Ship without a mast...

“And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

-The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich.

Banksia Marginata, SW Conservation Area. Hasselblad 500CM, Planar 80mm, f11/30. Ektar 100.

Lewis Plains, SW Conservation Area. Hasselblad 500CM, Sonnar 150mm, f11/15, Portra 400.

Huon Pine, Conder River. Hasselblad 500CM, f11/4 - 80mm Planar, f11/8 Sonnar 150mm, Portra 400.

Along the old road to the lighthouse...

“The greatest enemy of authority is defiance, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.”

-Hannah Arendt

Gorge, SW Conservation Area, f16/125, Ektar 100, Hasselblad 500CM, 80mm Planar, Dec 2023.

Burnt buttongrass. SW Conservation Area, f8/250, Ektar 100, Hasselblad 500CM, 80mm Planar, Dec 2023.

D’Aguilar Range, f11/60, Ektar 100, Hasselblad 500CM, 80mm Planar, Dec 2023.

The Way of Dragons

“All that is of dragons belongs only to dragons.” -Robin Hobb

The Arena, Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm, f8/30, Ektar 100, Nov 2023.

Mt Robinson. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 150mm, f11/60, Ektar 100, Nov 2023.

Late light in the SW. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 150mm, f11/15, Ektar 100, Nov 2023.

The narrowing path

“And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do…”

-Ursula K Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea

Only one way to go. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 150mm, f5.6/125, Ektar 100, Nov 2023.

The Arena, Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm, f8/60 Ektar 100, Nov 2023.

Cliffs. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm, f8/125, Ektar 100, Nov 2023.

Grayscale

People come, people go,

The rock stands still,

Though the wind may blow.

-A.S. 21/01/2024, Lenah Valley

GB. Nov 2023. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm, Ilford Panf 50+, f11/30.

The Den, Nov 2023. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 150mm, Ilford Panf 50+, f5.6/125.

Summit Stones, Nov 2023. Hasselblad 500CM, Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm, Ilford Panf 50+, f11/4.

Fury Gorge, The Call of the Abyss: Part IX The Return

When we are in the bottom of an abyss, we are already past the halfway mark. Even though the bulk of the labour is still ahead of us, there is no decision to be made. We must climb up and extricate ourselves. There is no choice, if we wish to return.

The paddy made tent on Little Plateau. April 2023, Hasselblad 500 CM, Ektar 100.

I started early the next morning. I climbed through a mixture of tangled rainforest and tea trees. In three hours, I gained about one kilometre of horizontal and about four hundred metres of vertical distance. I followed the ridge NE for another hour, and that brought me to a high point, with an open buttongrass lead in front of me.

As the view slowly opened up around me, I was able to appreciate the dramatic nature of the landscape I was in. The western end of the Cradle Plateau terminates in the gorge of Sutton's Creek, which rivals Fury Gorge in steepness and scale. I saw crumbling scree slopes of quartzite, and thick rainforest with patches of the golden fagus cloaking the precipitous slopes dropping down to the river.

The unfortunate turn of events for Hellyer and his men was that after they climbed out of Fury Gorge, they descended to the gorge of Sutton's Creek. I imagine they didn't realise that the plateau they were on connected to Cradle Mountain or the depth of the snow was too great for them to make progress through it and they were forced to descend again. Camping down the bottom of Sutton's Creek was the low point of their expedition. 'It now became a serious question whether we should extricate ourselves at all...'. The next day, Hellyer's party crossed a creek that was swollen by the snowmelt and he noted: 'a torrent that made us start, its fury was beyond anything we could conceive of water'. Perhaps it is from this reference that the Fury River got its name?

The old paddy made tent. April 2023, Hasselblad 500CM, Delta 100.

It was the 21st of November, 1828, the day they all thought they would perish. Instead, Hellyer and his men climbed out of Sutton's Creek, crossed Hounslow Heath and reached the more sheltered Cradle Valley. 'We felt we were in the land of the living once more... In fact it was an escape from a snow prison.'

For me, it was the 25th of April, 2023. The weather was fine, and I had no intention to descend to Sutton's Creek. I was knackered, running low on water and I hoped I was going the right way. I was still on an unknown ridge to me and unable to see where it was leading me. The open buttongrass had turned to tea tree thickets, and I was making excruciatingly slow progress.

Eventually, I reached a rocky high point. I had been climbing for seven hours. It was here that the view fully unfolded around me. And I finally sighted that the little finger of plateau I was on connected to the Cradle massif. I wouldn't have to descend to Sutton's Creek. Relief washed over me. I had climbed out of Fury Gorge!

