Heart land: Heather Rose returns to Lake St Clair, Tasmania
This ancient, magical landscape has a magnetic attraction.
We arrive at golden hour, that filmic moment when the world pixelates into golden motes of light across the expanse of forest and lake, burnishing the air. A pair of platypus break the lake surface and then they are gone.
High above, as if cut from black paper, is a stark ridge where the Central Highlands of Tasmania end and the wild South West begins. The sky is cloudless and white bleeding into a darkening sky. Soon a canopy of brilliance will emerge, the most stars you might see anywhere other than far out at sea under sail on a calm night, or splayed on your back in the desert.
A distant river runs into this lake. In the silence I can hear it burbling on the far shore. I take off my clothes and swim naked. It is cold the way only deep mountain lakes are cold but the water is soft as silk on my skin. I am used to cold water, but this is a whole other order of cold. I swim out into the deep centre and wonder what might be below. I dip my mouth and drink the lake. It tastes of rain and moss, sky and sunshine. I float on my back and watch the day fade away.
Ancient pines grow on the lake shore, their roots deep in the sand, their bodies a fabric of soft papery bark and submission to weather. From one of the campsites along the lake, there is an eruption of laughter. Night birds honk their remarks. As I return to shore, I hear the clatter of metallic bowls, dinner being made.
Back at camp, I am wrapped in my sleeping bag, fed hot drinks laced with whisky, and then held by my beloved, skin against skin, until my corpse-like flesh becomes warm again. Then we eat steak and potatoes tossed in garlic and herb butter. We drink a very fine red wine. Camping has always been about deliciousness. Two possums, father and son perhaps, are caught in the beam of a sudden torchlight heading for our leftovers. They turn nonchalantly, like pros, as if to say, “Nothing to see here, just passing by.” But we are onto them and pack away the kitchen.
Stars lace the arms of an ancient gum bent into the wind like a Giacometti creature. There is no wind tonight. Nor hail, rain or tempest. It is so quiet. We might be the only human eyes watching as the moon rises late behind us.
I have been coming to Lake St Clair most of my life. For a child in love with The Lord of the Rings, this part of the world has always felt like Middle Earth. Green and noble, laced and encrusted, rich in story. For several years while writing my third novel, The River Wife, I came here through every season, staying for weeks in a Parks hut as part of a wilderness grant. I gazed for hours into ponds where cities of lichen, miniature trees and bushes, micro-sized flowers and tiny insects congregated, unaware of the scale of the larger world. I sat in snow and watched onyx water become silver. I sat on river rocks and listened for what the water might tell me. I lay on enormous fallen gums and soaked up sunshine. I thought about the nature of time and the nature of love.
This is one of my heartlands, here at Lake St Clair and the hills, lakes and mountains beyond. When he was 13, I walked the Overland with my eldest son, from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair, some 70km across escarpment, button grass plain, through bright root-entangled forest, along river banks, over mountain passes, camping each night, chatting at every small stream where he liked to ease his pack down and observe the world of skinks and fungi. He started out a boy on that walk, but by the end I could see the man in him, and I could feel the older woman in me.
The last day of that walk, heading to Lake St Clair lodge, there’s a boat to take you down the lake, but the walk is magical. Some years it’s hard to tell what’s path and what’s river. The green is luminous, the shafts of light making it look other-worldly, only it’s this world. This one part of the world left to be itself.
And here I am again, walking this part of my island home, my children now grown and flown, but with this place in their hearts. I have photos of them growing up year after year, perched on one particular rock. My daughter and I were here over summer together, walking the old paths, remembering the stories, the games and the weather.
Today, there are no children in our midst, but we laugh and share memories just the same. We walk to another lake. There, as we make lunch on the lake shore, wind hurries from all directions as if it is playing a game. On this lake the shore is a border of dolerite. There is no beach, just rocks as big as chairs, lichened, pitted, some holding small pools of water. The lake is slate and pearl in the erratic overcast day.
Huon pine dot the shore, acolytes to the eternal. Above us Mount Hugel is edifice and scree, its pinnacle serrated by snow and blizzard. Forest climbs toward it, the rise and fall of tree line the only evidence of hidden valleys, grey sentinels of the dead among the living, a reminder of a man-made fire some 20 years ago.
We eat good cheese, salami and crackers. We fill a cup from the lake to drink. Tomorrow we will wake to snow and hail and we will laugh as our fingers freeze. We will walk back to the lodge in rain and mist, singing and chatting. We will leave this ancient place for a faster world, while here, this goes on, filtering water, making oxygen, bringing rain. Being itself while ever we keep it safe.
Heather Rose is the author of eight novels including the award-winning Bruny and The Museum of Modern Love. She lives by the sea in Tasmania.
