by Paul Collins
‘Early the next morning we arose after arranging matters respecting our luggage. [We] kept to the tops of the mountains for our travelling’ whenever possible to avoid any pursuing troops. In other words, they were following the ridge-lines, which experienced bushwalkers in this area agree was probably the best way to go. Pearce tells us that ‘we made toward the east, keeping off Gordon’s River for fear of the soldiers’. Since at this point they were about 17 kilometres (10½ miles) due north of the Gordon River, they had little to fear from the military. But they did not know this.
With the exception of Mount Sorell, Frenchman’s Cap and the Gordon River, none of the geographical features of the landscape had been named in 1822, and Pearce’s narratives of the journey are vague on exact locations. From the information given in the Pearce accounts, a reasonably accurate estimate can be made most of the time to within about 15 kilometres (just over 9 miles) of their actual route.
As soon as they descended the eastern side of Mount Sorell that morning, they would have been in the narrow valley of the Clark River, which at that point was more of a creek. After fording it and getting through some rainforest of medium density, they would have had to climb steeply to the Darwin Plateau, the ridge-line between Mount Darwin and the South Darwin Peak. Like Mount Sorell, the Darwin Range is a steep, rocky, exposed escarpment about 650 metres (2130 feet) high on a direct north to south alignment, and descending from it would have involved in places hand-over-hand rock-climbs.This type of terrain quickly sapped their strength, especially now that they were no longer driven by the adrenalin of escape. Probably no European had ever been through this area before them, and it was only intermittently visited by the Aborigines – the landscape around Macquarie Harbour and the mountains to the east constituted the border between the territories of the North-West and South-West tribes, and there is debate as to how often the Aborigines visited.
To the east of the Darwin Range they descended into what Pearce calls ‘very rough country’.That is an understatement: they were now heading east–south-east, and although the tops of the mountain ridges are bare, down at the lower levels the escapees had begun to penetrate a wide swathe of implicate rainforest, the scientific name for the thickest, most tangled, inaccessible type of country. But it is not just a matter of getting through. Describing this area, Terry Reid says, ‘Down in the valleys you have scrub, and also you have to cross drainage creeks and then the Andrew River. The Andrew is in a very deep valley. The whole area is well vegetated, with very fast-flowing streams, and in September there is a lot of water around.’
Reid correctly uses the word ‘scrub’ to describe the forests that the eight escapees were now entering. The predominant and most obvious species are the various types of beech trees: botanical name Nothofagus, the remnant vegetation from Gondwana, the original southern super-continent that centred on the South Pole and began to break up and drift northward about 160 million years ago. So Pearce, Greenhill and their six companions were now entering what had been the natural home of the dinosaurs until the great extinction of the reptiles at the end of the Cretaceous period, some 65 million years ago.
These cool temperate beech forests long outlasted the dinosaurs and were the predominant vegetation in Australia until the major changes in climate that occurred between five million years ago and fairly recently. During the recurrent ice ages the atmosphere became drier and the Nothofagus rainforest species slowly disappeared from most areas on the mainland, and the acacias and eucalypts gradually took over across the Australian landscape.They still dominate it. Modern research has shown that especially over the last 750,000 years, the rainforests have expanded and contracted after the major fluctuations in climate brought about by the ice ages. Since the arrival of humankind in Australia, probably as long ago as 60,000 years, the deliberate lighting of fires by Aboriginal people to flush out game and maintain grassy areas has also favoured the eucalypts and acacias over all other species, because these plants need fire for their germination.
It is only in far eastern Victoria and south-western Tasmania that remnant Gondwana vegetation has survived. These forests are quite different from the tropical rainforests of northern Australia and the equatorial regions. That is why they are historically and biologically so important.
But Pearce and his seven companions would have had a very different view of this landscape.The area that they were traversing was dominated by myrtle beech. As far as they were concerned it was an alien landscape full of almost impenetrable scrub through which they would have had to cut a path to make their way. At ground level the beech forest is a twilight world – cool, damp and still. In a mature rainforest these trees form a dense canopy that can vary in height from 7 to 36 metres (20 to 120 feet) above the ground. The ground is littered with rotten fallen trees and branches. There are great festoons of vines and mosses, as well as large and small fern-trees, one of the few species that can grow in this closed atmosphere.
