A mountain story memoir…
Lost in the mountains
Some years ago I was a member of a search and rescue unit in Tasmania. Those were the days before the ready availability of helicopters and the State Emergency Services. Searches and rescues were left to the police and to volunteer teams from bushwalking and climbing clubs.
It was not uncommon for people to get lost in the state’s rugged mountains and on its wide boggy plain in those days, and it is not uncommon today. As I write, a search is underway for a missing woman in Western Tasmania. She presumably set out for a day walk to a waterfall close to where her car was located in the car park. That is all that is known.
This is the story of a search on Tasmania’s Central Plateau, an elevated, rocky geography of boggy button grass, scattered snow gums and numerous small lakes and ponds known locally as tarns.
First published 2001.
“VECTOR west 180 degrees now. We are on the other side of the button grass plain. Look for our orange marker”.
I release the transmit button and await the pilot’s acknowledgment. Three or four kilometres to our east, way over on the other side of a broad button grass plain, the Bell Jet Ranger tilts and makes a sweeping turn, coming towards where we stand at the edge of the treeline. The helicopter slows as it descends, hesitating as the pilot seeks solid ground on which to put down. This is boggy country and he would not want to touch down and feel the machine subside sideways into wet, peaty soil. Gently, the skids make contact with the earth, the rotor winds down until there remains only the whine of the turbine.
A door opens and out climb two men. We lead them into the open forest of eucalyptus, over to where a log fell across a trail many years ago. I point to fresh-looking scuff marks on the log and the older man bends down, his weatherbeaten face suggesting a lifetime spent in the highlands. He places his hand next to the scuffmarks, wrinkles his face as if in deep thought and then announces: “Probably made a day or two ago”.
Tasmania’s Central Plateau is an easy place to get lost on. The undulating, rocky terrain supports a sparse vegetation of tussocky button grass growing in moist and sometimes swampy soil interspersed with belts of snow gum. Hundreds of lakes, known locally as ‘tarns’, dot this region which occupies an extensive uplifted area that forms the central land mass of the state and is known as the Central Plateau. There is a sameness to the landscape. Even rural people lose their way.
Callout
Hobart. Four or so in the afternoon. The phone rings. The voice is authoritative, its message brief. “This is police search and rescue. We have an alert. Can you be at the police garage ready to leave for the Central Plateau at 7.30? Pack for overnight”. I reply in the affirmative and go home to pack.
Members of search and rescue keep a pack and essentials more or less ready to go. I check its contents. Ground sheet/tarp, sleeping bag, wet weather clothes, warm clothing, first aid kit, beanie and cap, wool gloves and waterproof mitts, folding knife, billy and eating utensils. Yes, all there. I toss in some snacks. I don’t know if we will be overnighting in the field. Probably be out and back to search base each day if we are out for that long. If so, then I will take just day walk kit in the small daypack I stow on top of my other stuff. If we overnight in the field we will combine our ground sheets into a shelter and sleep under that. Done that before. I grab a bite to eat and then walk to the police garage.
We are on the road by 9.30, driving through the darkness of the Derwent Valley, through the sleeping town of Ouse, climbing through the night toward the Central Plateau. The bus is old and slow and is the type designed for hauling passengers around city suburbs rather than for long-distance travel. There are no headrests so the team members contort themselves into bizzarre shapes in an attempt to get some sleep. A few stretch out along the passageway.
We arrive at the start point at 4.30am to find a few police officers standing around, a couple police Range Rovers and two large tents. Into one of these we stumble to get what sleep we can find. Briefing is at 5.30 when daylight will be starting to seep aross the sky.
The weather is fine and coo. For that we are thankful because search and rescue is sometime conducted in foul weather. Maybe, perhaps, we will stay dry today.
Briefing
5.30am. Cups of hot tea steam in the cold air as we stand around the map in the pre-dawn glow. The officer briefs us on the situation. A teenage boy is missing, a local of these parts. He set out and has not returned. His destination is unknown.
“There’s a hut in the trees on the western shore of this lake”, the officer tells the group, indicating a point four or so hours north of our location.
“Select three others”, he says to me, “take a radio and go check it out. Report your position hourly and call in with what you find when you get there and we’ll let you know what to do next”.
I look at the terrain on the map, planning our course. It is mainly untracked terrain interspersed with expanses of button grass and patches of forest. Our route lies almost directly northwards. This is undulating country, no steep hills to climb and descend.
The early morning chill hangs in the air as we move out. It is cool enough to wear wool shirts or pullovers but it is far from the cold that is common in this country. Other parties are going off to other points. Because of the fog the helicopter has been delayed and will be leaving Hobart in an hour or so.
We figure we are on the most likely route for walkers trekking out to the hut although we have no idea of the lost boy’s destination. A faint track comes and goes through the button grass and the bands of forest. Clearly, people pass this way from time to time, but not all that often and not all that many. In places it looks like the sort of track that wombats make — an animal pad. Elsewhere the track appears a little too substantial for an animal trail, but only just.
