75 years of the Overland Track

By Alistair Paton

Published in Outdoor Australia, 2006

THE jagged ramparts of Cradle Mountain cut a stark profile against a sapphire blue sky, and bright orange leaves reflected the harsh sunlight as a stepped between twisted fagus branches and looping pandanus fronds. As shadows lengthened, this perfect start to what is billed as the perfect hike hit an unexpected obstacle: Blocking the path was a bag, its teenage owner standing beside the track wearing jeans, a turtle-neck jumper, a bewildered expression, and holding a piece of toilet paper as if it was about to explode. I tried to look sympathetic as I passed, but I could see my tolerance would be tested when I discovered she was one of a large group of students making their first expedition in the wild on the same week I had intended to get away from it all.

Those moments encapsulated the best and worst of Tasmania’s Overland Track. The scenery is unquestionably magnificent and the walking challenging but not overly taxing. But this combination, and other forces known and unknown, has made the track a phenomenon. What was once a muddy path through the wilderness has become an icon.

If you want to walk in Tasmania, you walk the Overland Track. If you want to walk in Australia, see above. A few days after meeting the students last summer I was making myself at home in one of the huts further along the trail when a lone hiker entered, dramatically ate a tin of uncooked corn, stomped on the empty tin and headed out the door. His English wasn’t great but during his brief visit I learnt he was in Tasmania for only three days and was trying to walk the 63km Overland Track in two. The possibility of not walking it seemed not to have occurred to him.

About 10,000 people make the same decision each year (although most do it at a slightly more leisurely pace, and cook their corn), making the track by far Australia’s most popular long-distance walk. In 1975 about 1500 people took the overland route from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair (or vice versa), a jump from about 250 a year in the mid-1950s. In 1994 the figure was almost 5000. Eighty-five per cent of walkers are from interstate or overseas, and for close to 90 per cent it is their first major bushwalk in Tasmania. While the boom has been fantastic for Tasmanian tourism, the wilderness has suffered, and so has the experience of many walkers. The track, which celebrates its 75th birthday in March, has reached a crossroads in its history.

This summer, for the first time, independent walkers were required to pay a $100 fee and book a spot on the track. Stuart Lennox, Tasmania’s Parks and Wildlife Service’s manager of strategy and sustainable use, said that on one night last December 124 people stayed in and around Waterfall Valley Hut – a track record made even more remarkable when you consider the hut has room for about 20.

“That is not good for us and it can’t be good for the people out there,” Mr Lennox said. “We want to improve the experience, that’s what it’s all about.” 

Of course, that wasn’t always a problem. When Max Poulter walked through the Cradle Reserve in 1937 he shared the park with one other party of walkers. In his diary Poulter described the appeal fo the walk; crossing Pine Forest Moor, he enthused: “It’s simply stupendous to see the enormous massiveness of W.Pelion (West Pelion)”. Standing at another vantage point he summed up the Overland experience: “Simply marvelous!” (although by the end of day one he noted at the bottom of a page: “by hell this pack is heavy”. Still, that is hardly surprising when that night’s meal was a pound of steak and five cups of tea, and the first-aid kit contained flour and dripping to ease sunburn).

Poulter was among the first to follow the designated walking track from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair. But his footsteps were far from the first in what may be mistakenly perceived as a wilderness untouched by man. There is some irony in the fact that planners of today’s highly publicized “great walks” have the Overland Track as a prototype when it is a hotchpotch of miners’ and snarers’ tracks, Aboriginal trade routes and parts of a never-built railway line. It was certainly never conceived as a walking track.

The first people to follow what is now the Overland Track were Aboriginal groups moving between hunting sites such as Pelion Plains and around Lake St Clair – which they knew as Leeawuleena, “the sleeping water”. Apart from isolated incursions (the first European to climb Cradle Mountain was probably Henry Hellyer in 1828, looking for grazing land on behalf of the Van Diemens Land Company), the central plateau went largely unnoticed until the late 19th Century, when a large block of unused land in the centre of Tasmania appeared an unnecessary impediment to the colony’s growing economy, based on mineral exploration on the west coast.