Climbing over fallen trees and pushing their way past branches and vines, the escapees often fell, cutting themselves and putting a terrible strain on their bodies. Occasionally they would have seen an isolated remnant mountain ash, or even a small stand of them, that poked out of the forest-cover like a thin, leafy spire on a cathedral – a sure sign that the rainforest had reclaimed an area that it had surrendered to the eucalypt forests several hundreds of years before, following a wildfire. Besides myrtle beech, Pearce and the others would have also seen southern sassafras, celery-top pine, leatherwood and an occasional stand of Huon pine. In the higher mountain valleys and gullies the predominant species they would have encountered were deciduous beech, celery-top pine, King Billy pine and pencil pine.
But the escapees were too busy and too exhausted to give a darn about the various species of beech and pine, most of which had not been named, let alone catalogued, at that time.They were about two to three days out of Macquarie Harbour when they passed to the north of the Darwin Crater, where a meteorite hit the earth 750,000 years ago, a major source of glass-like silicate, much valued by the Aborigines and widely traded throughout Tasmania. Although they did not know it and nothing in the landscape had been named at that time, they were actually pushing on toward the Andrew River and the Engineer Range, some of the toughest country in the world. Even today there is no walking track, let alone a road that follows their course. Only the best equipped and most experienced twenty-first-century bushwalkers would attempt to follow in the Pearce party’s footsteps, and then only using accurate and detailed survey maps, compasses and probably a Global Positioning System (GPS).
But as the convicts cut their way toward the Andrew River, they soon realised that they were not just facing dense, implicate rainforest, difficult creek crossings, steep mountains and deep valleys.They were also beginning to experience some of the nastiest vegetation in the world. Interspersed with the beech trees and often growing around and through them, especially where fire had disturbed the rainforest, was the notorious horizontal scrub with the odd botanical name of Anodopetalum biglandulosum. This type of scrub literally becomes horizontal rather than vertical, after growing 2 to 5 metres (6 and 15 feet).The main stem grows vertically until it is forced to lean over under its own weight, and it then spreads out, forming a thick tangle of horizontal branches. The whole process is repeated over and over as further stems grow upwards and then bend over under their own weight. The denseness of ‘horizontal’, as it is called in the southwest, creates a near inaccessibility; there is simply no way you can move through it or stand upright in it.You are constantly thrown off balance. It tears at the front of your legs and chest and you can easily fall over and break a limb. There is no way of boring a path through without an axe and much exertion. Even trying to hack a path is often unsuccessful.You can attempt to crawl beneath it, but here you find uneven ground and a clammy, slippery, slimy, wet surface with fallen logs, mosses and debris. As you crawl along, the stems grab at your clothes and skin. It is soul-destroying, and no mat
ter what you do, you quickly tire and become disoriented. So the best you can do is to chop your way through, especially if you can’t go around it. This is what our escapees would have tried to do.
One way of dealing with the horizontal scrub is to walk on top of it. This is possible in some places because it is so dense, although it can be very risky and you can fall through and hurt yourself badly. There is a story told in the south-west of a massive D-8 bulldozer, whose driver felt the vehicle gently rocking from side to side as he drove it along, just as though it was riding on a sponge. Fearing that the dozer would roll over, he jumped down and was amazed to find that he had driven it onto horizontal scrub so strong that it supported the heavy machine. Henry Hellyer, a surveyor for the Van Diemen’s Land Company, reported in March 1827, five years after the Pearce party, that he tried to move across the top of the horizontal: ‘We were obliged to be walking upon these never-dry, slippery branches, covered with moss, as much as twenty feet [six metres] above the ground, which, being in many instances rotten, occasioned us many awkward falls, and tore our clothes to rags. We were not able to force our way on five hundred yards in an hour in some of these horrid scrubs’.
