An Island Dream: Don Defenderfer loves his Tassie touchstones
From a dangerous dalliance with Cradle Mountain to magical moments on Maria Island, local writer Don Defenderfer loves his Tassie touchstones.
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It was early March but it felt like summer when Don Defenderfer set out to explore Cradle Mountain National Park for the first time in 1982. The 24-year-old San Franciscan, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, pitched his tent and went to bed planning to start the Overland Track the next day. He thought the multi-day hike would be a piece of cake.
It poured overnight and into the next day, soaking his tent and gear, and drenching his plans. The day after that it snowed.
“I had to tie plastic bags around my legs as snow pants,” Defenderfer tells TasWeekend. “Two days before it was 30C, but ever since then I have known Cradle Mountain can change at any moment.”
The former Landcare Tasmania state co-ordinator, author and photographer says experience is a great teacher. “It takes some people a long time to learn these basics,” he says with a laugh. “It taught me respect for the Tasmanian weather. It’s a beautiful entrancing place, but it can kill you and it doesn’t really care, it’s going to do its thing. You have to prepare for it, it doesn’t prepare for you.”
The rainclouds really did have a silver lining, though, as Defenderfer outlines in his new anthology of stories, poems and photographs, Tasmania: An Island Dream. When he left his sodden camp to dry out and have a cuppa at nearby Pencil Pine Lodge, he encountered his wife-to-be.
“I met a girl who invited me to travel with her and some friends by car around Tasmania,” he writes. “I accepted the invitation, thinking I could return to do the Overland Track another day. That day came — in 2016.”
Though he went on to explore both ends of the park, walking around Cradle Mountain and through the Walls of Jerusalem, into Pine Valley and up in the Labyrinth over the next three decades, the time never seemed right to do the famous trek.
“Imagine being short of time for so long,” he muses. “What was I thinking?”
When Defenderfer finally donned his pack and set off with his wife and their two then-teenagers, his brother and good friends, the walk was everything he had dreamt it would be.
“When we arrived at Lake St Clair we felt, as one always does upon completing a great journey, a mile high,” he writes. “I had finally done it. We had lifted those heavy packs for a week and no one had complained. We had bagged Ossa [Mt Ossa, the state’s highest peak] and I had bagged the hike of my life. Something had been vindicated in me and I felt complete. I could sleep well for the rest of my life now, for I had at last completed my mission.”
He says he had the feeling of walking both into the future and back in time. “I felt part of a continuum, of my own journey and that of the landscape. The land had continued on without me, allowed me back for a glimpse, and then let me go again.”
FIVE OF A WANDERING POET’S FAVOURITE PLACES
Cradle Mountain National Park— “It was special to me even before I met my wife there. No matter what the weather the mountains are dramatic and beguiling. And with so many birds and small plants, it’s a fascinating place with abundant inspiration.”
Walls of Jerusalem— “It was used in a BBC David Attenborough dinosaurs series as a backdrop and I recognised it instantly. Going there really is like walking back through time, with vistas offering a chance to imagine the Earth as it was in ancient times.”
Franklin River— “Travelling up the Franklin River is a timeless and very spiritual journey, a pure world of unchanged natural history with a darker, more secretive feeling than many other places.”
Freycinet National Park — “Great for walks, snorkelling, swimming, hiking, views and it just has that special Tasmanian coastal feeling, including the Friendly Beaches. It’s the combination of the rocks and she oaks, views and pristine waters that attracts me over and over.”
Maria Island — “A wonderful place for family camping holidays with friends over summer. It’s really safe and like camping in a wildlife park. People are at their best when they are holidaying in the bush. They are at their most natural, reflecting on their lives, what they’ve done that year, what they want to do the next, reading books, going on hikes and creating their own traditions.”
The more often you visit a place, the deeper your understanding of it becomes. It is this message that Defenderfer conveys especially richly in his book. “The more you go, the more you see the subtleties, and if you are lucky you can tap into the spiritual essence of a place,” he says. “You get a totally different feeling in Cradle Mountain depending on the season and the weather.”
His reverence for iconic places including Cradle Mountain, Maria Island and Liffey Falls continues to inspire semi-regular pilgrimages to each site — as well as stories and poems.
The steep learning curve of unfamiliarity having been scaled, he takes a deeper dive each trip, no longer defaulting to the obvious sights and activities (though he tries never to say no to a sailing expedition with mates or a kayaking trip).
“Returning lets you wander beyond the obvious and build up your understanding of geology, plants, fungi and animals. For a small place Tasmania is incredibly diverse. You can spend a lifetime trying to get to know it and barely scratch the surface.”
Whether it’s to Ben Lomond or Narawntapu National Park, Waldheim cabin or his own shack, returning is a joy.
Picture: Don Defenderfer
“You just love these places more and more,” he says. “You can immediately tap back in. It’s like being in a family. You feel at home.”
It’s not just places that change, even subtly; we do, too, says the author. Time is always at work, too, altering what we see and how we perceive it.
At 61, Defenderfer says he feels more present in the landscape than ever before. “As you get older you see things differently. You are more perceptive, hopefully. When I am not hiking I still feel like a young man, rearing to go. But I am slowing down, walking slower, being more in the moment.”
He enjoys tracking his history by poring over old photographs, spending much time reminiscing as he made selections for this volume. “At some of these places, I have 20 years of pictures to draw on,” he says.
As a poet and writer of fiction and nonfiction, mother Earth has almost always been his muse. And he has always combined his two passions, studying both environmental management and writing at university. While he wrote most of the prose pieces for his book over the past three years, he penned some of the poems many years ago.
Though nature offers him solace, Defenderfer knows not everyone draws from the great outdoors in the way he does.
“Nature is not the answer for everyone,” he says.
“It lends perspective and spiritual insight to a lot of people. A lot of people can get that through music, friendship, social interaction and religion, but this is what works for me in finding something beyond my normal reality.”
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