Readers
may have noticed that Lees Paddocks in the Upper
Mersey appears frequently in my writing. The relationship is
multi-layered, beginning with a family link. George Lee, the Mole Creek
farmer who began selecting blocks there in the 1880s was my great
grandfather. Generations of my family have subsequently made the
pilgrimage there. I myself have been there many times including visits
with my children. But the quality of my relationship is much broader
than this for Lees Paddocks, a secluded glacial valley, is also a place
of great aesthetic beauty. The juxtaposition of towering peaks,
grasslands, forests and meandering river conjures a special power and
presence that makes my spirit soar. But most significant of all, I
marvel at the fact that Lees Paddocks is a living cultural landscape of
great antiquity and quality. When Europeans first saw the place, they
found a landscape that had been actively managed by Aboriginals for
around ten thousand years, a date derived from an archaeological dig at
the Wurragarra Rock Shelter, a kilometre upstream of the current Lees
Paddocks hut. Think about that for a moment. For a period of time
stretching over 500 generations, a population of humans developed a
relationship with the valley shaped by complex understandings of
environment, cosmology and ceremony.
While we can never fully comprehend the
complexity of that relationship, two features, currently visible in the
landscape today, excite my imagination. While now overgrown, a network
of tracks up river valleys and over mountain passes connect Lees
Paddocks to a broad hinterland. It was not a regional backwater that its
current geography might suggest. Secondly, the glacial outwash plains
of Lees Paddocks presented particular regional opportunities that I
believe Aboriginals actively exploited. These were fertile, sheltered,
well-watered pastures that were actively (perhaps intensively) managed,
in season, probably to support large populations of wallaby. Enclosed
within meanders of the river and with the river itself providing a
semi-hard boundary, they were probably managed more like contemporary
paddocks than we might care to imagine! Many of these plains were likely
to have been maintained in that grassy form for thousands of years.
Lees Paddocks was thus an important place to Aboriginals and probably
the site of seasonal gatherings and ceremony.
Those Europeans who had the opportunity
to spend significant time there responded to it in similar terms. Lewis
Lee (1903-1998), for example, who managed the lower part of Lees
Paddocks from 1932 to his death in 1998, saw it in spiritual terms:
‘If there is a God I feel closer to him up here than I would do in any church. This is His valley and I am its keeper.’
He consequently adopted a style of land
management that very closely mimicked that used by Aboriginals that he
and other Mersey hunters and cattlemen called ‘burning back with the
snow’ (for my research on this strategy read 'Burning Back with the
Snow': Traditional Approaches to Grassland Management in
Tasmania’, Australian Geographical Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1996 and ‘Fires in the Wire Paddock’, Australian Forestry, Vol. 61, No. 3, 1998).
This strategy was consciously taught
one generation to another. Those who implemented it made special trips
back to their mountain runs in spring as the snows melted from the
grasslands. When frosts had dried the dead tops of the grassy tussocks,
the mountain men would walk across the grasslands lighting fires
wherever one would take. Some of these fires would burn, others not but
those that did were cool fires that burnt steadily over wet soils and
extinguished themselves at damp forest edges. Only grasslands and grassy
woodlands were burnt with patches of forest that provided shelter
conserved. Typically, a quarter or a fifth of a place might end up being
burnt in any one year. Consequently, it might take four or five years
for a given area to be completely burnt creating a mosaic of different
aged patches of grassland.
The ecological outcome of this burning
practice has been scientifically studied. Burning in this way, it turns
out, reduces the height of tussocks and opens up the space between them
allowing a wide range of herbs, forbs, grasses and flowers to grow that
would otherwise be smothered. High altitude grasslands that have been
managed in this way are more species diverse than areas that have not.
The grasslands at Lees Paddocks have been actively managed using this
strategy for at least a century. Crucially, the practice continues to
this day. The consequence is that Lees Paddocks is regarded as an
ecological wonder among the scientific community. Ironically, it
is one of a limited number of such high value, high altitude grasslands
that remain in Tasmania today. There were once many more. Many that were
placed in national parks that have not been actively managed, have
deteriorated and lost value. The grassy banks below Waldheim at Cradle
Valley, for example, that were once covered by wildflowers no longer
present that annual display. Similar grassy areas at Lees Paddocks
and the Vale of Belvoir – areas both actively managed - are covered in
flowers every year.
It is in representing these three
levels of connection - family, aesthetics and an actively managed
country - in one place that makes Lees Paddocks the very crucible of my
identity, the forge which shapes my sense of who and what I am.
This photograph of the Lees Paddock Hut
taken from Mt Pillinger (below) by Ken Felton moved me in many
ways. At one level, it tells the story of the differing management
philosophies employed by George Lee and his son Lewis.
The Lee’s development of the valley
principally occurred in the period from 1900 to 1920, a time of general
economic expansion. As outlined in Mountain Stories, 6 January
2016, George Lee contracted sons Basil and Oliver to clear around 80
acres of forest on either side of Wurragarra Creek around 1907-8 in a
process that involved ringbarking and burning the mixed eucalypt and
myrtle forest. He also had teams of men clear up the valley slopes on
patches of good soil and sow it to grass to extend the area of land
available for grazing. Finally, he did a bit of opportunistic draining,
especially on the very top plain, again to optimize grazing area.
