Autumn in Tasmania

You can't beat that Tassie light.

Autumn in Tassie

All is quiet. All is still. It is Autumn in Tasmania. After three weeks in active, noisy, over-the-top India I relish the peace. Autumn is often a quiet time in Tasmania. Strong winds and sea breezes drop, as the days are pausing to take stock before the harshness of winter. It is a time of stunning sun-rises, followed by a chorus of birds as morning light rouses them. At my place by the sea it is the Magpies that lead. What magnificent warbling to wake to, as their songs reverberate through the foreshore white gums, the Balook Eucalypts. The Little Wattle Birds are less enthusiastic with their tentative muted backdrop. I imagine them fluffed up in the branches grumbling at the intrusion. Sea-gulls, Kelp gulls and Cormorants flash back and forth across the bay as they move to their favourite feeding spots.

Contrary to most times of the year the sea is flat, indolent, and lapping rather than pounding on the shore. Perfect swimming weather, if only it wasn’t so cold. A few hardy souls take advantage of the warmer 16 degrees later in the day.

During Autumn there are some excursions that we Tasmanians take, that have become a yearly tradition, to savour the seasonal delights. The vineyards, in particular, are paddocks of yellow, contrasting against the Tassie bush. And they sell wine and food. What is not to like?

Around the city of Hobart, and through the 1800s village of Richmond, to the convict site of Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula, the convict past has been muted and overlaid by Autumn with the splashes of yellows and reds and oranges of the European trees, our ornamental trees - oaks, poplars, ash, beech, lime and birch. These were planted by the ‘old settlers’ before we appreciated the beauty and power and sustainability of our native Tasmanian Eucalypt forests. A contrast is always good for appreciation and in Tasmania, Autumn gives us plenty of opportunity for juxtaposition.

My favourite excursions are into the bush of course. A short drive from Hobart down past the wide Huon River, with, at this time of year, the purest reflections. Boats seem to be floating on clouds – Sleek Huon Pine yachts, clinker dinghies and stumpy motor boats are, as if, suspended. Tucked behind the little town of Franklin is a new rainforest walk marked out by F oFF (I know. Very clever.), Friends of Franklin Forests, who saved this valley from clear-fell logging. I walk on a soft, springy carpet of moss through the Myrtles and Horizental Scrub. Scattered through the rainforest are huge Eucalypt butts, the slits in the remains of the trunk testament to the men who stood on planks with their crosscut saws and felled these mighty giants ‘back in the day’. Now covered in moss and lichen they remain a thing of beauty.

And tucked amongst this green wonderland are the splashes of colour of hundreds of varieties of fungi – brackets, agarics, jellies, corals, stinkhorns, clubs, boletes and so on, or for the enthusiast you’d be referring to them with their scientific names such as Volvopluteus gloiocephallus or Anthracophyllum archeriid, that are really tricky. They may be small and delicate but their names are mighty and complicated. These brightly coloured fungi are like little gems in the forest to search out and photograph. Maybe I’ll head to the Florentine or the Styx Forests to search further. So many locations to choose from. In Autumn in particular the healing power of the moist forest is particularly noticeable. Is it the sheer beauty, or is it something more, scents that stimulate our brains as well as our senses? You always come out of these magic environments with a positive sense of well-being.

Or I may head to Mt Field National Park, leaving behind the Eucalypts and the rain forest areas, and venture up to the alphine plateau. Sheltered amongst the glacial cirques and around the mountain tarns is an amazing forest of mountain beech, Nothofagus gunnii, endemic to Tasmania, and Australia’s only native deciduous tree. How special is that!

Just when you’ve settled into the complacency of the Autumn calmness, an unexpected cold weather front sweeps across from the west whipping up dried leaves, slamming doors and flinging passion-fruit from the vines. Then it passes, and you step outside to once again marvel at Tasmania’s unique Autumn light.

Yes, Autumn may signal the end of Summer and the advance towards a colder Winter, but it is definitely a time of awe.

Recommended reading :

Limberlost, Robbie Arnott, Text Publishing Company 2022

Wildlight, Robyn Mundy, Picador 2016