Mountain sunshine and Windy Moor

Mt Field National Park has to be one of the most magical places. It has everything scenic – and only an hour's drive from Hobart. There are  picturesque waterfalls and temperate rain-forest in the vicinity of the Visitors' Centre at the entrance to the park and the sixteen kilometre drive to Lake Dobson brings you within easy walking distance of mountain tarns, sheer cliffs, rocky slopes, high moors and alpine scenery. On the way you pass Lake Fenton, source of much of Hobart's drinking water.

I've always thought Seagers Lookout, above Lake Fenton, looks terribly forbidding with its dramatic boulder-covered slopes so it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I set out to climb it on the way to Mount Field East.

I needn't have worried. The track leading up the hidden, not so scary, side is well-marked and, although wet in places, not particularly steep. 

Lake Fenton and the Rodways in the distance

waiting for the rest of the party - the climb gets serious

my favourite scenery - boulders and twisted trees

the gap between rocks is just wide enough to squeeze through

Lake Fenton and the Rodways from Seagers Lookout

morning tea, and a round of the perennially favourite game - "Now what's that mountain?"

Bonnie spots some scenery

and here it is

After morning tea on top of Seagers Lookout we retraced our path to the junction with the Mount Field East track.

At first there was duck-boarding over the muddiest patches, then we reached Windy Moor.

track junction - to Lake Nicholls or up the mountain

the ascent begins

onward and upward

the summit in sight

The structure at the top is the remains of a Sprent cairn constructed during the first survey of Tasmania.
James Sprent (1808-1863) arrived in Hobart Town in May 1830 and opened a public school in Liverpool St. In August 1833 he was appointed temporary assistant surveyor and as part of a trigonometrical survey of Van Diemen's Land set up survey points throughout the south-eastern part of the island. The precise form of these markers depended on available materials, so there were a lot of ten-foot-high stone cairns constructed on rocky mountaintops.

The exact number of cairns built by Sprent is uncertain, many have been partly demolished, and some have modern survey beacons erected on their remains.  The most blatant act of vandalism was the complete demolition of the Sprent cairn on Mt Field East in the mid 1980’s. Less than 12 Sprent cairns remain substantially intact. (ref. Fred Lakin in Tasmanian Tramp, reprinted in Wildcare incorporated newsletter)

An extremely dark green person who believed there should be no man-made objects in a national park took it upon himself to remove Sprent's marker. How he coped with ski-tows, duck-boarding, footbridges and improved paths is a mystery; perhaps the cairn was an easier target.

Sprent's map of Tasmania was completed by 1859 and you can purchase a copy of it from Tasmaps, should you wish to do so: https://www.tasmap.tas.gov.au/do/product/HISTCHART/HISTSPRENT1

After lunch on the summit of Mt Field East where lizards darted over the rocks and we basked contentedly in the warm spring sunshine, we made our way back to the track junction and headed downhill to Lake Nicholls.

view from the top - that's Mt Wellington, on the distant horizon

picking our way back down the mountain

first view of Lake Nicholls (right in the centre of the photo)

day-use hut at Lake Nicholls

From Lake Nicholls we followed the narrow ridge bounding the end of the lake, then it was all downhill back to Lake Dobson road. According to a party member's electronic recording device, we had covered 10.6 kilometres.

It's a great walk - do it!

More about Sprent cairns: http://www.wildcaretas.org.au/news_details?news_id=194
Sprent's biography: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sprent-james-2687

THE NAKED BUSHRANGER

The Lichen Hill walk is considered one of the best short walks on the Tasman Peninsula. Of course, this depends how you define "short" - at about twenty kilometres it's certainly shorter than the stroll out to Cape Pillar, for example. And it certainly is a beautiful walk if you don't mind having to push through a bit of prickly scrub.

Pirates' Bay from sea level; as most people see it.

This is another view

We parked at the Devil's Kitchen (for those unfamiliar with the area, it's on the coast slightly left of the centre of the above photo) and walked along the cliff-tops past Waterfall Bay to Tatnell's Hill, just visible on the right. The pointy bit is Clemes Peak, not on today's itinerary.

Forestier Peninsula and a bit of Pirates' Bay from below the summit of Tatnell's Hill

Tatnell's Hill is the second-highest peak on the Tasman Peninsula.  And this is what the summit looks like.

Knowledgeable persons tell me this is a morel and is not only edible but is considered a great delicacy and highly sought after. I'll take their word for it. There were plenty of them about, but none of us felt like risking a nibble.

There were lots of puffballs, too. Nobody has ever tried to tell me they are edible.

The highest point on the peninsula; nothing to see here

This is the summit of Lichen Hill, the highest peak on the peninsula; it's five metres higher than Tatnell's hill. Nothing to see but some dry bushland so we moved along to a more picturesque lunch spot.