Lewis Lee, who controlled the lower
area of Lees Paddock following the death of his father in 1932, elected
not to maintain the clearing on the slopes. Wattle seed, capable of
surviving long periods of time dormant in the soil, subsequently
germinated to fulfil its ecological function of stabilising disturbed
soil. Felton’s photo shows the spectacular outcome a century after the
forest was first cleared. It also points to the potential use of wattle
flowering by historians or archaeologists as an indicator of historical
land clearing.
The area on which the current Lees
Paddocks Hut was built in 1940 was an open plain when it was first
surveyed in 1892. Interestingly, all the five huts that have been built
at Lees Paddocks since 1890, bar the Reg Wadley Memorial Hut (built in
1983) at the ‘top’ Paddocks, have been located within a stone’s throw or
two of the current hut (see Mountain Stories, 9 December
2013). It is a superior site possessing water, firewood, shelter and
solar access. For these reasons I wonder if generations of Aboriginals
also camped on that very site notwithstanding the fact that we have
evidence that they also camped in rock shelters up and down the
valley.
The Upper Mersey 1932: A Snapshot
In the winter of 1932, Elsie (Tot) Lee
shared a snaring hut at Lees Paddocks with her brothers and a number of
other men. Her recollections of that stay provide a vivid snapshot of
activity and arrangements in the Upper Mersey at that time. It includes
the strength of family associations, ‘men swapping loaves like women’,
and the location of individual hunters.
Elsie Lee, born in 1899, was the fourth
daughter and seventh child of the thirteen children born to George and
Alice Lee of Mole Creek between 1886 and 1911. Small at birth she was
given the nickname Tot, a name that stayed with her all her life. Tot
became a double certificate nurse who took leave from the Devon Hospital
at Latrobe around 1930 to return to Mole Creek to look after her father
whose health had begun to deteriorate. She continued to care for her
father at his home at Mountain View House up to his death in July 1932.
The stress took its toll on Tot whose own health deteriorated. Her
doctor suggested she should seek a higher altitude. One of her brothers:
Oliver, Basil or Oxley, suggested that The Paddocks might be a good
place for Tot to recuperate. It was certainly higher in altitude than
Mole Creek and was a safe place for an unmarried woman. Always
adventurous, Tot agreed and soon found herself packing for a most
unusual sojourn.
By 1932, the Lees had significant land
holdings in the Upper Mersey. Over 34 years George Lee had patiently and
strategically accumulated land in the valley both at The Paddocks (620
acres) and Pine Hut Plain (150 acres) six or seven kilometres down
stream. By 1932, her brother Oliver also owned a 150-acre bush block at
Moses Creek, a property on the other side of the Mersey from Pine Hut
Plain. These properties were used for summer grazing and as a base for
hunting in winter.
Tot travelled on a horse cart to
Howells Plains and then rode a horse though to The Paddocks. She arrived
to find a significant community connected by family and friendships.
Gloster Richards, her brother-in-law, was hunting from Howells Plains.
Oliver, her brother, was hunting from a hut near Moses Creek. Another
brother, Basil, managed a snare line that stretched from The Paddocks
down to Pine Hut Plain. He would spend alternate nights at The Paddocks
and his hut at Pine Hut Plain. A third brother, Oxley, hunted from The
Paddocks Hut as did her Uncle Len Applebee, cousin Kitch Lee, nephew Max
Lee, Maurice Sheriff and Mort Blair.
The Byard brothers, Wilfred and
Meyrick, were hunting from a hut at Kia Ora Creek on a run that extended
up stream into the Never Never. Their occupation of this run,
previously Paddy Hartnett’s, may have sprung from a practice of George
Lee’s. During the 1920s he spent a few weeks at The Paddocks every
summer. Parents of active young teenagers in Mole Creek observed this
and, before long, a few boys took turns going back with him for the
experience. The Byard brothers gained their initial exposure to The
Paddocks in this way and grew to enjoy the lifestyle.
During her stay, Tot had a chance to
observe the mountain country that surrounded The Paddocks. Basil and Max
took her on walks up into the Never Never, to Lake Meston and to Lake
Lousia. But it wasn’t the country that captured her imagination as much
as it was the food the hunters ate.
She found that it was common practice
for the men not to work on Sunday and to gather at The Paddocks Hut to
socialise. One of the important functions of this gathering was to
exchange loaves of bread. Yeast bread, she learnt, was highly valued by
the hunters over the alternate (bi-carb) soda loaf. ‘Never have soda dog
when someone could cook yeast bread’, she was told. But there was
competition between her brothers as to who could make the best bread.
The bread was made each morning in a big dish that was put in a warm bed
to rise. Then the first back to the hut at night would push the
dough down and make loaves and, after tea, cook them in the camp oven in
a bed of coals with coals also placed on top. On the Sundays, Tot
observed, the men would ‘swap loaves like women’ to see who had the
best bread.
Tot made her own contribution to the
hunters’ diet. She observed that native hens were nesting and, while the
men were out hunting one day, collected a lot of eggs. She used the
eggs to make a big batch of little cakes that were warm out of the camp
oven when young Max Lee (b. 1916) came home one afternoon. The cakes
were stored in a box out of sight but Max could smell them. He thought
he was going mad and imagined he would need to back to Mole Creek to
actually have the pleasure of eating what his nose had identified. The
reveal was met with both amazement and delight. Tot made more culinary
contributions. She had the men shoot native hens that were plucked and
dressed and cooked in a camp oven. She also had them collect wallaby
livers that she fried up for them with bacon. Her crowning glory,
however, was a variation on the scotch egg theme with a minced wallaby
roll with a boiled native hen eggs in the middle!