Several attempts were made to find a railway route across the plateau. One party cut a track up the Mersey Valley to Frog Flats, covering 133km before they ran out of money and the project was abandoned. Their paths were followed by miners, who dug up silver at Pelion Plains, copper near Lake Windermere and coal at Mt Ossa, barn Bluff and Mt Pelion West. In 1926 the Adelaide Oil Exploration Company set aside 25,000 pounds for drilling around the Pelion region. Hunters and snarers also operated across the plateau, and cattle yards were built at Pelion Plains.

While the wildness of the terrain, the fierce and unpredictable weather, transport problems and, in the miners’ case, the poor quality of metal, beat back almost everyone (a few sheep and cows were left behind which terrorised bushwalkers into the 1940s), their efforts paved the way for adventurers to follow. The failed attempts to exploit the area’s natural resources gave way to a new industry as roads and tracks cut for mining were commandeered by tourists. In 1909 Austrian naturalist Gustav Weindorfer climbed Cradle Mountain and famously declared: “This must be a national park for the people for all time”, and built Waldheim (“forest home”), a home-cum-guesthouse in the shadow of the mountain.

The highlands between Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair were declared a scenic reserve in 1922. By the end of the decade, separate boards were managing the northern and southern ends of the park, but hunters still operated freely, and would play a major role in the development of the Overland Track.

In 1928 snarer Paddy Hartnett wrote to ET Emmett, director of the Tasmanian Tourist Bureau, proposing to construct a track between Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair, utilizing huts built by snarers and miners at Lake Windermere, Pelion and Du Cane, which were conveniently spaced 13 miles (21km) apart. Today the Queensland Government is spending $10 million on seven great walks; 75 years ago Hartnett’s asking price of 220 pounds was considered excessive, and the job fell to another snarer, Bert Nicholls, who was paid 15 pounds. 

Nicholls led Emmett on a reconnaissance trip through the reserve in January 1931 and, in April, a party of four men set out from Waldheim to mark a track to Lake St Clair. Despite heavy snow, they completed the job in two weeks. Though today’s Overland Track departs at several points from the original trail, there are still direct physical connections to those early pioneers: Du Cane Hut was built by Hartnett in 1908, Old Pelion Hut is one of two huts built by Melbourne-based company Mt Pelion Mines for a nearby copper operation, and the track between Lake Windermere and Pelion Plains follows the incline cut for the long-abandoned railway line to the west coast.

In the decade following its construction the track was upgraded and huts improved or replaced (much of the work was done by the Connell family, who inherited Waldheim after Weindorfer’s death in 1932), but, despite these developments, the Overland Track, as it was by then known, still wasn’t seen as just a hiking trail. Nicholls believed he was clearing an upgraded horse track, miners and snarers used it as much as walkers, and in the 1930s the Tasmanian Government unveiled a plan to extend the Cradle Mountain Road through to Lake St Clair. 

After World War 2 the area was declared a national park, with one board taking over the management responsibilities of the original northern and southern boards. By now summer tourist numbers had grown to over 800 – a 400 per cent rise in six years. The new board shelved plans to extend the road and the park became the exclusive domain of bushwalkers and skiers. Track development had continued during the war – the path to Pine Valley was cleared in 1940-41 – but work was accelerated with the stability of peace. New Pelion Hut was constructed in 1950-51 (this was the second “New Pelion”, the first burnt down in 1943. A third New Pelion was built in 2004). Windy Ridge Hut was added in 1953, and Waterfall Valley Hut in 1959. By 1970 close to 20,000 people a year were visiting Cradle Valley, but the number walking from one end of the park to the other was about the same as other major tracks in Tasmania. So, what happened? How did a good bushwalk become an icon?

