. But its political distractions, including money-making imperatives like the proposed Tyndall Range multi-day walk, means only time will tell whether they are executed.

My version of the circuit took three and a bit days. The slow pace of the first two days is because the terrain demands careful interrogation and addressing, and there is plenty to enjoy looking at, so why rush? First day from Condominium Creek, past High Camp, to Shelf Camp, with a Mt Anne side-trip. Day two to Lonely Tarns. Day three to an improvised campsite by Anne River’s suspension bridge, with side-trips to Mt Sarah Jane and Lake Judd. Then a short exit on day four to Red Tape Creek.

I was hoping to do the Lots Wife side-trip on day two, but the time factor and drizzly weather disinclined me to do so. After having done the walk, my advice is to do two nights at Lonely Tarns, adding on Lots Wife as a single day side-trip (off-track, scrubby; taped and cairned pads; about four hours return). This would be a relaxed and rewarding day.

While the waterside views adjacent to the campsite by Lake Judd are stunning, the actual campsite is overrated as it’s tree-surrounded. I was intending to camp there, but it was overflowing with day trippers and circuit walkers (spurned by my unexpected talisman, dammit, which felt a bit like betrayal by mystery, an unknown unknown pile-on). There are plans to introduce platforms and a toilet, though that won’t solve the capacity

Mt Anne doing its wreathing and writhing in cloud thing

10 | Bushwalk October 2024

issue, unless bush is flattened. Another option near here is to explore up Schnells Ridge and improvise a campsite. But you’d best carry water in.

Cloud-orama

When it comes to mysteries, Mt Anne’s circuit has its fair share. On my exploration, even some of the known knowns ended up having unknown constituents. This is normal as all walk observations, which lead to their stories, are made through the lens of the actual describer, each with their own idiosyncratic filter (this isn’t airbrushed corporate or political communication, thank God). In addition to that, if my own experience is anything to go by, there are always moments – big or little – that each person accumulates on their journey utterly unique to them, non-replicable, because of the baggage we bring; and the t(r)ips, tricks and interactions with other humans we collect on the way.

Same same. But different.

One of the greatest of nature/adventure writers, Barry Lopez, has spoken of the value of stories, how they “preserve…possibilities”, offering “patterns of sound and association, of event and image.” Stories of nature and people prompt us to “reimagine our lives.” In this, we find humanity, which at its best is rich with empathy, selflessness and respect. For all forms of life, not only for other humans.

Mt Anne’s mysteries – and the way I interpreted them through my own experience – repeatedly presented themselves to me through portals, as if I had unconsciously drifted through time and landed in a different location and era – Gondwana-time vegetation; Pleistocene ice age glaciations; Jurassic geology; most vibrant of all, what this environment triggered in my fevered imagination.

It was a set of interconnected short stories, each distinct in their own way with their own mini narrative, but with a commonality of mood and, even, characters (which in this context includes non-human organisms like birds, mammals and trees, and inanimate entities like rocks and tarns).

Stillness at Judds Charm campsite

11

The main mysteries of my Mt Anne experience only became mysteries once, ironically, they surprised me. The unknown unknowns actualised.

The first mystery discovered came immediately following my escape from the solid step-characterised climb to the hut at High Camp. Brobdingnagian mushroom rocks sprouted out of the hill - Henry Moore-like sculptures crowding this gallery of stone. Hard core rock was one of this walk’s defining characteristics. However, it was rock’s opposite – cloud – which dominated my circuit experience. And was mystery writ large. Mt Anne itself was almost constantly wreathed in it – sometimes still, seemingly solid – but most often ceaselessly dynamic, a peak set in a swirl of glaucous air.