Lichen Hill certainly deserves its name. The variety of shapes and colours was wonderful – but like so many wonderful natural things, it was hard to really capture them in a photograph.

Impossible to photograph - this huge and incredibly beautiful carpet spreading over rocks just below the summit.

Much of this area was logged in the early days, and here and there are massive, rotting tree-stumps to remind us of the size of some of the trees taken out. Somewhere along the ridge-line we came across relics of the timber-cutters. Rusting machinery under all this moss suggests there may have been a bush sawmill here once.

The pink ribbon on the stump is a navigational aid for bushwalkers. The track is well marked, which is a good thing as it's very difficult to see in some places; often it was a blurry as this photograph (left).

We came down Lichen Hill onto the road leading up to a hang-gliders' platform, which provided the splendid view back over the Blowhole and Pirates' Bay at the top of this page. Then we picked our way further downhill to Cash's Lookout, named after Martin Cash, the "gentleman bushranger".

Cash was an Irishman who was transported to NSW in 1927 for housebreaking. He served out his sentence and obtained a ticket-of-leave, but just couldn't stay out of trouble and fled to Tasmania after a spot of cattle-duffing. He was soon convicted of larceny; escaped from prison three times in three years, remaining at large for almost two years before he was caught again and sent to Port Arthur. Escape from the Peninsula was supposed to be impossible, but Cash, with his companions Jones and Kavanagh, succeeded.

After a career as bushrangers, during which the three became notorious for robbing inns and wealthy landowners,  they were recaptured. This time Cash barely escaped hanging and was sent off to Norfolk Island where he was a model prisoner. Eventually he was released again, spent a few years in New Zealand then came back to Hobart and settled down at Glenorchy, overseeing the Government gardens on the Domain and running a small farm of his own.

Never resorting to undue violence and generally treating their victims respectfully while relieving them of their money, Cash and his companions became popular villains. In later life Cash was persuaded by a journalist, James Lester Burke, into narrating his story, which Burke edited. It was published in 1870 and has been reprinted many times. Pick up a copy in a second-hand book shop and enjoy a rollicking good read.

Eaglehawk Neck from Cash's Lookout

Norfolk Bay from Cash's Lookout

Cash's Lookout is a rocky outcrop on the hill overlooking Eaglehawk Neck that gave the boys a good vantage point from which to watch the guards at the Neck and plan a strategy.

In the end they swam across Norfolk Bay but lost all their clothes and possessions in the process and were forced to cross the Forestier Peninsula without the protection of boots or trousers.

This is Richea Dracophylla. Don't be fooled by the pretty flowers. The pointy caps drop off as the flower opens, but those leaves are big, rigid and sharp. This is only one example of the dense anti-pedestrian flora Cash, Kavanagh and Jones would have encountered. Not to mention leeches, jackjumpers and other biting insects.

They built 'em tough in those days.

ref. Australian Dictionary of Biography http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cash-martin-1885

Agricultural Gothic - visiting Shene stables

As pony-besotted teenagers being driven up the Midlands Highway we were too busy looking out for horses along the way to notice many buildings. An exception was an imposing stone edifice marooned in the middle of bare, flat paddocks just north of Pontville. We knew it had been erected as stables, and that the accompanying farmhouse was far less grand – quite insignificant, in fact. Here, we felt, were people who had their priorities right.

That was a long time ago. The last of our ponies has long gone to that verdant pasture in the sky and we are getting old. But the magnificent stables at Shene are still standing and the view across the paddocks towards Mount Wellington is still recognisable as the one Mary Morton Allport and John Glover painted in the early nineteenth century.

Last weekend we went for a bracing walk on Butler's Tier before settling our feet under the table in one end of the lovingly refurbished stable for afternoon tea.

working up an appetite

climbing the last slope

But why did the owners of Shene apparently neglect their own comfort so their horses could live in luxury?

Gamaliel Butler Esq. is the man most closely associated with the history of Shene, although others had owned the property before him. Born in 1783 he was a lawyer, practising for eighteen years in Watling St., London. In July 1824 he and his wife arrived in Van Diemen's Land to find out what had happened to his £10,000  investment in a cargo of sugar. Although they had intended returning to England, Mr Butler was admitted as a practitioner in the Supreme Court; the colony was barely twenty years old, and no doubt highly educated men were in short supply. By the time the sugar business was satisfactorily resolved, the Butlers had settled in and could see great opportunities for a smart man with a bit of money and some legal training. He was in on the ground floor of a new venture.

The Butler children had been left behind in England to be educated and raised as proper English gentlemen and women. The youngest, Francis, who had been only a year old when his parents set sail, studied architecture, and on graduating joined his parents at Pontville.

