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Balfour Track, Trowutta Arch 2017 Mar

Balfour Track and Trowutta Arch, Tarkine Day 4.


Sadly, we turned our back on the coast – but not before I’d got up in the dark and wended my way down to the ocean to capture moonset, long before the sun had risen. The shot here is a very long exposure.


To reach our goal, we headed from the coast on the road running east from Couta Rocks – the C214 – until signs directed us to our destination. The track runs parallel to the road, rejoining it after about an hour’s walking (plus any stops you might have). Our group did an out and back route, probably taking us the three hours recommended. The extra half hour in each direction beyond walking was used in taking copious photos of fungi and forest, and in snack time beside the beautiful Stephens Rivulet.


Of all the tracks we walked this trip, this one was my favourite. The path was narrow and non-invasive; the forest was lush and green with plentiful tree ferns and moss. I thought it would be way too dry and warm for fungi, and that there would not be much to photograph, but I was mistaken. The quaint, tiny ones were not yet out, but there were still plenty of others. Luckily for me, the other walkers had gone on ahead, so I was supposedly giving chase. However, I ended up rolling in dirt every ten paces or so at the discovery of each new delightful specimen. The fact that the others were ahead meant I didn’t have to feel guilty about holding anyone up. If and when all these marvellous sights stopped, I could keep my promise about giving chase, and if not, I’d just meet them on the rebound. I rolled in a little more humus and thoroughly enjoyed myself. (Map at end of this page)



In the afternoon, we visited the Trowutta Arch. The arch itself was spectacular, but the way to it quite ruined it for me. I hated the hard, wide, unnatural path that has been built that scars the landscape. The forest also appears to be most suspiciously “tidy”. If the bureaucrats who designed this have wheelchairs in mind, I am most curious to know how they intend getting such chairs down the steep drop to the actual arch. Are they going to pop in a lift? Stairs will hardly help. The only section I enjoyed was the part they haven’t yet attacked. I hope this is the only route they decide to tame and manicure for tourists. I wonder why it is assumed that visitors are incapable of walking on any surface other than the artificially even one they normally use for shopping. This is a sad reflection on our society if it is correct. It contradicts what is actually good for our brains – a little challenge – a matter pursued by the excellent Austrian architect, Hundertwasser, in his deliberate planning of crooked, uneven paths and walls in anything he designed. I seemed to be the only one in the group who felt this way, but for me, the sight and feel of that city-style pavement in what had once been pristine rainforest, completely jarred, and detracted markedly from any delight I might have felt in the beauty that was there. Significantly, with the forest so “clean”, there were no fungi to be seen. There was nothing much for them to decompose.


Balfour Track instructions: The orange road to the left with 17 beside it is the C214. As you can see, you turn right off it (if going up from the coast) and travel 700 ms to the start. After your one hour (plus stops) walking, you will reach the C214 again, where you either retrace your steps (NOT boring at all) or, if you have arranged a car shuffle, a car will return you to the start. As the forest is always new in a different direction, the former method is both easier and more enjoyable. The track itself is the dashed line that basically follows the Stephens Rivulet. The other dashed, very straight line to the right (east) is presumably a boundary of some sort.

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Bowes 2014 May

Mt Bowes May 2014
Entoloma rodwayii.

Mt Bowes is in the south-west, so it must, by definition, be a good mountain. As soon as I saw it on the programme I signed up.

Possibly Cortinarius levendulensis
The forecast was for a pretty dismal day – and yet fourteen of us turned up to brave it; I packed more layers and coats than for a summer’s multi-day expedition, and heaps of food in case the 4.30 a.m. start that I’d need to meet the others in Hobart at 7 would leave me more peckish than usual during the day. (It did. I was craving lunch by 10 a.m.)

Our track – not always as easy to see as this bit here! 

My mental image of what lay in store was, I guess, informed by trips to the nearby Western Arthurs: I imagined a lengthy phase of muddy button-grass plain ceding to alpine vegetation once we’d gained height. Wrong.

Having parked at the locked boom gate (en route to Mt Mueller) and swallowed the 500 ms or so of road to the cairn that marks the start of the pad, we entered the domain of melaleuca and leptospermum scrub, complete with requisite muddy pools of unknown depth to dirty our boots and gaiters. This section, however, was short – perhaps a kilometre  long – after which we entered quintessential Tolkien country, with sentinel Ents in every direction, fabulous guardians of the sylvan domains. The forest was very different to that of my normal bushwalking diet, which features huge myrtles and fatter trees; here the trees had quite narrow trunks. The bark underneath was invisible, as all wood seemed covered in a rich coating of vibrant green moss, with hairy lichen-beards hanging from horizontal surfaces. Colourful and abundant fungi were, of course, a distraction – so much so that we hardly saw our leader at all on the outward journey: he was too busy bowing obeisance to the fungi, his camera held in a suspicious position. Tannin-stained creeks, pure and gently flowing, were crossed by natural bridges made from fallen trunks.

I learned that this pad was originally the path cut by Edward Alexander Marsden in 1898, and is part of the original and much larger track going from Port Davey all the way to Fitzgerald – a very long distance – intended as an escape route for shipwrecked sailors. Snooping around the web, I have since picked up that the Port Davey track was used in 1914 to check out a rumour that a German submarine was lurking in Bathurst Harbour, intent on destroying troop ships as they rounded the coast. At that date, the track hadn’t been used since a 1905 shipwreck.

After many wonderful kilometres of this rainforested beauty, we were in a position to diverge from this path and begin the climb proper (still adorned with pink tape [mostly], but it was quite hard to find evidence of human wear on the ground). The quite steep rise was made more taxing by the presence of waist-high bauera and other bushes to keep us honest in our efforts. It took longer than I expected to reach the summit. Once up, we found a small depression out of the wind, which was necessary, as most of us had become wet from the morning of pushing through wet bushes plus the sweat generated by a healthy workout on the way up. Like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, I seemed to amuse some by the number of coats and layers that I extracted from my pack to cope with the fact that we now had to stop moving. Like little Michelin men, we sat on top eating and looking at our hard-won view of half-disclosed mountains and a grey, moody Lake Pedder way below. The vista was tantalisingly full of promises that would not be kept on this day.

There she is at last: our mountain.
I must return when there’s a better forecast, as, even on a dull day with light sprinkle and smudged, detail-less mountains, it was magic. Just imagine what it could be if the sun shone and the mountains were well defined. I will be back!

Summit view

Beautiful quartzite on top