Table of contents for Issue 178, Summer 2020 in Wild

There is only one road into Tasmania’s Southwest Wilderness. This is the Gordon River Road, bulldozed and constructed in the 1960s to allow the Hydro Electric Commission (HEC) to install dams on the Gordon, Serpentine and Huon Rivers. In doing so, they created Australia’s largest water reservoir: the Gordon-Pedder impoundment; two distinct lakes, connected by a canal, which allows water to flow from Pedder into Lake Gordon. The Gordon Dam is the main ‘plug’ that holds back the Gordon River, built to bridge an incredible gorge. The 140m tall concrete arch dam is an awe-inspiring sight. The turbines here produce an average of 133 megawatts of sustained power, roughly 10% of Tasmania’s hydroelectric output. There are also a number of smaller ‘plugs’ to create the 15m deep Pedder impoundment; the…

‘Long, steep, rocky descent.’ Four words to strike fear into the heart of any hiker. This threatening combination, repeated with worrying frequency in my guidebook, is an accurate description of roughly 45% of the 180km trail to which I’ve committed the next two weeks of my life. Replace the last word with ‘ascent’ and you’ve got another 45%. Such is the task awaiting anyone crossing of the corrugated granite spine of the humpbacked Mediterranean island of Corse, or as English-speakers know it, Corsica. Mention the GR20—the 20th in France’s system of Grande Randonée walking paths—in any group of self-respecting walkers and you’ll hear the mantra ‘Europe’s Toughest Hike’ confidently repeated. When I first heard it, that was all I needed to know. Europe’s toughest hike? Pah! I stopped listening there…

You know you’re in a paddling mecca when—while sipping on a morning coffee on the main street of town—cars creaking under the load of too many boats strapped onto (often homemade wooden) roof-racks zip past in regular intervals. Such is the case in Murchison, a small village tucked deep in the mountains of New Zealand’s South Island. Surrounded by stunning rivers and alpine ridges, Murchison is a magical place, home to tiny bakeries, country pubs, and friendly locals. Unlike the committing and often gnarly boating of the nearby West Coast, Murchison offers a variety of whitewater kayaking, ranging from beginner-friendly Class II jaunts to Class IV adrenaline rushes for more experienced paddlers. Six different rivers are accessible from the town—the Buller/Kawatiri, Matakitaki, Maruia, Mangles, Glenroy and Matiri Rivers—and there are…

DAY 1 SRT Trailhead to Mt Mistake Camp 9km (approx. 5-6 hours) Following a 3hr+ drive and car-drop, you will depart the walk at the Thornton View Trailhead. There is a carpark, toilet, shelter and rainwater tank here, along with a map of the route. The trail begins in open eucalypt forest, and within minutes, the incline turns steeply upwards for another three kilometres. After about 1.5-2hrs, you’ll encounter “the ladder”. This is part of the eco-tourism development, and while it remains on a parcel of private land for now, it certainly doesn’t (in this writer’s opinion) add any appeal to the overall experience. The ladder is prohibited to the public, but the walk around this steel eyesore is much nicer anyway! After gaining the ridge, the gradient eases for…

Kids are soft these days. Back in my day, if we got breakfast at all, it’d be nothing more than a bowl of poison. And it wouldn’t even be hot; it’d be cold poison. We then walked 15km to school, uphill all the way, lugging more than our body weight in schoolbooks. Eighteen hours later, we’d trudge home, again uphill all the way, now lugging twice our bodyweight loaded down with the 20 hours of nightly homework we had to do. And the packs we carried all the books in had straps made of barbed wire. Yeah, kids today are soft. I keep telling this to my seven-year-old son Quincy, but he doesn’t believe me. But Osprey’s Ace series of kids’ packs are a case in point; there was nothing…

“Dan McKenzie, AKA Batman, wondering if he’s stuck or just figured out some fancy new beta before settling in for a night in the Bat Cave. The plan was for a night climbing session and I had barely arrived when a stormy sunset lit up the cave walls, turning them a golden yellow. With Dan being the only person climbing, I quickly jugged up any available rope to capture the spectacle. Blissfully unaware of Dan’s next moves, I painfully contorted my body in order to keep the camera aimed at him as my rope spun me in the opposite direction. “Click-click-click.” I mashed the shutter three times and hoped for the best” Nathan wins an OSPREY TRANSPORTER 65 DUFFEL, valued at $199.95. Designed to be tied to yaks on faint…

We need to talk about having fun. Specifically, we need to talk about recreation in national parks. And by 'we', I don’t mean you and me at a personal level, or me as editor and you as reader. I mean we as a community. As a community of adventure recreationalists, as a community of conservationists, as a community of national park users. As a community, full stop. And by talk, I don’t mean a shouting match; I mean nuanced, reasoned discussion. None of us have all the answers. We need to hear what others say. The impetus for me bringing this up are recent developments in Grampians NP (Gariwerd). Many of you might be aware of the bans on climbing there. If not, to bring you up to speed in…

“We all come from wilderness. That’s why we love nature. It’s why we delight in flowers and seeing wildlife because it’s part of our genetic structure. Now we live mainly in cities, where wilderness has been 90% or totally destroyed. It’s arguably the fastest disappearing natural resource on the planet. That’s why it’s such a premium. As it’s become less available, it’s become more valuable for exploiters.” Bob Brown, in a personal conversation with Wild. “A couple of rich bastards want to come into our parks and ruin everything.” Geoff Dixon—ex-Qantas CEO and co-founder of the Australian Walking Company, and one of the rich bastards who wants to come into our parks and ruin everything—quoted in the Financial Review. Earlier this year, wanting to take my young son on a…