Shelf Camp proved to be the ideal viewing platform to experience cloud-orama. It would be comprehensively speck-tack-u-lar

no matter what the conditions, I’d guess. But in my case, whether it was at dusk with the magician’s cape swirling hide and reveal over Mt Anne; dawn’s cloud inversion below the campers’ eyrie and the way it Christo-wrapped the ridge’s rock peaks; or – at any time – blasts of fog sweeping across the open rock and its sky-scraping wall backdrop of fluted dolerite columns, there was no time-standing-still mood here. It was truly hectic. Whenever I turned my neck or raised my eyes there was either a new frame for my surroundings, or a different artist had taken the same elements and reconfigured them.

The artists known as nature and time had been at work on the preceding Mt Eliza, too. Its open, alpine expanse – where you really begin to get a sense of this ancient ice-carved landscape – was ornamented with tarns and vivid green cushion plants. The mottled rock and flurry of tiny wildflowers were further features in the artists’ palette.

The 'easy' section between Tarn Shelf and The Notch

12 | Bushwalk October 2024

Another mystery, for me, on day one, was determining the final section of the route up Mt Anne. I just couldn’t figure it out, despite trying different instructions and routes. Solid handhold-scarce walls or highly exposed scrambles too vertical for my blood confounded me. Other walkers I encountered on the walk didn’t appear to have the same issue, so it was clearly navigational incompetence on my part. Still, I wasn’t far from the peak, and I enjoyed the rock hopping diversion off the main track and the views I did secure.

As much as the Mts of Anne, Lot and Sarah Jane – as peaks tend to do – fixate the mind, the anticipation and probably the photos, it was the ever-present Lake Judd that became a talisman of the walk for me. The walk does encircle three quarters of it, so perhaps not a surprise in that sense, but it still seemed a little bit miraculous to keep finding gorgeous cameo views of it from a myriad of locations – among them Mt Eliza, the boulder-grasping traverse to The Notch (where I was glad

to have good tackle in gardening gloves for digital and, hence, stability-enhancing security), Mt Lot and Mt Sara Jane.

Big boulders’ brethren – smaller and less trustworthy scree – made their first significant impression down the ruined knuckles of Lightning Ridge. It was a ‘be alert but not alarmed’ descent (as long as you paid attention…). I sidled in staccato lunges, parry and pause, waiting for the rocking horse ride beneath me to subside, ligaments necessarily fluid. The occasional rock stillness surprised me so much so that I almost felt betrayed when it occurred. Then the unexpected pandani glade (remnant temperate rainforest?) off the ridge to the plain by Lake Piccone.

View from Mt Lot with Lonely Tarns on the left and Lake Judd on the right

13

The forest track was comprised predominantly of slippery tree roots, another challenge to the objective of staying upright, but at least the roots and mud were a softer backside landing (frequently tested) than sharp rock (also, regrettably, tested).

Before late afternoon drizzle shut up scenery’s shop, stretching out physically and mentally by Judds Charm, at Lonely Tarns, provided one of the walk’s key dreamy not dreaming moments – where my mind fell into stream of consciousness, an organic and intuitive recalibration, multiple subjects actual and fantastical collapsing into each other with a complete lack of discipline. Freedom. It’s my wilderness mental mode, a state I wander into eyes wide open and an amorphous aspiration for these experiences. The lake reflected

much of the Mts Anne and Eliza range just traversed. The watery foreground was utterly still. I was reminded of Ali Smith’s observation that “…an apparent absence of sound (becomes) a new sound palette in itself.” The range, as usual, oscillated from stasis to its opposite, courtesy of its garlanding cloud’s restlessness.

This sense of mental drift I feel on the trail is, for me, standard. While my mind is restless with its gymnastics, at the same time it is imagining, refreshing. This state of mind is accelerated by being solo, as is the connection I feel with nature, which the presence of other people mitigates. Our species’ social character is helpful for survival, but not for reaping the rejuvenating rewards of solitude.

