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Black cockie song of the mountains

June 8, 2019 Don Knowler

The black cockatoos were moving from the high country, their far-carrying calls a keen for the close of autumn and the approach of the snows of winter.
I was walking the Organ Pipes Track on kunanyi/Mt Wellington and a keen – an Irish lament – seemed an appropriate noun to be applied to cockatoo contact calls. Wisps of cloud tumbled down from the highest point of the Organ Pipes above me and the freezing mist promised snow.
Hobart myth says the sight of yellow-tailed black cockatoos in the city always foretells adverse weather on the mountain and, watching the cockatoos over the years, I have to agree they seem to find the high country an unsuitable environment in the snow.
I pondered the theory as I walked the trail with members of my literary group, the Hobart Bushcare Walking Book Club one Sunday in May, and then expounded the view to my fellow walkers that it was not snow the cockies feared in winter, but the mists. These made flying amid the stark skeletons of trees – that remain on the mountain from the 1967 bushfires – hazardous for fragile avian wings.
It was a good talking point to go with discussion about the book we had been reading that mouth, The Call of the Reed Warbler, in which author Charles Massy advocates “a new agriculture and a new earth” to counter what he says describes as harmful industrial food production.
Instead of broader environmental issues, my mind during the walk was focused on the trail which in recent years had been upgraded at a cost of $1.4 million.
I’d walked it before, at the height of the flower season in mid-summer, and had vowed to return.
The cockies were seen feeding in one of the many features of the walk, beyond the view of the Organ Pipes towering over walkers’ heads. This is a tangled forest of yellow banksias at a point called the Bower, before the track enters more open country with stunning views on its eastern side across the city and beyond.
The banksias still in late autumnal flower were not the only botanical delight. The bright red and pink fruits of cheeseberry and pink mountain berry decorated the fine bottle-green lattice leaves of these alpine shrubs, and clumps of mountain needlebush were decorated with their large seed pods, which resemble walnuts.
These also drew the attention for the black cockies, while another species seen along the track, black currawongs, concentrated on the bounty of the alpine berries.
The last time I had walked this trail I only came across one other walker, although it was on a glorious summer’s weekend. This time, on the eve of winter and most of the show-case flowers like waratah out of season, the track now had a steady stream of walkers, and mountain runners.
The Hobart City Council’s investment in this track – which I consider the best in the greater Hobart area – and others on the mountain is certainly paying off.

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