The answer probably has more to do with Eric Sargent than he would admit. Guided walks have always been part of the Overland experience; figures such as Nicholls, Hartnett and the Connell family were leading visitors through what is now Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park before the track was officially established. But as they departed or retired, the park became the domain of independent hikers for almost 30 years. In 1970 Sargent led his first party trekking through the Tasmanian highlands and, in doing so, pioneered eco-tourism in the state. Sargent estimates it took 10 years before his business, Craclair Tours, became financially viable, but his idea made an already accessible wilderness easier to negotiate, and customers started spreading the word. The snowball had started rolling but, as Stuart Lennox points out, it wouldn’t have got far if there wasn’t much for walkers to talk about. “It’s the sizzle that sells the sausage,” he says. “I fundamentally believe the reason (the track is so popular) is just because it’s a bloody brilliant walk.” Sargent agrees: “I never get tired of it. It’s all there – the animals, the forests, the rivers, the mountains, the streams and waterfalls. It’s just the sort of place you don’t find anywhere else. I’ve seen bigger country but the unique thing about the Overland Track is just about anybody can access it and most people can go to the higher peaks.”

Dr Peter Martin, head of the Outdoor Education Department at La Trobe University in Bendigo, says: “It’s a beautiful area, no doubt, but if you went 60km down the road and walked into Frenchman’s Cap there is more spectacular scenery in a more pristine location. But that’s not a bad thing because having not as many people on lesser-known tracks is better for visitors, and better for the environment.”

When talks about a co-ordinated walking strategy began in the 1990s, the Tasmanian Government came to the same conclusion. Lennox says the Government also realized that if numbers continued to grow at the then-current rate (about 8 per cent a year), the Overland Track would struggle to cope. The implications could be an overhaul of some of the track’s most recognizable features, including replacing some huts or removing others altogether. But Lennox says the essence of the Overland Track experience will be retained and, hopefully, enhanced.

I was taught about that essence by a group of students who, despite my misgivings, proved to be quite entertaining hut companions. By the time they walked off the track those jeans were a lot dirtier and the girls were over that whole exploding toilet paper thing. And they learnt plenty more – about self-dependence, about wilderness. And about themselves.

The Overland Track might not be the best bushwalk in Tasmania, nor the most remote. But for many people it is an introduction to wilderness – not a place untouched by man (those boardwalks are a giveaway), but a place somehow able to retain what in 1929 Fred Smithies described as “an air of never being disturbed since the beginning of time”. The Overland Track changes people. And that will always make it one of the world’s great outdoor experience; always, in the words of Max Poulter, simply marvelous.

10 THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE OVERLAND TRACK

1. Flynn’s Tarn is named after eminent Tasmanian biologist T.Thompson Flynn, father of film star Errol.

2. The first boat from Narcissus Hut to Cynthia Bay had no roof, an oar for a mast and a tent for a sail. The popularity of the service increased when the tub was replaced by former racing boat Miss Velocity, which was fitted with a motor car engine. It was designed to carry two people but often held 10 times that number.

3. Timber cut in Cradle Valley was used to build minesweepers during World War 2. A mill operated on the current site of Cradle Mountain Lodge.

4. The popularity and accessibility of the track can cause problems. In the 1960s two well-dressed gentlemen arrived at the ranger station with briefcases and informed ranger Gordon Sanders they were walking to “Windermere Hotel” where they intended to catch a taxi to Hobart.

5. Yeti or yowie footprints have been found several times on the track. In 1898 a visitor claimed to have bumped into a 2.4 metre tall “human” covered in hair that fled on all fours.

6. The original Kia Ora Hut was reportedly built by Paddy Hartnett and his brother Jack to hide a lover they had brought home from New Zealand. “Kia Ora” is a Maori greeting. The original hut utilized living trees as posts.

7. The Connell family’s spaniel Skipper often accompanied them on excursions and made it to the Cradle Mountain summit.

8. Cradle Mountain was originally called Remarkable Mountain and also appeared on some maps as Ribbed Rock until the 1820s.

9. The oldest rocks on the Overland Track are over 100 million years old. There are pencil pines along the track over 1000 years old.

10. Gustav Weindorfer’s hospitality was legendary, but living in a small wooden hut in the heart of the wilderness was no easy life. In 1916 police investigated claims he was a German spy, searching his hut for a secret radio he was allegedly using to communicate with the enemy. The only machine they found was one Gustav used to produce his staple diet of kangaroo rissoles.

Click here to see track notes and photos of the Overland Track