The voice of Missy Higgins rang out through the dry woodland of the Queens Domain, carried on a light breeze which tossed the ears of the kangaroo grass.
I recognised the song, The special two, immediately and then realised what I was hearing was not someone with the knobs of a ghetto-blaster turned to high volume but the actual voice of the multi-hit singer.
My mission had not been about music. It was to view the native grassland in all its golden glory, after a letter writer to the Mercury had urged readers to do the same. What I didn’t expect to see was the tall grass, rustled by the breeze, swaying in rhythm to Missy’s melodies.
The singer’s presence should not have come as a surprise because hundreds of parked cars lined routes through the Domain leading to the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, where she was appearing in concert on a summer Saturday afternoon.
Last year it had been Jimmy Barnes who had rattled the leaves of the gums with his screaming, and put the sulphur-crested cockatoos – accomplished screamers themselves – to flight.
This time it was the green rosellas, with their piping contact calls, that provided Missy with an accompaniment, a duet of the dry woodlands.
Pop singers apart, I always visit the Domain for a lengthy stroll during late summer. The environment there is how the general Hobart area, especially locations close to the coast, would have looked to the first-generation Tasmanians and the European settlers before trees were cleared to make way for farms and housing.
An interpretation centre placed in a pavilion along a track called Grassland Gully, connecting the Crossroads sports fields to the botanical gardens, is a perfect introduction to native flora and fauna cleared for what the pioneers had called progress.
The Grassland Gully threads its way through pastures of kangaroo, wallaby and spear grass on its northern slopes, interspersed with white and blue gums. Facing south are swards of tussock grass, swaying under an umbrella of wattles and sheoaks.
The grasses hide herbs and orchids, all part of a complex ecosystem that sustains the life of not just plants and fungi but reptiles, mammals and birds, along with the insects on which they feed.
Among birds seen along Grassland Gully are endemic species found only in Tasmania, yellow wattlebirds, yellow-throated honeyeaters and the green rosellas, although other, smaller species tend to get harried by aggressive noisy miners.
In her letter, the Mercury reader praised the Hobart City Council for rehabilitating the native grasslands and called for more funding to control invasive weeds.
“The grassy kangaroo sward yearns for admiring eyes to join those of the birds and the bandicoots that so enjoy its protection and bounty,” wrote the reader. “The lightest breeze ignites the dance; elegant spikelets nod and sway with liquid grace.”