By road & track…
On foot to Mt Connection
Watch your step, it’s all-too-easy to slide on these loose rocks. Fire trails are not my favourite trails to follow. They are made for firetrucks, not people, and whoever makes them likes to take them straight up steep slopes. We are following the steep stony trail downhill and will be coming back this way and we will have to walk up. Not an inviting prospect.
The trail starts where the road to the summit of kunanyi-Mt Wellington, which is not far ahead and almost 100m higher, and makes a curving turn at the aptly named Big Bend.
We are at 1150m here, in the mountain’s subalpine zone. The tall forest lays below, and above is the stunted vegetation of the summit plateau’s alpine zone. This is snow gum country, a eucalyptus species that makes its home at colder, higher altitudes.
Mt Connection is our destination. It’s the first peak out from the southern end of the Wellington Range, the end that overlooks Hobart. Beyond lies Collins Bonnet, Collins Cap, Tom Thumb and Trestle Mountain, all accessible from Big Bend or by following separate trails from the farming district of Collinsvale far below. The Mt Connection walk is not a long one and you can follow foot tracks and fire trails to those more distant peaks.
The weather could not have been better. The largely cloudless blue sky and a temperature around 15°C are ideal bushwalking conditions. Down we go, watching our steps so our feet don’t slide out from under us on the loose rocks.
The vegetation opens and, as you do in the mountains, we stop look at the vista revealed to northwards. Beyond the forested lower slopes of the range, in the middle distance lies the patchwork farmland on the Derwent Valley, and there’s Mt Dromedary, a long forested ridge ending in a peak that rises to around 990m. Beyond that, ridge after ridge fading in tones of blue to the far horizon. What are those mountains? Somewhere out there is Mt Field with its forests and alpine uplands that are often covered by snow in winter. There’s Wylds Crag and there is Mt Ossa, Tasmania’s highest mountain which, if visible at all, would only be a bump on the horizon and barely distinguishable in the blue haze of distance. These peaks and ridges are the haunts of bushwalkers.
The walking track to Mt Connection leaves the fire trail to track more or less southwards through thicker a vegetation of low trees with a dense scrubby understorey. It is good to be off the fire trail and on a narrow walking track, however we still have to watch where we step because like many mountain tracks in Tasmania, this one is stony. It would be all too easy to slip off a rock or to get your foot caught and sprain your ankle. I’ve taken a spill on a track like this, slipping on a rock to find myself sprawled on the ground. No injury, thankfully. As it happens, Fiona will take a spill later on, but other than a bruise she will have no other injury.
Around 400m along we come to a sign where the track makes an abrupt turn to the north. Collins Bonnet, the sign says. Here we start a gentle downhill run that brings us out into a heathland through which flows the tannin brown waters of a narrow creek. A boardwalk comes and goes to take us between stony sections of track and across a section that would be boggy in wet weather. Walking is faster along the boards than along the rocky track and soon we are climbing through a forest of low trees and scrub to the summit ridge of Mt Connection.
On cresting the ridge we decide to descend a distance to find somewhere to stop for lunch. We find a sloping slab of rock that will do just fine, and there, directly across from us, is the bulk of Collins Bonnet. It looks imposing from here and were we continuing on to climb it we would follow the track where it steepens to rejoin the fire trail and then ascend to the ridge. Like the fire trail we descended at the start of our walk, this one too looks steep, rocky and uninviting.
We don’t have time to continue on to Collins Bonnet today but sitting there eating our crispbread biscuits with home-grown capsicum and mini-Roma tomatoes with tuna, we talk about making the climb from Collinsvale. That track will take us steeply up through the temperate rainforest until it reaches the open tops above, then on to the Bonnet.
The land falls to the broad ridge connecting Mt Connection and Collins Bonnet. It is a divide separating the watersheds of the Derwent Valley and the Huon Valley to the south. In the far distance are the serpentine curves of the Huon River and the town of Huonville amid the valley’s farmland. From close to where we sit, Mountain River cascades at the bottom of a steep and deep forested valley. Eventually, it feeds into the Huon River. Flowing eastwards, the waters of Sorell Creek descend through a similar steep valley to Collinsvale and the Derwent River beyond. With its peaks and valleys, this is a dramatic landscape.
Time to head back. We pack our lunch stuff, swing packs onto backs and start to retrace our steps. Circuit tracks are what most people like but retracing the route that you took to get somewhere allows you to see the land differently. The main features might be the same but it is the detail you see as you walk and the perspective that makes it different.
We follow the foot track up through the forest of small, scraggly trees, crest the ridge and start descending to the heathland. Time for a break, says Fiona. We stopped here on the way out, so let’s stop here again. She takes her pack off and sits on the log where we sat earlier, but I leave my pack on. Fiona is carrying the food so she digs into her pack to extract a muesli bar and takes the water bottle from the side pocket. I sit on the log and… CRACK!… it gives way and we topple backwards into the scrub, lay there stunned for a moment then laugh at our predicament. I have to remove my pack to get up.
The freedom of the hills
I walk on to where I can see the land further to the south. There, far in the blue distance, is Hartz Peak in the Hartz Mountains where a walking track takes you to the peak past lakes carved into the mountain rock by the glaciers of the Pleistocene. The 1300m peak of Mt Picton rises to the right and to the left the 1168 metres of Mt la Perouse far away on the Southern Ranges at the far southeastern end of Tasmania.
I scan the horizon. What’s that? That mountain with the serrated ridge? I consult my peak finder app. Can it be? It is. Precipitous Bluff. I realise I am looking at the far southern extremity of Tasmania. Rising above New River Lagoon on Tasmania’s wilderness south coast, walkers on the seven or so day South Coast Track catch sight of this mountain as they approach the Lagoon.
Looking out over this mountainous landscape I experienced one of those peak moments that lift you above the everyday, those moments when the mind expands to fill the landscape in front of you and you gain a perspective not only of the land but also of the mind. I have had these peak moments before, usually in the mountains but also where some high vantage point reveals a landscape spread below. I value them. Just like the forest and the mountains, peak moments are highlights that stay with you.
Standing here, looking out to the horizon, Tasmania appears a small island of corrugated terrain. The straight line distance between mountains might not be great, however, getting to them on foot can take days. Distance, though, is their attraction… the freedom to wander their terrain with all you need in the pack on your back.
Our short walk today has afforded that freedom to wander, to enjoy ‘the freedom of the hills’ as the name of the book by The Mountaineers puts it. You don’t need high and distant mountains to experiences this freedom. The Wellington Range close to Hobart is wild country enough, the type of country that people in other cities lack.
This was an out and back walk and, yes, that stony fire trail going back was steep, however it seems shorter than going out. It’s always like this in the mountains, isn’t it? The journey out seems to take longer than a journey back? The track was steep and rocky and we have just walked up it. Sure, it was a bit tiring but less so than I thought it would be.
Not far from the end of the track I sit on a rock and look out over a landscape in which patches of green farmland lead the eye to ridges of misty blue. A long ridge in the middle distance is edged with deeply shaded gullies. Light shines from tree tops to contrast with darker patches of forest and right over there on the horizon… peaks and ridges with even more behind. The sky is as blue and cloudless as it was when we set out. The afternoon warm but not so warm that walking leaves you with a layer of sweat from exertion. A light, cooling breeze came up and my mind settles into that calm space that you enter when you sit and contemplate the land.
By road & track…
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