On the surface it’s a mere, dusty track climbing into the heart of my local reserve. I can never ignore it, though. It calls to me, lures me, seduces me, and I always feel compelled to explore the magical world beyond its leafy margins.
The track leads from the far side of the lower lake at the Waterworks Reserve and its crushed mudstone glows golden in sunshine. After rain, it is clothed in a more restrained shade, that of tarnished copper.
To the refrain of golden whistlers and grey shrike-thrushes it curls like a snake from the grassy embankment of the dam holding the lake, before vanishing from view behind the lush vegetation of the wet sclerophyll forest on the northern side of the Waterworks Valley.
It’s a track for all seasons and in the short time it takes to traverse it – about 20 minutes to the top end of the reserve – the whole spectrum of the Tasmanian forest environment is revealed.
Beyond a rich variety of birds, the changing seasons are revealed by fungi and flora. In winter eastern spinebills dip their scimitar bills in the bell flowers of common heath. In late spring the blossoms of stringybark are raided by green rosellas.
All summer long the eucalypt canopy above the trail rings to the song of satin flycatchers and into autumn the yellow blooms of Banksia marginata reveal themselves, to be ripped apart by yellow-tailed black cockatoos.
Autumn also sees fungi sprout from leaf litter and bracket fungi provides a perch for pink robins on fallen, mossy timber. Native-hens scamper along the track ahead of me.
My favourite time is summer, when the winding trail inspires all sorts of notions of trips into unknown and mystical worlds told in children’s stories. It is the yellow brick road of the Wizard of Oz, the wardrobe in the Chronicles of Nania, a gateway to adventure.
And from my teenage years, my misspent youth in the Swinging Sixties, I always think of the phrase the “long and winding road” which seemed to feature in not just the folk and pop songs of the era, but in the New Journalism which so influenced my budding career in journalism.
I got to travel long and winding highways in the United States, viewing yellow-bellied sapsuckers on the way, and dusty roads in Africa, where elephants and rhino crossed ahead of me. But I never became as familiar with the environment of these roads as I know my track. I see so much that is contained within it, a microcosm of the great world of nature, as vital as the savannahs of Africa or the deciduous forests of North America.
The golden track rising above the lake calls to me and each time I accept the invitation to climb it, I know something new will be revealed.