halfway up the peak of mount murchison, in early january, it’s about three degrees. i hike up alone, one morning after the rain lifts. periodically clouds will pass over the face of the mountain, and cold droplets of water will condense on my skin. when the clouds part i can see shaded lake just below me, and east, towards mount ossa, the central plateau, and the walls of jerusalem.
then the next wave breaks, and again i am alone on the mountain, in the primordial un-world that came before human beings, that is only the stone, water vapour and light.
a flooded sinkhole, in the tarkine. the trunks of three dead trees stand on the opposite side. the water is deep and black, and the sky is full of dragonflies.
in the height of summer, i spend around a week on lake pedder. i island-hop in my kayak, crossing between what were once mountain peaks. the days are warm, and the nights are mild. i understand this is rare- it’s not uncommon for these mountains to get a dusting of snow once or twice over summer, when the winds converge just so, bringing a plume of frigid polar air over from the antarctic.
i see very little animal life out on the islands, and no people. once i see a boat pass on the far side of the lake, but it passes north, toward the shallower waters, with more buried trees for fish to hide between. lake pedder is poor for fishing, and even it’s contribution to the state’s hydroelectric capacity has dwindled over the past few decades.
before the dam was built, the original, much smaller lake was famous for a long, pink sand beach- made up of quartzite ground down by glaciers over tens of thousands of years. a comparison of the shoreline, from topographic hiker’s maps, can be seen on slides two and three. a sample of the local quartzite rock can be seen on slide four- a smooth stone, silky to the touch, with fine, glittering grains of crystal in it’s matrix.
periodically a movement will gain momentum to dismantle scott’s peak dam, and restore pedder beach- which still lies beneath the red tannin water of the lake, more or less intact. the local buttongrass is hardy and would likely creep back down to the shore within a decade or so. i met a woman in a book shop in burnie, who had flown to pedder beach once, by seaplane. she said:
“you could never imagine it. in the middle of summer, all the mountains around you, it (the beach) was pink, like fairy floss. there was nothing like it in the world, in the world”
it's raining, in rosebery. i can hear the sounds from the mine in the distance.
no one seems to be on the road. i get a coffee from the one store thats's open. there's a pizza restaurant that's closed up, and has been for a while, but all the equipment's still inside, and no one seems to have touched it. there's a stack of pizza boxes, with the top one sitting open. dust has settled over everything. petrol is $175.9 per litre. atmospheric carbon content is at 430 parts per million.
silos from the old cement works on maria island, built to hold limestone from the cliffs for processing. it’s a mild day, with only a thin white cloud covering the floor of the sky. the grass is long and shifts in the light breeze, dry and pale.
i drive south of queenstown to see if i can make it up to mount darwin, and get a view of the impact crater from above.
on the way, i pass three sheep that are walking single-file down mount jukes road. two of them pay me little mind, but one of them- the one pictured- is particularly friendly, and likes having his head scratched above the nose and behind the ears. a woman driving in to work stops too, and when i walk over to speak to her, the sheep follows me and nudges me for more scratches. she tells me she may know the man who owns them, and when express surprise at finding them so fair into the rainforest, she shrugs and says "it's the west coast". the sheep eventually continue up the road, seemingly going somewhere, in single file once more.
i drive further south, and stop to photograph foxgloves growing in the siding. they dance in the summer wind, flashes of violet against the deep blue-greens of the rainforest, and the bright summer sky. driving back into town in the evening, after a long day stomping down a muddy track on the rim of the crater, and bathing myself in lake burbery, i spy the sheep again, as they're nibbling at the grass outside an abandoned sawmill, and while i see them only for an instant, as my eyes flick back to the road and i pass back into the rainforest, i can recall the softness of his wool, and his weight against my leg as he leans against me, and the warmth of his breath as i pet him. i think to myself: it's okay, little sheep, i'm an invasive animal too.
through the gaps between plastic blinds, in our motel rooms in coffs harbour, stella spots vivid crimson rays, and we rush down to the beach. the sun descends beneath the rainforest mountains to the west, and casts the last lights of day onto a constellation of storms moving out to sea, flaring out at the tropopause, pushing down on the LCL, islands upon islands upon islands
a colossal subtropical storm cell moves out to sea. it’s around midnight, and warm. the lightning is constant, though from where i stand on the beach, the display is silent.
i visit the gondwana relic rainforests at dorrigo for the fist time. i have been meaning to come here for years, but the opportunity never came.
this forest has been here for one hundred and sixty million years. fossils of these trees are buried under the antarctic ice sheet.
it stormed last night. waves of mist move over the escarpment. the forest is strangely silent, and the air feels thick and damp in my lungs, like breathing clouds. where the treeline drops down into the valley, and the canopy follows the mountain down, the dense rainforest become only fog. the world ends, only a zero-information state follows, signal becoming noise
