Tales from Tassie - Ranger James’ exchange

After talk­ing to a num­ber of peo­ple, I arrived in Tas­ma­nia pre­pared with plen­ty of warm gear to wear. The con­trast between the region I work in, the Flinders Ranges, and Tas­ma­nia is staggering.

With the amount of water that is around and the lush green veg­e­ta­tion, it took me some time to adjust. If we were to get a sim­i­lar amount of rain­fall, roads in Ikara-Flinders Ranges would be closed for months. 

Anoth­er thing that stood out for me is the time it takes to dri­ve a rel­a­tive­ly short dis­tance on the windy Tas­man­ian roads. I am yet to dri­ve a road that wasn’t beau­ti­ful, so the extra time it takes is worth it. On one of those jour­neys, I man­age to see a spot­ted tail quoll in the mid­dle of the day, but I only man­aged to see a Tas­man­ian dev­il in enclo­sures at Devils@Cradle.

I spent my time work­ing with a num­ber of Parks Tas­ma­nia staff from Cra­dle Moun­tain and sur­rounds. A new Field Offi­cer start­ed at the Cra­dle Moun­tain work cen­tre, which allowed me to take part in the induc­tion process for new staff and go through Parks Tas­ma­nia sys­tems. This includ­ed learn­ing the Land Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem Tas­ma­nia (LIST) map, uni­forms and SafeT sys­tem. All were sim­i­lar to sys­tems, poli­cies and process­es that we use in SA. 

I was shown the dai­ly pro­ce­dure at the Cra­dle Moun­tain work cen­tre, including: 

• Open­ing the inter­pre­ta­tion centre 

• Putting weath­er updates up at Roney Creek (the start of the Over­land Track) and Dove Lake for vis­i­tors plan­ning walks on some of the tracks 

• Check­ing boot wash­ing sta­tions and water stor­age sup­ply lev­els which sup­ply the vis­i­tor cen­tre and staff accommodation. 

Dur­ing the first cou­ple of weeks I went to meet­ings with a road con­trac­tor to dis­cuss road verge works on Dove Lake Road and a new bus shed shel­ter for new hybrid shut­tle busses join­ing the fleet going in and out of Dove Lake. Fol­low­ing that, I spent some time explor­ing tracks in the Cra­dle Moun­tain area and walked sev­er­al of the short walks, as well as look­ing at the Crater Falls Track infra­struc­ture — one of the projects bud­get­ed for a future upgrade. The ranger in charge explained the Parks Tas­ma­nia track clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem and the stan­dards required to main­tain safe­ty for the net­work of tracks through­out the park. 

I drove one of the rangers from Cra­dle Moun­tain to Lake St Clair so she could walk the Over­land Track to check and clean huts from south to north. One of the Lake St Clair rangers took us out to Nar­cis­sus Hut via Echo Point Hut on the Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice (PWS) boat. 

After the first month I began to recog­nise that the weath­er con­di­tions dic­tate a lot of what is in the oper­a­tional works pro­gram. One day you could be hik­ing tracks on a blue­bird day and a week lat­er you are check­ing road con­di­tions to give updates on sta­tus to the bus shut­tle service. 

The start of my sec­ond month at Cra­dle Moun­tain was very inter­est­ing, with a large weath­er sys­tem from the west to north-west hit­ting Tas­ma­nia hard. I post­poned mov­ing to the oth­er work cen­tres until the weath­er con­di­tions improved. 

Destruc­tive winds and rain caused road clo­sures, pow­er out­ages and flood­ing. Cra­dle Moun­tain had trees down on Dove Lake Road, which ren­dered it unsafe for the usu­al bus shut­tle to oper­ate.
Addi­tion­al­ly, with the pow­er out­ages, com­mu­ni­ca­tions went out, so the vis­i­tor cen­tre was closed for a few days. We relied on the Gov­ern­ment Radio Net­work to com­mu­ni­cate, and I assist­ed staff with main­tain­ing fuel to gen­er­a­tors, clear­ing roads and man­ag­ing tourists, some of which were still deter­mined to hike in the extreme conditions. 

