I'm not going to look at my ankles!
Update from the Last Great Wild Places Tour: I
Yesterday was the high point of our trip: a day in the Last Great Truly Wild place on Earth: The Southwest National Park/World Heritage Area in the South Western corner of Tasmania. It would have been the ends of the earth, had it not been so much like no place on Earth. There are three ways in: Light plane to the Melaleuca airstrip (made of crushed quartz, it will land nothing bigger than a 6 seater, cruising yacht (risky, since the weather is very unpredictable) and a five day trek through the peat bogs and their assorted inhabitants. We flew.
Bush pilots are crazy. Ours had just gotten a digital camera and at any time would just let the plane fly itself so he could take a few pictures (also, answer his cell phone, fix someone's lap belt, get a map). "You can go ahead and use your mobile" he said cheerfully. "We don't use any navigational instruments!"
Our pilot estimates that around 1000 people a year enter the park, which includes the only pristine estuarine system in Australia (and probably the world) and is extremely strange and beautiful. The land is covered with peat bogs in most places and sits mainly on quartzite rock, with some clayrock. Stark white layers and pebbles are everywhere. We got on a small boat and motored through the waterways of the estuary. The water runs the color of coffee from the bogs and the tea tree that grows on it (though it is more of a tea shrub). We also walked on some of the hills and the tide was low enough for us to get off on an island and walk around the tidepools.
There was very little diversity and the organisms are very small, because of the poverty of the underlying geology. Quartzite and claystone contain no phosphate to speak of, and plants need phosphate. It is an essential nutrient. Plants get carbon dioxide from the air and nitrates from the air via nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but phosphate has to come from the rock and the rock doesn't HAVE phosphate in it. So all the plants are very low-phosphate and low-nutrient, since all phosphate will have to come from sea birds that eat fish that get their phosphate from run-off from better lands. It's essentially a phosphate desert. It was like being on the moon - I had just never seen anything like it in any way.
Some people had scratched a living out of it in the past - a very hard living. Their remnants were the only signs of humans with two exceptions: a small piece of bottle glass with markings probably left by researchers AND! a piece of toilet paper. (waves her ziploc, meaningfully). Not mine. I pack mine out. Everyone in Australia thinks that is extreme. Obviously not.
Our pilot stepped off the trail in one place to show us a Huon pine. I looked down at his shoe and saw a little worm on it. It was only an inch long and segmented, and a dark brown color. I interrupted him as another crawled up his shoe and asked if he wanted me to knock it off because it did seem like it was heading for bare skin. He looked down. "Oh, those are leeches" he said with distaste. He took a little stick and knocked off the leeches.
After that I kept moving, and resisted the urge to constantly check my ankles. To me, venomous snakes are a photo op, and seeing a crocodile is a rare treat. I'm ecstatic that a coyote hunts in our backyard. But leeches. Oh my god. Leeches.
Leeches and all, it was something that will stay with me forever. On a planet of six and a half billion people, I have known true solitude in a place humans have scarcely touched. It was the highlight of an astonishing trip.
Today we see a bit more of Tasmania, though nothing so splendid. That's pretty much it for us:
We are traveling back home via Sydney on Saturday and Sunday.
Yesterday was the high point of our trip: a day in the Last Great Truly Wild place on Earth: The Southwest National Park/World Heritage Area in the South Western corner of Tasmania. It would have been the ends of the earth, had it not been so much like no place on Earth. There are three ways in: Light plane to the Melaleuca airstrip (made of crushed quartz, it will land nothing bigger than a 6 seater, cruising yacht (risky, since the weather is very unpredictable) and a five day trek through the peat bogs and their assorted inhabitants. We flew.
Bush pilots are crazy. Ours had just gotten a digital camera and at any time would just let the plane fly itself so he could take a few pictures (also, answer his cell phone, fix someone's lap belt, get a map). "You can go ahead and use your mobile" he said cheerfully. "We don't use any navigational instruments!"
Our pilot estimates that around 1000 people a year enter the park, which includes the only pristine estuarine system in Australia (and probably the world) and is extremely strange and beautiful. The land is covered with peat bogs in most places and sits mainly on quartzite rock, with some clayrock. Stark white layers and pebbles are everywhere. We got on a small boat and motored through the waterways of the estuary. The water runs the color of coffee from the bogs and the tea tree that grows on it (though it is more of a tea shrub). We also walked on some of the hills and the tide was low enough for us to get off on an island and walk around the tidepools.
There was very little diversity and the organisms are very small, because of the poverty of the underlying geology. Quartzite and claystone contain no phosphate to speak of, and plants need phosphate. It is an essential nutrient. Plants get carbon dioxide from the air and nitrates from the air via nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but phosphate has to come from the rock and the rock doesn't HAVE phosphate in it. So all the plants are very low-phosphate and low-nutrient, since all phosphate will have to come from sea birds that eat fish that get their phosphate from run-off from better lands. It's essentially a phosphate desert. It was like being on the moon - I had just never seen anything like it in any way.
Some people had scratched a living out of it in the past - a very hard living. Their remnants were the only signs of humans with two exceptions: a small piece of bottle glass with markings probably left by researchers AND! a piece of toilet paper. (waves her ziploc, meaningfully). Not mine. I pack mine out. Everyone in Australia thinks that is extreme. Obviously not.
Our pilot stepped off the trail in one place to show us a Huon pine. I looked down at his shoe and saw a little worm on it. It was only an inch long and segmented, and a dark brown color. I interrupted him as another crawled up his shoe and asked if he wanted me to knock it off because it did seem like it was heading for bare skin. He looked down. "Oh, those are leeches" he said with distaste. He took a little stick and knocked off the leeches.
After that I kept moving, and resisted the urge to constantly check my ankles. To me, venomous snakes are a photo op, and seeing a crocodile is a rare treat. I'm ecstatic that a coyote hunts in our backyard. But leeches. Oh my god. Leeches.
Leeches and all, it was something that will stay with me forever. On a planet of six and a half billion people, I have known true solitude in a place humans have scarcely touched. It was the highlight of an astonishing trip.
Today we see a bit more of Tasmania, though nothing so splendid. That's pretty much it for us:
We are traveling back home via Sydney on Saturday and Sunday.