Deb Hunter – hope and care for the land at Sassafras Creek

Speleologist and karst landscape expert Deb Hunter and a heritage tree on the Sassafras Creek World heritage site. Photo by Sharon Webb

Sharon Webb

THE SIGN on the gate to a strip of World Heritage land near Mole Creek is forbidding: ‘Private property, no unauthorised access, no shooting. This property is under 24-hour surveillance.’

The narrow road into the Sassafras Creek Conservation project is bordered by private tree plantations owned by corporations.

But a little way in, regiments of mop-like Nitens give way to more natural scenery. Plovers dive bomb my car, and local speleologist and karst expert Deb Hunter tells me I am on the land of the Aboriginal Pallatorre people, who owned it for 5000 years.

‘George Robinson commented on the famous Pallatorre women’, she said.

‘I know of seven possible heritage trees here, shaped by Aborigines. I use that term to distinguish when a tree has been managed by Aboriginal people rather than others.’

This land is the site of the Mole Creek Caving Club’s longterm conservation project. Their objectives are based on conservation and providing conservation leadership to young people as well as search and rescue expertise for police and rescue groups.

The heritage trees, as Deb calls them, are Eucalyptus obliqua and viminalis, both of which can grow to 90m high. Some of their lumpy, knotty trunks were shaped by Aboriginal axes, Deb says, creating burls where the tree bleeds and making them easier to climb.

She takes me inside the secret, hollowed base of one. The ‘door’ faces north and there is a ‘window’ to the west.

‘Look down’, she said, pointing out the base stone.

‘Each heritage tree has one, used for grinding ochre (ballawinnie) or possibly as a fish smoker.’

The fish, blackfish, would have come from the nearby fast flowing stream, Deb said. We pull on gumboots to cross its 2m width.

‘It’s called a karst window; surface water is rare in these limestone landscapes. Most water runs through the caves so it’s like a window into the karst’, she said.

According to Deb, this land, Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage since 2013, was not originally forested but was grassland valley, an interface between lowlands and Western Tiers highland, between meadow and woodland.

Now degraded by grazing and seriously eroded by flooding, much of the peat in the alpine catchment was burned in the 2016 Lake Mackenzie bushfire. One deep erosion gully was carved out in a single 2016 flooding event that scoured out glacial rocks, strewing them across the landscape.

‘Students can see the sequence of sediments. It’s tremendously valuable,about this property, that you can see the landscape’s evolution.’

Deb indicates groups of acacias planted under the auspices of wildcare group Karstcare about by 15 years ago and more recently planted poa, seedlings from Herbert and Sally Staubmann’s natives nursery at Liffey, Habitat Plants.

‘Bracken’s good too. It makes a thick mat of rhizomes under the soil.’

Then comes the mysterious heart of this valley.

The vegetation is thicker, the air damper as we come closer to the base of the hills. This is where glaciers have decanted their melt into the earth’s cavities, water which inevitably joins the karst master stream deep below.

We have arrived at the entrance to Baldock’s Cave, at the nose of a glacial valley, gated and locked to all but licence holders.

The bars across the cave’s entrance and the detritus of its ancient acetylene gas lighting system are the only signs of people. Baldock’s Cave is a dark hole in the rock without concrete paths or steps but with high fauna values.

Over our heads is a canopy of blackwoods and tall emergent eucalypts. There are tree ferns, a thick cover of hen and chicken fern and our steps are cushioned by moss.

We can hear olive and golden whistlers. Deb has recorded 37 species of birds in this valley.

‘The devils are back too. They were extinct locally for 10 years because of the facial tumour disease but we started seeing them again 18 months ago.’

As we walk out of the valley Deb speaks of her hopes for it.

‘I want this place to be an exemplar, a place where respectful people such as scientists, teachers and students can be on country and work to maintain it as a cultural landscape.’

Having crossed the stream and passed the heritage trees, we drive away from the valley, a double rainbow curves across the sky.

Deb exclaims, ‘Oh my god, this place does things like that. Serendipitous!’