The “Respect the Mountain” forum ( here, here, and here ) at the Hobart Town Hall earlier this year prompted Don Knowler to return to a diary he compiled after daily rambles on Mt Wellington during the previous year. In what promises to be a momentous year in the modern history of Kunanyi, the weekly diary gives the mountain and its wildlife its own voice. All Don’s Mother Mountain columns – and much more by this superb writer – can be found under the Category, Don Knowler, here
Overnight the waratahs had burst into stunning flower along the Silver Falls Track.
The waratahs on the lower slopes of the mountain had been holding their fire during the colder days at the start of the month – and especially during the storm that had raked the mountain and city – and now they felt confident enough to unleash their pronged, spidery flowers from their protective pods.
The explosion must had happened as the first warm sunlight of the day hit the plants, because on a few days previously when I had inspected the fantail nest imbedded in one of the waratahs along the Silver Falls Track there had been no hint of what was to come.
Now these flowers held my spell-bound attention and, as with other blooms I had discovered during the spring, no longer would the world of flora form only a backdrop, a green blur in my binoculars, when I focused on birds.
I should have known that a Tasmanian waratah in delicate flower would be something special. I have a picture of one on my bedroom wall, along with three other Tasmanian native flower prints, which was bought as a set at the Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens, but the picture did not convey the plant’s sublime beauty. Also, as with much botanical art, the illustration presented the flower in isolation, not as a whole. The waratah bloom not only adorns an upright, robust bush with blue-green lanceolate leaves, but an environment in which neighbouring, less showy plants try so hard not to be left in the shade.
The waratah bush, about five metres high, was festooned with bright, scarlet flowers grouped in clusters at the outer-most reaches of the plant, like coronets. Close up, I could see the crowns were made of fingers of stringy petals, each about five or six centimetres long.
Reading a book on flowers when I got home, I was to discover the waratah is rich in pollen and nectar, and later see pods, and this explained why so many birds were in attendance. The fantail nest was at the heart of all this frenzied activity but was placed in such a position, inside the bush and away from the flowers, not to attract attention from the other birds. They were largely pollen and nectar feeders, at least in this bush, and would not be interested in the fantails, who in turn gave the visitors hardly a second glance. Yellow-throated, crescent and black-headed honeyeaters, eastern spinebills, green rosellas, and silvereyes were having a feast. The waratah was also attracting insects, and scarlet and pink robins singing from thick bush nearby suggested they might also find it a vital food source for feeding young after the honeyeaters, noisy and pushy by nature, had moved on.
As the summer progressed I would find myself climbing higher and higher up the mountain to find waratahs blooming in progression as the sun slowly warmed the higher zones. I’d discover other high country and alpine plants, but the waratah would remain my favourite, though. To me, the plant with scarlet coronets is the king of shrubs.
Bulging and heaving, the nest of the fantails indicated the young were growing steadily. I was confident this was one nest not housing a cuckoo chick. I had checked the base of the waratah to see if there was any evidence of fantail young being turfed out, as would happen if a cuckoo chick was in the nest.
A young cuckoo, growing faster than the others after monopolising the food supply brought by the parents, slowly wedges its body under its “siblings” and lifts them to the rim of the nest, before giving a final heave to thrust them out. Sometimes, though, the cuckoo chick merely crushes its rivals beneath it.
Down below the fantail’s nest, along Dunns Creek, the thrusting, yellow beaks of the pink robins were getting bigger and bigger, and I could now see fully shaped, feathered heads poking above the nest.
As the male and female arrived with food, three beaks would suddenly rise straight and true into the air, and the parents would take care to give each mouth an equal supply of food.
Within a day, I was delighted to see the first of the three chicks emerge from the nest and stand momentarily on its rim, calling triumphantly to its parents. The grey currawongs with a nest not so far from the robin’s had reared three young of their own and these were now perched on the branches holding the nest, demanding food. A meal could well comprise robin young and the pink robin parents knew it. As the young currawongs called for food, the robin parents called to their own bird who had ventured from the nest, warning the youngster to stay silent and out of sight. It soon dropped back to safety.
The young of one species were missing from my nestling checklist, and I climbed higher up the mountain towards the Springs, in search of the Bassian thrush nest.
Here four rapidly growing chicks were raising their heads in union as the parents arrived, and it was clear that, like the pink robins, they would soon be eager to explore the world beyond the nest.
Walking back towards Fern Tree, a Bennett’s wallaby hopped across the track, and I was surprised to find one out and about during daylight hours, and in a section of wet forests far away from the dry forest glades where I usually find wallabies emerging at dusk. And there was another surprise. The wallaby had a joey in her pouch.
Solitary runners sometimes plod the hard climb up the Pinnacle Road to the mountain summit and during the month of November these had increased in number, sometimes whole groups sweating and panting as they passed the Springs with a hard climb still ahead of them.
The annual Point-to-Summit race loomed, 21.4 kilometres of blood, sweat and tears from the shores of the Derwent to the peak. It was a 1270metre climb, with an average gradient of 7.4 percent but 867 runners and 1043 walkers had signed up for it on Sunday, November 18.
The day of the event had dawned fair and sunny but as the race progressed a cloud settled on the mountain and the final kilometre was run through clinging mist. Two Tasmanian runners took out both male and female prizes, Douglas Hamilton of Ulverstone and Glenorchy-born Karinna Fye. A few years previously the men’s race was won by an American backpacker visiting Hobart. Immediately, he telephoned his mother to tell her of his triumph. He hadn’t told her previously he was in Tasmania and on the phone she said, “Tasmania? Is that a real place?”
I left the runners to it after my own hard walk on the mountain, climbing 500 metres or so and now finally brushing off a tick as I sat on a bench in the Fern Tree Tavern sinking a Cascade Pale Ale. The tough climb through the Myrtle Gully Track had rewarded me with pink robins, Bassian thrushes, scrubtit, golden whistler and strong-billed honeyeater. In the tumbling stream cutting through the gully, a black-headed honeyeater perched on a rock to dip its beak into the water and, in dry woodland at the top of the gully, I found several singing satin flycatchers. My own triumph of blood, sweat and beers.
Later I thought I would check out the flame robin nest. Cuckoos had been calling all morning and afternoon and I had them on my mind, and feared for the flame robins.
All was well, however. I could see three young, healthy and growing and, like the pink robin and Bassian thrush nestlings, eager to leave the confines of the nest hidden in the rocks, framed by yellow gum saplings and the flowers and stems of twiggy daisybush.
Beyond the nest I looked out over the sparkling Derwent, down to the Wrest Point Casino where earlier more than 1900 runners and walkers had set out for their assault on the mountain. To the west of the casino, the Aurora Australis research and supply vessel was heading out past the Iron Pot lighthouse to Antarctica. Just a few weeks previously it had been trapped in ice, stuck fast for five days.