"You came from where?" asked a lady standing on a short, wooden jetty. Behind her, sat the rest of her family eating afternoon tea, but she hadn't directed the question at them. She had posed it to the end of her jetty. There, bobbing in the small swell of the windblown Murray River, sat two bedraggled men in long yellow/green kayaks. "The top" they replied again, followed by a rushed, "Kosciuszko…The Snowy Mountains…near the ski resorts?" but the lady only looked more puzzled with each word. And fair enough. The two paddlers—Jason and myself—were well over 2,000km from the Snowy Mountains where our 76-day journey down the Murray River had started. Now, just outside the town of Wellington, there wasn't a hill in sight, the river was wide, and the…

Ka-whump! It was 2am, dark as tar, and a cyclonic blast of wind semi-trailered into the tent. I woke with a spine-jarring jolt. I was 950m up on Southwest Tassie’s Ironbound Range—its upper reaches mimicking a craggy aircraft carrier deck—and in the face of this gale, the ‘protection’ offered by a nearby stockade of trees seemed increasingly scant. In fact, things felt grim. The wind snaked its Herculean arms underneath the tent, doing its damnedest to power-snatch me into the adjacent Southern Ocean. Next stop: Antarctica. This was the forecast living large. Fate was tempted and fate was cackling. Nature is fine and all that, but this was on the comfort zone’s razor edge (and, more prosaically, on the calamitous drop off the Ironbounds). The incentive that drove me to…

BULLER/KAWATIRI RIVER Class II to Class IV Collecting all the water from the Matakitaki, Matiri, Gowan, Maruia, and Mangles Rivers, and fed by Lake Rotora and Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes National Park, the Buller is the big water river of the region. It can hold a LOT (!) of water. During the December ‘19 flood, the Buller (above of the confluences) was reading more than 1,100 m3/s at the Longford Gauge. Back in 1926, the Buller at Te Kuha had NZ’s largest estimated flood peak: 12,700m3/s. The Buller floods from bottom up, so while downriver of Murchison might be flooded, the levels upriver might still be normal flows. GRANITY CREEK RAPID Class III+ to Class IV An enjoyable Class II boulder garden at most water levels, with lots of…

FEEL TERRIBLE Taipan is as much an idea as it is a place of climbing. A wall that dominates both the landscape and the mindscape. A towering, intimidating wall that burns orange in the afternoon, not just from the rays of the setting sun but also because millions of climbers project their dreams onto it. It is brilliantly illuminated by desire. It is no wonder then that its closure has been towering over my mind, dominating my thoughts, as it has for many climbers. How do we react to its closure? It has taken some time to write something about it and I have deleted it all and started again more than once. Knowing that something is inevitable doesn’t protect you when that thing comes to pass. When the bans…

YUKI GUNI (literally, Snow Country) is a resonant term in Japan. It’s the title of one of Japan’s all-time classic novels, written by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata in 1930s and 40s. Set on the border of Gunma and Niigata Prefectures in Central Honshu, it’s here that, in Winter, moisture-laden air—having travelled across the Japan Sea—slams into soaring peaks and smothers them with metres upon metres upon metres of pristine white fluff. But Kawabata got it wrong; on the other side of Niigata, on the border with Nagano, it’s snowier still. In fact, locals claim the Shinetsu Shizenkyo region—straddling both prefectures, and centred on the town of Iiyama—is the snowiest area in the entire country. Shizenkyo means ’Nature Park’, and the area is one of exquiiste beauty. On the east,…

On Friday September 6, 2019, the air was dry and hot on Binna Burra Mountain. Humidity sat at a miserly eight percent, and the usually lush forest surrounding the heritage-listed Binna Burra Lodge—which sits high within Lamington National Park in the Gold Coast hinterland—was parched. For almost a week, since August 31st, volunteer fire crews had been battling spot fires burning since teenagers thoughtlessly discarded cigarette butts into the dry tinder. Around mid-afternoon that Friday, winds from the west-northwest gusted up to 90km/h, fuelling a fireball which rushed down the range. In just ten minutes, it moved a staggering four kilometres. Locals described the sky as ‘eerie’, an apocalyptic mixture of light purple and dusty orange. Ash tumbled from its inky depths, swirling, spinning, scattering on the houses and rainforest…

Get set to be transported to another world on the newly opened Scenic Rim Trail. Just 90 minutes west of Brisbane, this four-day walk in Queensland’s beautiful Main Range National Park blends both newly constructed and existing sections of track, and traverses a staggeringly diverse range of terrain and ecology. Commencing from dry eucalypt regrowth, you gain an escarpment that’s home to fuzzy rock wallabies and ancient grass trees, some hundreds of years old. When the trail dips away off the ridges, you enter the jungle—or more accurately a dense, tangled sub-tropical rainforest. Tree ferns, mosses, giant figs, cacophonous native birds, wildflowers, insects, and endless other natural treasures abound. Despite all that threatens—progress, climate, bushfires—this tract of UNESCO World Heritage Listed Gondwana Rainforest endures. At first glance, however, people might…