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!