In the warmer months, people are unavoidable on this walk. Of those I observed, I was impressed by how one family banded together to help its least agile member get through The Notch unscarred and, it appeared, inspired! And also by one walker who recognised, on her way to Shelf Camp, that the demands of

Near Judds Charm with the Mt Anne 'range' behind

14 | Bushwalk October 2024

The Notch were likely to be a bridge too far for her capability, and returned the way she came. This humility exhibited strength, not weakness.

Day three out of Lonely Tarns began optimistically enough, with clear skies, open landscapes and a wending moderately uphill walk, through patterns of tarns and their sibling bogs. As the eastern base of Sarah Jane came into view, however, the

peak vanished as cloud, in a typically droll SW Tassie turn of events, consumed the landscape.

On the way, I fell in with a walker I’d met the evening before, Ben, and we kept each other company for the rest of the trip. Sarah Jane was an objective for both of us, and we debated the pros and cons of the climb, thinking what’s the point if you can’t see anything from the top. We threw the dice, though, meandered up its scree and boulder shoulder (health warning: the steady as a rock phrase is NA in SJ’s case), and were grateful we did. Yeah, sure, it’s the journey not the destination and all that fine talk, but that’s until you see the views from Mt Sarah Jane itself. In this instance, it’s all about the destination, trust me. A 360-degree panorama featuring Lake Judd to the west, Mts Lot and Anne to the north, and the temptations of Schnells

On Mt Sarah Jane, looking towards Lake Pedder

15

Ridge to the south, with its sibling spurs and their collection of hidden tarns (and was that, hello, the Arthur Range in the distance, sticking up its needy peak ‘hands’, clamouring for attention?).

Then came the descent – slow going due to the knee-daggering gristly cartilagic grind it induced – off the range through thick melaleuca scrub to Lake Judd’s button grass plain. The track was a steep, rugged scar, technically challenging, full physical activation and mental attentiveness required. At its base was the joy of a mud wade, until a boardwalk materialised (not very wilderness and all, but you can see its environment degradation-mitigating point).

The heart sings

From a multi-day walking perspective, Mt Anne is a mini marvel. Not long, but packed with diversity, drama and challenge (and, yes, surprises, inspirations and revelations – it did indeed make the heart sing). It’s brevity, however, is not a synonym for ‘easy’. The exposure it contains and the region’s irascible, reliably unreliable, weather means it must

be taken seriously. Plan Bs if the proverbial occurs should be in the walker’s back pocket.

By including Lots Wife and Schnells Ridge into the route, I anticipate I’d get closer to achieving the separation – from civilisation – that each of my adventures is a search for. Mentally, at least, that would also help me get closer to the ambition of Patrick White’s Voss, who sought to “discard the inessential”. Having said that, I don’t possess Mr Voss-like hardness, so my own inessential has limits – I ain’t doing SW Tassie, even in summer, without the waterproofing of tent, jacket and pants, or the down cocoons of sleeping bag and jacket. I’m all for a lack of metaphysical insulation, but not the physical, sorreee…

Mt Anne was not my first rodeo in SW Tassie. To quote Mr Voss again, it appears, “I am compelled into this country.” As I think all of us who dive into the wilderness are. And as much as the views and beauty of the walk were expected, and not a mystery in themselves, to experience them is another thing entirely, and my expectations did not lessen their impact.

Anne River’s suspension bridge

16 | Bushwalk October 2024

It did the opposite, in fact, as others’ storytelling – word, voice, visuals – are, as fascinating as they can be, almost immaterial compared to being in the moment. The chill, brusque air; wind’s force; cloud as edifice or gauze; the physical realities of multi-day walking; those views unfurling, whether with irrepressible dynamism or in utter pellucid stillness – comprised a revelation gifted by nature (or wilderness, if you’re happier calling it that…).

Ends

Craig means crag-dweller. Tarn Shelf beware, he could consider you home. Mt Anne? You’re probably safe, as he can’t find you anyway.

Tasmanian waratah

Lake Judd, an unexpected, non-peak celebrity feature of the Mt Anne Circuit

17