I took one last look down, and said goodbye to my old friend.

It will be some time before I visit the Fury River again.

The Fury Valley, from Little Plateau. April 2023, Hasselblad 500 CM, Portra 800.

Fury Gorge, The Call of the Abyss, Part VIII: The Fury River

It was five months later, in April 2023 when I was able to undertake a second attempt to visit the Fury River.

The route across Fury Gorge, similar to the line Hellyer and his men took in 1828. Spot the open buttongrass patch? Hasselblad 500CM, Portra 800, April 2023.

This time, I started from Cradle and allowed four days. The philosophy was the same; solo, no maps, no comms, just a compass, but this time, being late autumn, I opted to take a head torch due to the shorter days. I also took a different shelter this time, a Paddy made 'Golden Tan' canvas tent that was made about sixty years ago and originally belonged to Ian Boss-Walker, who wrote one of the first guides to the 'Reserve', titled 'Peaks and High Places'. This tent was probably not that different from the kind of tent Hellyer and his men would have used all those years ago.

The old paddy made tent. Hasselblad 500CM, Portra 800, April 2023.

It was a long day to reach Pencil Pine Bluff from the trailhead and I walked the last hour in the dark. The next morning I was standing on the edge of the precipice, looking into the abyss. The Fury River was down there, at the bottom, waiting for me. The scale of the landscape made me feel so small. In some ways, the most difficult part was to make the decision to descend. Some places we do not go because we want to go. Some places we go because we have to go.

Morning mist rising from Pencil Pine Bluff. Hasselblad 500CM, Portra 800, April 2023.

I opted for a direct spur heading straight for the only open buttongrass patch in the gorge I could see. As I descended, I traveled through time, from the deep past to the present. The top of the gorge contains rock that the river cut through millions of years ago. The bottom is freshly cut and still being shaped by the flow of the river.

About a third of the way down I entered a dry eucalypt tea-tree forest and was forced to skirt around quite a few cliff bands. The descent took about three hours in total. I lost 750m of elevation. About a hundred metres from the river, the vegetation turned to tangled rainforest. And then, there it was; the Fury River! I waded across without incident; the water came to just below my knees. I set up camp in a small buttongrass patch, with the walls of the gorge towering over me. I drank from the Fury River.

I felt like I was a very long way away from home.

The Fury River. Hasselblad 500CM, Portra 800, April 2023.

Fury Gorge-The Call of the Abyss: Part VII: The Snowstorm

“It now became a serious question whether we should extricate ourselves at all and we determined to start very early tomorrow and have a long day before us.” -Henry Hellyer, 20th November, 1828.

Due to the blizzard, I had made the decision to leg it out of Pencil Pine Bluff on the 21st of November 2022; to abandon the idea of descending into Fury Gorge and to exit along the most efficient route possible. Better to abandon the objective of my trip and to make it out than stick with the objective and not make it out at all.

Barn Bluff during one of the short breaks in the weather. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

From Pencil Pine bluff, I headed South; summited Mt Inglis without trouble, but started descending on the wrong spur, back towards Granite Tor. I caught my mistake in time and backtracked to the summit. After Inglis, following the Fury-Divide proved tedious with some bands of snow laden scrub that soaked me to the skin.

After a solid five hour march, I had made it to the base of the cliffs high up on Barn Bluff. I was wading through knee deep snowdrifts on the scree slope, the wind howling past me in a roar, knocking me off my feet in places. I had to move as fast as I could to stay warm, despite wearing my full blizzard kit. It was tricky keeping balanced on the snow covered boulders, but I couldn't slow down. I had to keep moving as fast as I could. I felt the mountain challenge my right of passage that day. It was a test I passed, but only barely.

I eventually picked up the SE ridge and started descending. I left the promise of a snowy death behind me with the cliffs of Barn Bluff as they disappeared in the mist. I got to Waterfall Valley in a bit of a state, entered the public hut, found it empty and positively warm. I checked the temperature gauge and saw it read seven degrees Celsius. It was strange to transition from a state of great peril to perfect safety in such a short time.

It snowed steadily all through that night. A number of saturated walkers arrived around 6pm, who had walked in from Ronnie Creek. I thought I would have a reasonably easy day to walk out.