Right up until the middle of the twentieth century Pontville freestone was famous as a building material, and there was plenty on the Butler property. Labour was plentiful and cheap; there were convicts assigned to landowners, and there was a pool of ex-convicts who had been set free to survive or starve as best they could when their sentences expired. And here comes an enthusiastic, newly-graduated architect keen to make a name for himself and set up practice in a new country.

So young Francis set to work to build his Cotswold-style masterpiece that would prove he had skills worthy of hire. No doubt Mr Butler Snr. was not at all averse to possessing the smartest stables in the colony and supported his son's ambitions.

Even with free labour and materials it takes time to build a large stone building, and the work was still incomplete when circumstances beyond his control thwarted young Frank's efforts. In 1852 Gamaliel Butler died, and the following year the Victorian gold rush began. There was a boom in export of timber, fruit and grain to Victoria, and those who could take advantage of the new market did very well.

However, farm labourers vanished from the land, off to seek their fortune in the gold fields and many large landowners had to give up outlying properties over the next few years because there simply wasn't the manpower to work them. Even the source of cheap labour – convicts – dried up with the last 1,507 arriving in 1853. By 1855 the Tasmanian economy was in decline and completing a ridiculously elaborate barn for somebody's horses would not have had a high priority. In 1874 the Butler family sold the property.

from: the Mercury, 26 October 1874; p. 4

Roberts & Co Are favoured with instructions from the Trustees under the will of the late Gamaliel Butler, Esq , to sell by public auction, at the mart, on

FRIDAY, 18th December next Commencing at half-past eleven sharp,

The Estate of SHENE, Bagdad, at present in occupation of J. Butler, Esq., close to the main road to Launceston, within three miles of the probable station of the Main Line Railway at Brighton, and l8 miles from Hobart Town, bounded by properties of Hopkins, Hayes,Lord, and others.

The land contains 5,600 acres, of which 800 acres, including a part of the rich Bagdad Valley, have been cultivated; there are large orchards, and the whole is abundantly watered by the Bagdad Rivulet and other streams, the former being stocked with trout. There are also two large ponds well stocked with English fish.

The buildings are mostly substantially constructed of cut stone, and comprise large dwelling-house, stores, dairy, gardener's house, men's cottages, granary, wool-shed, barn, large range of stabling, coach house, &c, &c.

Maurice Weston, Esq. bought it for £13,328.10 shillings.

gothic revival detailing

stable facade and barn

The magnificent, though still unfinished, stables were in a sad state and the house not much better when the present owners, Anne and David Kernke, joined the new wave of free settlers arriving in Tasmania. There are no more land grants and assigned servants, but there are plenty of derelict colonial buildings waiting for the right people to lavish vast amounts of time and money on their restoration.

Since 2006 the Kernkes have been toiling like convicts themselves putting Shene back together, and hope that before long Francis Butler's showpiece will be completed – a century after his death in 1916.

there are matching staircases at each end of the stable

roof construction - the stables. In Stones of a Century, published in 1952, Michael Sharland wrote " . . . [at] the superb stone stables at Shene, near the road to Mangalore, . . . shingles are being replaced by iron on the once harmonious roof."

stonework - spiral staircase in the unfinished tower - the last step leads into thin air - not for the faint-hearted! 

one end of the stable loft was used as a chapel and had a lath-and-plaster ceiling, which apparently drew snorts of derision from neighbours who had never heard of such a thing in a stable!

the original flooring and stalls remain in one half of the building

window in the barn
 like many early buildings this barn was a mini-fortress, with windows designed as loopholes and heavy, barred doors

stable with unfinished tower

the homestead

covered well

A new field of study in Tasmania is convict graffiti. One of the Butlers has carved his initials into the brickwork by the door to the dairy. The scratches on the course below are thought to be a folk ritual sign intended to ward off evil. There are several other signs scratched into the stonework around the stables. These were commonly placed by the doors and windows of dairies and other buildings used to store or prepare food or house animals to prevent dark spirits entering. Such markings are relatively common in England, some of them dating from the thirteenth century, but so far Shene is the only Tasmanian site where they have been found. No doubt there are many more, should those occupying old buildings start looking.

interior of the dairy

the meat room retains its shingle roof 

passageway in the homestead

Francis Butler did a few architectural jobs around Hobart – the Battery Point Community Hall on the corner of Hampden Rd and Francis St in Battery Point; the bank building at 103 Macquarie St and the Gothic Revival church on the corner of Brisbane and Elizabeth Streets, but this hardly earned him a living. He became Commissioner of Public Works in 1871, a position he held for two years, and he retired as Commissioner of Taxes.

making short work of afternoon tea

There aren't any horses at Shene these days, although I'm told there are plans . . . 

In the meantime, drop out there yourself. Enjoy afternoon tea in the stable, inspect the homestead and see what a terrific job Anne and David are doing. Oh yes – this is a link to their website: http://shene.com.au/