Adding to the inaccessibility of the horizontal are stands of tea-tree that grow to 3 or 4 metres in height (10 to 13 feet), and paperbark trees that can grow up to 9 metres (30 feet). They are often accompanied by silver banksia, a shrub that can also grow to up to 9 metres with a conspicuous honeycomb-like flower. The ground is often sodden underneath these shrubs and trees, with a mixed undergrowth of ferns and mosses. But even more frustrating for Pearce and the other escapees would have been the bauera – pronounced ‘bow-ra’ – a thick understorey shrub. It looks a little like tea-tree and has a rather lovely flower and soft leaves. But it grows in dense clumps, sometimes occurring around and through the horizontal. One of Tasmania’s most experienced bushwalkers, and a campaigner for the Wilderness Society, Geoff Law, describes bauera as ‘a yielding sort of vegetation that absorbs all the efforts you throw at it, and you just end up in a complete tangle. It grows up to 2 to 3 metres [7 to 10 feet] tall. You can push through and down on it, you can try to crush it, and the more you push and crush, the more it falls back in on you. It is like trying to fight with a trampoline!’
Perhaps the most vicious form of vegetation in the southwest is cutting grass. Its name says it all: it cuts any exposed skin it comes in contact with and leaves a nasty wound that usually becomes infected and festering. It grows in tussocks 2 to 3 metres high (9 feet) and often becomes intertwined with other clumps of cutting grass, or attaches to branches and fallen logs. It makes any movement forward almost impossible. The combination of bauera, horizontal and cutting grass, together with sassafras and leatherwood, can tear your clothing to pieces and sap your energy and patience – a completely morale-destroying situation. If it does that for well-fed, fully equipped, modern bush-walkers, you can imagine the effect on a group of poorly equipped, poorly dressed escapees.
After some time battling through this kind of bush, even if you are on a path, you tend to slip into a kind of psychological automatic pilot. You become so tired in body that your mind withdraws and you revert to a semi-conscious state. It is precisely when you are in this state that you can miss your footing and fall over. Going downhill is sometimes worse than going up because you put so much strain on your knees and leg muscles. Certainly you can pick up pace on the downward slope, but if your mind and eyes are not closely focused on where you are walking and where you put your feet, the mud and slippery ground and rocks can give way and lead to serious falls. For the convicts this lack of attention would have been exacerbated by hunger, yet the Pearce party could have survived in this type of bush as long as they did only by withdrawing mentally.
By about day four into the escape there was trouble brewing. Even as they crossed the Darwin Range, Little Brown, the oldest man in the group, was becoming a problem: he could not keep up with the others. Pearce says that even on the second day he was ‘suffering more by the fatigues of the journey than the others’ and that he ‘could not keep pace with us, and was frequently at a considerable distance behind us which compelled us to stop for him’. Little Brown had been in the convict system for a long time. His spirit was already broken, and probably his desire to reach freedom was largely gone. He was ‘the worst walker of any’, Pearce says, ‘which detained us much’. He had really gone along with the others because he was part of the group and he did what they decided. But by now their patience was growing thin, and while they ‘compassionated [with] his sufferings’, he was told bluntly that despite all his ‘remonstrances . . . it was our determination to leave him if he did not endeavour to keep pace with us’. They were adamant that ‘We would not lose so good an opportunity of gaining our liberty through him’. However, to try to help him they shared out among them his ‘burthen’, which can’t have been much. But by now the realities of nature were impinging on them all. Pearce says in an understatement: ‘The ground over which we travelled [had been] dreadfully rough and bushy’, and this slowed them down considerably.
The second night out they ate some more of their provisions. They used a portion of the flour to cook damper, the bush bread made from mixing flour and water, which was then baked on the coals of the fire. It was not particularly nourishing, but it filled their empty bellies.
Things were even worse the next day. Pearce says that they ‘arose at the very dawn of day the third morning and proceeded on the journey through thick woods of brush in a very melancholy state’. They were now in the implicate rainforest to the west of the Andrew River, still difficult country.