Benson’s Peak from the OT. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

The next day brought the most tempestuous conditions I have ever seen on the Cradle Plateau. Even on the well formed Overland Track, I was struggling to cover ground among waist deep snow drifts, a howling westerly and a saturating drizzle that soaked me to the skin within half an hour. I met three hikers at Kitchen Hut who had spent the night there and were likely to spend another night before walking out because they were too scared to leave. Later that day there was a helivac from near Windermere further down the OT, where two wilderness guides saved the life of a public walker who had succumbed to hypothermia.

I shuddered to think what would have happened to me had I descended to the Fury River the previous day. Attempting to climb out of the gorge, only to end up having to traverse the exposed Little Plateau in the deep, wet snow would have been nothing short of suicidal. I was content with my decision to abandon the objective of my trip, for the primary objective always trumps all others, and that is to return alive.

On the tenth day of my trip, on the 22nd of November, I reached Cradle Valley around lunch time. I drove back to Hobart via Burnie, as the wind had brought down a telegraph pole across the road at Wilmot. I had made it out in the nick of time. But the call of the abyss had not been subdued.

I knew I would have to do another trip, to visit the Fury River.

Honeymoon Island. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

To be continued…

Fury Gorge- The Call of the Abyss, Part VI: The Decision

“The snow now fell so thick all round, that we could see nothing whatever, and were completely puzzled which way to go, or what to do as we had arrived at the edge of a tremendous gully many miles in width.”

-Henry Hellyer, 18th November, 1828.

I woke to find that my tent had failed to keep the water out; my sleeping quilt and mat were both rather wet. There was about five inches of snow outside with the promise of more. Visibility was down to a hundred metres. I was on an exposed alpine plateau with no tracks and no maps. I had two days of food left. My resolution to descend to the Fury was ebbing away as the seriousness of the situation dawned on me.

The head of Fury Gorge. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

It was that day that I finally understood why Hellyer and his men descended into Fury Gorge. They had no alternative. When he wrote, ‘descend into the gully or perish’, he meant every single word. They had no waterproof gear, no knowledge of the country they were in, they were at the end of an arduous journey, and they were probably severely hypothermic. Hellyer didn’t make the decision to descend into the gorge. That decision was forced upon him.

As I packed up my tent in the building blizzard, I realised that it was time to get out of there, along the most direct route available to me, or I might not make it out at all. And the most direct route out was to avoid the gorge and to stay high up on the exposed ridgetops, over Mt Inglis, then across the Fury Divide to Barn Bluff before dropping down to Waterfall Valley and the relative safety of the Overland Track.

Despite the call of the abyss, Fury Gorge would have to wait for another day.

Pencil pines in the blizzard. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

Thinking back to that morning, I still have some level of regret at the decision that I made. A part of me wishes that I was determined enough to descend into Fury Gorge; despite the blizzard, despite the insufficiency of my shelter, despite my dwindling rations, despite the fact that I’d be committing to a more difficult exit route, despite knowing that I’d likely be overdue and cause the people who love me great anxiety. A small part of me wishes that I had stuck with my plan and descended down to the Fury in the blizzard, just like Hellyer and his men did.

In the end, it was my knowledge of the country that allowed me to make a decision that Hellyer simply couldn’t.

I just wished I had a bottle of brandy. Or at least that I had a pack of dogs.

Pencil pine stand, Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

To be continued…

Fury Gorge- The Call of the Abyss: Part V

Pencil Pine Bluff. Hasselblad 500C/M, Ektar 100, April 2023.

I walked out towards the great drop off at the edge of Pencil Pine Bluff just as an eerie mist came in. I had made it to the great precipice. I stood looking into Fury Gorge. At first I was unable to see much further than a hundred metres down. Then, the mist parted and what I saw left me feeling numb. The rocky escarpment that marks the edge of the plateau drops down in a series of quartzite ridges, chaotic and sharp. The depth and sheer nature of the gorge stunned me. It was so much bigger and steeper than I had imagined. I had a deep sense of foreboding, looking down. I finally understood how desperate Hellyer and his men must have been to drop into this ravine. 

Scattered pencil pines. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.

As I stood there on the edge of the abyss, the weather deteriorated rapidly. My plan that day was to descend into the gorge, but my intuition told me to seek shelter and pitch my tent. It took me a while wandering around on the plateau in a dazed and confused state to find somewhere out of the wind among the pencil pines. I didn't feel cold, but it was snowing by the time I had pitched my tent. Later I realised I had been in the early stages of hypothermia. The wind had swung from a northerly to a south-westerly. I figured I'd sleep on it, and make a decision as to whether I would descend in the morning.

Blizzard on Pencil Pine Bluff. Pentax MX, Ektar 100, Nov 2022.