The walking is easy and the day looks as though it will stay fine although you never know, it changes quickly in the mountains. Fine, clear weather is good news because the visibility it brings increases the chance of finding someone. The more atrocious the weather, the more critical the timeframe to locate someone, especially if they are poorly equipped for cold, wet conditions. Bad weather is tiring for the searchers too, especially if they don’t get adequate sleep before starting the search. Tiredness increases the chance of accidents and of missing clues, and searching can be a tiring business even in the best of weather because searchers might be out in difficult terrain for a long time.
We walk at a moderate pace so as not to miss sign left by the missing boy, scanning the countryside as we go. An hour in, we find the scuff marks and radio search base, describe our find and our map coordinates. The helicopter has now arrived and they despatch it with two local trackers.
Reconnaissance
If the destination and route a lost person takes is not known, a reconnaissance is the first phase of a search operation. It involves walking, driving or flying the main tracks and visiting huts and known campsites in the area. It is about checking out the most likely places they would go. Walkers who are ill or injured are likely to be found during this phase. It is on a reconnaissance search that we are now engaged.
If missing people are not found during the reconnaissance, but promising sign of their whereabouts is, a more detailed search may be conducted. Minor tracks and less frequently used camping and shelter locations are checked. Anyone encountered is asked if they have seen the missing person. Clearly, having someone who is familiar with the area will speed things along and increase the chance of finding a lost hiker. Where they may be in a smaller, more defined area, a line search might find them. This involves setting up a line of searchers who move close together over an area looking for sign. I had only been on a line search in training and all that was found was a large tiger snake.
Once, all seachers were carried out on the ground. Now helicopters are brought in. Quite a lot can be seen by flying low and slow over the terrain. But what you miss are the small signs of a person’s passing. If you want to find those then you have to be on the ground, on foot. Whatsmore, pilots will not take their machines up in the poor weather that foot searchers venture out in.
Alone
The boy we are searching for has been alone on the Plateau for two nights. The only sign of him was his yellow waterproof parka found by a tree around a kilometre north of the search base. It has been left hanging there in case he comes back that way. After that, there is no indication of the direction he took, no sign of his passage… nothing.
Why he left his parka puzzles us. Waterproof clothing is not the sort of thing to be abandoned in high country noted for rapid changes in weather and the onset of cold conditions. He was equipped for only a day out and having lost his parka, those who know this country are concerned for his wellbeing. Nights have been cold but not frigid. All the same, cold saps strength and without protective clothing or the means to light a fire a person expends a lot of energy trying to stay warm. Fortunately, there has been no rain while he has been missing.
The killer in these highlands is hypothermia, the progressive loss of body core temperature that ends with collapse and death. Leaders know to keep an eye on their bushwalking party for signs oftiredeness and lethargy, confusion, slurred speech and disorientation that indicate hypothermia. The possibility that we are looking for a body is not far from our minds.
On course
The scuffing on the log — it looks like someone has dragged their boot as they stepped over — is inconclusive. Yes, it could have been the boy but it just as well could have been someone else, a trout fishermen, maybe a bushwalker.
The crew returns to the helicopter, doors close, turbine whines, rotor picks up speed and the machine lifts upward and disappears to the south. Back at search base it will take aboard a team and drop them to our north-west where they will search around a more-distant lake. Silence returns. We continue through the belt of trees and out onto a button grass plain.
Coming out of the trees we stop to scan the open grassland between us an the next tree belt. To do this we divide the view into quarters and scan each quarter in turn. What we would see first is movement, then silhouette, then bright colour, for it is in this order that things are noticed. It is only in closer proximity that sound is of any value, however experienced mountain walkers carry a whistle, the sound of which can carry a fair distance depending on wind strength and direction. We do not know if the boy has one. We see nothing out of the ordinary.
On searches like this you watch both the far and near distance. It is in the near distance, the space around you, that you find the small sign — a scuff mark on a log, the imprint of boots in wet soil, belongings, branches freshly snapped off, remains of a recent campfire, food wrappers, even a direction-of-travel arrow scratched into the soil or tree trunk if the missing person has their wits about them.
Taking a compass bearing we check our direction of travel on the map. Still on course and more than half way to our objective, the lake. We cross the grassy opening, pass through another belt of trees, then out onto another grassy plain. Not far to go now. The undulating terrain has made our passage easy and fast but you can’t help but notice how the sameness of the terrain and its pattern of vegetation would make it easy to get lost in.
Then, in the middle distance, a lake, though it is not our destination lake. This is a smaller body of water, one of the nameless hundreds that dot the Central Plateau. All the same, it’s the sort of place where a lost person would seek shelter and firewood. We go check it out.