The rain that had begun to pour down on the first night did not let up. ‘It kept on a constant rain’, Pearce reports, ‘which greatly added to make us far [more] miserable than we was’. Such weather is typical for south-western Tasmania, where the deluge can last for up to a week or ten days. Even in summer the rain often turns to sleet and sometimes even to thick snow. It is bone-chillingly cold, particularly at night. When the rain stops, frosts or fogs are common. Pearce confirms this when he says that ‘the weather still continuing to be very wet and foggy made it very disagreeable travelling’, and that the rain made them ‘far [more] miserable . . . and [it] was also excessively cold particularly at nights, and not having sufficient nourishment and being exposed so much to the night dews greatly impaired our constitutions’. Also their clothing and footwear, which would have been of poor quality and pretty rough and ready to start with, would now have become torn and frayed and would have offered them little or no protection.
By the fourth day of the escape they would have already climbed over Mount Sorell, crossed the Darwin Range, and penetrated the valley of the Andrew River 4 to 5 kilometres (2½ to 3 miles) north of its junction with the Franklin River. Immediately in front of them lay the Engineer Range, and beyond that the south-flowing Franklin, where water levels would have been high with the rain and the melting snow of late winter. As they moved toward the valley the Pearce party passed through forests of myrtle, King Billy pine and Huon pine, and cutting grass and bauera with dense tea-tree and horizontal scrub. As they got close to the river itself they found themselves in a tall eucalypt forest. The Andrew was in full September flood, but they must have found a fairly easy crossing-place because two of the party could not swim. It was probably a couple of kilometres (a mile or so) north of the Looker River’s junction with the Andrew.
Immediately they confronted a steep line of mountains on a more or less north–south axis – the Engineer Range. Although they did not know it, beyond that was the Deception Range, lying on the same axis across their route. While these mountain chains are not particularly high – on average they are about 700 metres (2290 feet) – they are extremely steep and treacherous, comprised of ice- and glacier-eroded Cambrian rock, with a number of sheer cliff faces and drops down to the Franklin River. Terry Reid says that the Engineer Range is not as hard to climb as Mount Sorell, although it
s difficulty would have depended on the direction in which they approached the ascent. He says that the fact that a couple of them were already exhausted shows that they were perhaps trying to cover too much ground each day.The one prominent point in the whole area that had already been named was Frenchman’s Cap; Greenhill would have used this as a reference point. Reid feels sure that they would have been trying to get to the east of Frenchman’s Cap as fast as they could.Then they would have felt safe from pursuit because they were well beyond the area that could be seen or reached from Sarah Island.
The party had now covered about 23 kilometres (14 miles) as the crow flies from the eastern shoreline of Macquarie Harbour. Pearce says that food was running low and there was ‘not the least prospect of procuring any more for there was not a single reptile in that part of the country where we was’. Aboriginal people would have known where to look for ‘bush tucker’, and there were wallabies around, such as the red-necked wallaby and the Tasmanian pademelon (pronounced ‘paddy-melon’), as well as wombats, ring-tailed and brush-tailed possums, and some species of birds. But the wallabies are shy, fast-moving and good at camouflage, and the possums are nocturnal and tree-dwelling. Without experience of the bush and lacking both the knowledge and wherewithal, Pearce and the others would have had no chance of catching them.There would not have been any birds’ eggs at that time of the year. Some people have suggested that they could have chased and caught wombats by hand, but both Terry Reid and Geoff Law point out that this could only have been said by those who have never tried to catch these seemingly awkward, but tough, burrowing marsupials. Wombats have a real turn of speed when necessary, they are bulky and strong, and when chased they make a bee-line straight back to the safety of their burrows, or they disappear into the scrub or forest. There were also some edible plants, but these were unknown to the escapees. As well there would have been the carnivorous marsupials: the now extinct thylacine (the Tasmanian ‘tiger’), the carrion-eating Tasmanian devil, the catlike spotted-tailed quoll and the smaller eastern quoll.The quolls are nocturnal, and thylacine cautious and well concealed, and the devils are too fast-moving.