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A wildlife walk that echoes history

February 1, 2025 Don Knowler

It’s said that hiking is a reminder of how we leave a mark on the Earth. British sculptor Richard Long, as part of a series of works called A Line Made by Walking, wrote in 1967: “If you undertake a walk, you are echoing the whole history of mankind.”
This quote came to mind when I walked the second section of the Darwin Trail on the Eastern Shore recently. Long’s words were a gentle reminder of how humankind has left such a far-reaching impression on the natural world since Darwin set foot on Tasmanian soil 189 years ago.
The view of Hobart from Mornington Hill would have changed beyond all recognition from the time an inquisitive and eager Charles Darwin trod what is now known as the Waverley Flora Park Reserve.
Darwin on his visit to Hobart in 1836 – during the epic voyage of the Beagle – had set out on several “pleasant excursions”, one of them taking a steam ferry from Sullivan’s Cove to Bellerive, as I mentioned last week in the first of two articles on the Darwin Trail.
The first part of Clarence Council’s walk takes the hiker along the Eastern Shore from Bellerive and the second section heads inland through Howrah towards Mornington and Waverley Hills.
In the diaries written during his 12-day visit to Hobart, Darwin noted that much of the light woodland on the foothills of kununyi/Mt Wellington had already been cleared “and the bright yellow fields of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes, appear very luxuriant”.
These fields, of course, now comprise the inner suburbs and much of the wildlife Darwin noted has vanished. In the Waverley reserve, however, things are very much the same as Darwin would have seen them, as he followed ancient tracks established over thousands of years by Tasmanian Aborigines.
He would have seen the same birds as I was seeing – with the exception of the Tasmanian emu which is now extinct – although his focus during his journeys in the general Hobart area were more about geology than fauna and flora.
Darwin was an expert geologist and the five information panels along the 12km trail make no mention of wildlife at all and confirm his eyes were firmly on rock formations of dolerite and red and yellow sandstone.
As I stood above a cliff-face comprising a rich seam of sandstone, the call of a yellow-throated honeyeater rang out amid the white and blue gums and then the excited chatter of a green rosella. Both these birds are endemic to Tasmania.
Sadly, some of the signs depicting the Darwin Walk have been defaced and trees in the reserve wantonly cut down. What would have Darwin made of it all, I asked myself, not only the vandalism but how the wild world he had witnessed in Hobart had been so comprehensively tamed by concrete and glass.

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