When the con­di­tions calmed, we were able to do the month­ly wom­bat sur­vey where we checked the con­di­tion of wom­bats in the high vis­i­ta­tion areas. The sur­vey col­lects num­bers of ani­mals, age, con­di­tion and if there is any sign of mange. 

When the weath­er con­di­tions set­tled and roads were re-opened, I was able to make my way down to Tri­abun­na via Mt Field Nation­al Park. At Mt Field I had a look at Rus­sell and Horse­shoe Falls before head­ing up on to Mount Maw­son ski field to check vis­i­tors and clean the toilets. 

After arriv­ing at the Tri­abun­na Field cen­tre, I made my way out to Maria Island in the PWS boat to deliv­er fuel sup­plies to the island and have a brief look around. The sec­ond day I caught the fer­ry to Maria Island where I helped TAFE Con­ser­va­tion and Ecosys­tem Man­age­ment stu­dents erect a fence around an ero­sion site to pro­tect the reveg­e­ta­tion from wom­bats and for­est kan­ga­roos. The stu­dents also set up some cam­era traps (which man­aged to cap­ture a Tas­man­ian dev­il) and did some water sampling. 

Freycinet Nation­al Park was my next stop. First­ly, I joined the local staff in assess­ing old infra­struc­ture at Mead­stone Falls in Mount Puz­zler For­est Reserve, which was due for upgrad­ing. The look­out at the falls is cur­rent­ly closed as engi­neers assessed it to be high risk. We looked at a poten­tial new site where the look­out could be con­struct­ed. On route to Mount Puz­zler, I tried my first scal­lop pie from a bak­ery in Bicheno (jury is still out). 

Dur­ing the remain­der of my time in Freycinet I walked into Wine­glass Bay to check and clean toi­lets, helped in the vis­i­tor cen­tre talk­ing to tourists, met con­trac­tors repair­ing tracks in the reserve and removed haz­ardous branch­es and trees along Freycinet Drive. 

From the east coast I returned to Cra­dle Moun­tain where I joined the North West Region on a fire train­ing day at Ulver­stone. This includ­ed BOM weath­er updates for the sea­son, new tech­nolo­gies, appli­ca­tions and break­out ses­sions for man­u­al han­dling, GRN radios and pump operations. 

My time in Tas­ma­nia fin­ished off with inspec­tion and clear­ing of a track into Win­ter­brook Falls, clear­ing ice off the road at Dove Lake so the shut­tle busses can get through and meet­ing the return­ing track rangers for sea­son­al open­ing of the Over­land Track. 

Gen­er­al­ly, Parks and Wildlife Tas­ma­nia and Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice SA are quite sim­i­lar. Some lit­tle dif­fer­ences I noticed may be just spe­cif­ic to the Flinders region rather than the whole of SA. There seems to be more of a walking/​hiking cul­ture in Tas­ma­nia. Many of the spec­tac­u­lar water­falls, lakes, rivers and moun­tain views are only acces­si­ble by walk­ing. The net­work of board­walks into these loca­tions is exten­sive and well-main­tained. There are large expans­es of wilder­ness and there are areas that are loved to death with high vis­i­ta­tion from tourists. 

As in South Aus­tralia, the Tas­man­ian parks staff are very pas­sion­ate and were more than hap­py to show me around their patch. I am grate­ful for every­one who was gen­er­ous with their time, and I hope that I have helped pave the way for future exchange opportunities. 

James’ jour­ney shows just how much we can learn when we step into new land­scapes and con­nect with oth­ers who share our pas­sion. These exchanges strength­en our col­lec­tive knowl­edge and inspire fresh ideas for car­ing for our wild places. Here’s to more expe­ri­ences that build bridges and keep our parks thriv­ing for gen­er­a­tions to come!