“Look!”, exclaims the man closest to the water. He is pointing at two boot prints in the sand of the lakeshore. “They look fairly recent”. And they do. The lugs of the sole have incised deeply into the moist sand and have not eroded yet. But is the print too big for that of a teenage boy? It seems so. If that is the case, and if they belong to the person who scraped the fallen log we came across earlier, then that was not sign left by the missing person.
Like most lakes out here, this one is surrounded by a narrow band of trees and among them we search for more sign, but the prints are the only indication that someone has passed this way recently. Whoever made the footprints was moving north, in the same direction we are going, and not all that long ago.
I click the transmit button: “Search base, team 1”.
The reply is immediate: “Team one, search base”.
I pass on news of the boot print and our grid reference.
“Copy that, team one, look around the lake then proceed on to your search destination and call in when you get there”.
The work of grinding ice
Tasmania’s Central Plateau was scoured into its flattish, undulating shape under the weight of an ancient ice cap. The tremendous pressure of the ice on the dolerite rock scoured hundreds of scrapes and pits which, when the ice age ended between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago, filled with water to become the lakes we see today. Over time, a vegetation of mosses and lichens, button grass, snow gum and other species adapted to the cycle of summer heat and winter cold colonised the bare rock. Birds found habitat here. Thickly-furred possums, Bennetts wallaby and wombat found the terrain to be a good home. So, during the warmer months, did the people who crossed the land bridge today flooded by Bass Strait, as well as those whose antecedents came later from distant shores.
Forested patches in areas slightly higher than that occupied by the button grass spread in clumps and drifts to create a vegetation that alternates haphazardly between forest and grassland. Periodically, bushfires sweep this region. They burn rapidly across the button grass and, when hot enough, kill the snow gums to leave the stark, grey skeletons we see in the copses around us. In winter the plateau is frequently under snow and cold wind howls in from the west. Few venture out here then.
This can be visually confusing terrain for those lacking a sense of direction or a compass. It is easy to head in one direction and be turned from that course to follow an easier route. That is why the search is covering such a broad area.
The hut
“The hut is in the trees a few metres from the shore”, I tell the team. “If we walk along the edge of the treeline we should find it.”
The first lake, the one with the boot prints, was a waypoint on our search. No further sign of the person who left those bootprints in the sand had been found. Sure, it was a bit of a mystery and we wondered who had come by this way so recently, and why, and where were they going, but such concerns were not our priority at the moment. We knew that people did do solo walks in isolated places and I had encountered one or two on my own wanderings in the mountains. Still, some time recently someone walked this way, going in the same direction that we were and had stepped out onto the sandy shore of the lake… and then left no further trace of their passage.
This larger lake with its more substantial stand of fringing forest is our destination. We move along the western edge of the trees where they give way to the button grass.
“Here’s a bit of a track”, one of the team calls. Sure enough, a faint path had been worn through the vegetation. Animal pad or human path? We follow it. “There it is”, he says, pointing to the grey timbers of a hut partially visible through the trees.
The hut is of medium-size, as the scale of mountain huts go, not all that old and in good condition, a sign that it is used regularly. But by whom? Fishermen, probably, less likely by bushwalkers who would prefer to travel on to the mountainous Lake St Clair region further west. What motivated someone to build here? And why this lake? What is it that they do out here? Questions come and go in search of an explanation of why someone, perhaps a group of friends, would go to the trouble to build a hut on the shore of a nameless lake a few hours walk out onto Tasmania’s Central Plateau. Trout, and the conviviality of friends around the fire. That was probably the answer.
We push the door open to reveal… an empty hut. Check the fireplace. Is the ash warm? No. What about other signs of recent use? None. The hut has that empty, dusty feel of a place unvisited for some time. So, perhaps the missing boy did not make for this hut after all. Did he even know it exists?
We inform search base and are instructed to return. We walk faster on our way back but we remain alert for any sign left by the boy. We don’t talk much as we are starting to feel tired after a largely sleepless night and early start.
Companions
My companions, like me, are used to long days on the trail in mountain country. They know how rapidly mountain weather can change from sunny to snowy, from fine to cold rain. It’s usually only people with experience in the mountains who volunteer for search and rescue because it can be difficult. Today was more a pleasant walk compared to what some callouts are.
The police provide the wherewithal of searches. There might be a couple training weekends a year. This is necessary so they can have confidence in the search and rescue teams, and vice versa. Fortunately, callouts are rare.
The radio crackles
We walked on more of less the same way we had come out and are on the trail for perhaps an hour when the radio crackles: “All units, all units. The boy has been found. Return to search base”. Our pace is now faster. We make good time.
The boy was well but he was not found by any of the search teams. That afternoon, he wandered into a town on the edge of the Plateau and sought out the local police.
Debrief over, vehicles packed, we board the rickety, uncomfortable bus and start the journey home. A few murmur quiet conversations but most are too tired to talk and sit immersed in their own worlds. Some doze.
One point made during the debrief, and a valid one it is, was that we should never assume that we are searching for a body.
