Separation and Connection

Talking with Tassie Trees

Our first foray out into the Tasmanian wilderness is a 4-day walk on the Three Capes Track. This 48km trail threads along the remote south-eastern coastline of the Tasman Peninsula. It is a stunning area, known for its dramatic geological formations, diverse ecological habitats and rich cultural heritage.

Rock formations and towering sea cliffs JF 2025

The track begins with a boat trip from Port Arthur. Originally a British penal colony, it’s been described as a place of both beauty and brutality. From 1830 to 1877 over 12,000 convicted criminals were transported here and put to work building the new colony. It was a grim chapter of Australian history. Now a popular tourist attraction, the setting is indeed beautiful, but a dark feeling lingers over me. We leave a visit for another time, watching the old sandstone prison buildings disappear from sight as we round the corner of the bay heading toward our drop-off point at Denman’s Cove.

Arriving at Denman’s Cove JF 2025

The original name for the area the trail traverses is Turrakana. The Aboriginal inhabitants who lived here for over 42,000 years prior to European settlement were the Pydairrerme people. It is almost incomprehensible to imagine the interconnection that must have existed between people and natural environment for the relationship to have flourished for so long. It is equally as incomprehensible how quickly the indigenous population lost their livelihoods, lands and countless lives over a few short decades.

I feel the ancestors’ presence as we walk the track. It is hard to know what to think, how to approach the enormity of their loss. I feel complicit being part of the colonising culture by association. I feel devastated, ashamed, grief-stricken, guilty, embarrassed in turn. All this is happening inside, I’m not voicing it to anyone. How do we hold the awareness of this history and still enjoy the experience? It seems banal, superficial almost irreverent to simply gaze upon the landscape and appreciate its beauty. Any yet, that is what we are invited to do. The brochures exhort us to enjoy this “nature lover’s playground”.

The path leads us on… JF 2025

And awesome it is. The towering sea cliffs are Australia’s highest. The dolerite spires are truly spectacular, rising from the Tasman Sea and jutting out into Capes Huay, Pillar and Raoul. The weathering of the great Southern Ocean against the remnant edges of ancient Gondwanaland has created unique rock formations, caves and arches. The plant eco-systems are mind-boggling in their diversity. One minute we are walking through sheltered coastal heathlands, and around the next corner we are on the edge of a cliff, leaning into the gusts along with the windswept coastal vegetation. As we trek inland, buttongrass moorlands, created by Aboriginal traditional burning practices to encourage game and open travel routes, give way to the temperate rainforests on the peaks of Mt Arthur and Mt Forescue. Ultimately we descend into the tall blue gums and stringy barks as we near the end of the track at the golden arc of Fortescue Bay.

Along the way we are greeted by a host of bird life, including honeyeaters, fairy wrens, robins, rosellas, and overhead the coastal seabirds, shearwaters and gulls, and the ever present currawongs with their raucous call. We keep a lookout for wedge-tailed eagles but aren’t lucky enough to see any. We see wallabies, especially around the huts, and plenty of evidence of animal life as we step around the scat underfoot. I take on a project to photograph the scat for the grandchildren to identify. We find wallaby, possum, quoll and wombat poo, and seed-filled currawong pellets. We watch out for snakes, but only hear of sightings from other walkers – our Kiwi eyes seemingly not trained to spot them.

So what about talking to trees? Isn’t that my mission in life? It was actually quite a big ask to take on a 4-day trek. Although we have done a lot of hiking in New Zealand in the past, recently we had been side-tracked by life events and had only done minimal preparation for this trail (also pretty typical of our somewhat random approach to life!) The Three Capes Track is an impressive example of walker-friendly construction, with easy-grade gravel paths, long sections of board walk and superbly-made stone steps, but even so I spend a lot of time looking down and ensuring I have secure foot holds. Then there are the cliff edges – most of the time we are perfectly safe, but being up high and looking down at the surging seas below is enough to set off the nervous system alarm bells. Suffice to say, while I take in the beauty of the trees and the plant life, I am hardly open to a long conversation. Even the rest stops are action-packed – eating snacks to re-fuel, taking in the wild scenery, comparing notes with fellow walkers. It’s not until the fourth and final day that I resolve to tune in and see if there is a tree that might be interested in talking.

Cloud forest at the top of Mt Fortescue JF 2025

It’s a stunning day. We take the ranger’s advice and start early, as there is a mountain to climb and rain is forecast for later in the morning. The rainforest is glorious in the morning light, and the forest floor absolutely blooming with a myriad of different varieties of fungi. I imagine the mycelium network beneath the ground, connecting up the trees and plants, exchanging nutrients and helping each other as needed. As we descend Mt Fortescue I stop before a towering giant gum just off the path. It seems open. I linger. I feel happy, rested (even though I have just climbed a mountain!), nurtured even. I wonder whether these are my feelings or the tree’s, or both? The words come to me: happy trees. Of course they are happy, they are in their natural environment, growing exactly where they have been growing for thousands of years. They are surrounded by and held by their community, other trees and companion plants, fungi, mosses and lichens. As well as the birds and animals that have evolved with them over the ages. I think about the Aboriginal people who had also evolved with them, no longer here. I wonder what the tree thinks about humans now. I’m not sure how old it is – perhaps not old enough to remember the indigenous people?

The towering gum who sees all JF 2025

Then a voice, you are strange you humans. You march past every day, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. It’s rare to have one stop. I didn’t have to say anything, the tree went on: You wear peculiar colourful garments over your skin, how do you feel/sense? You seem cut-off, as if you are separate from all that is around you. Some of you move really fast and look straight ahead, especially the ones that come early in the day. The ones that come later are slower and sometimes stop and look. But you all hold those square things up to us. You put them between you and us. You seem to have forgotten you are part of us, that we can commune, like we did with the old ones who had animal cloths and firesticks. But we are ok, we are happy. As long as you keep to your path and don’t harm us.

As we walk on I reflect on the tree’s words. I think about the different ways we modern humans relate to the natural world. The early settlers found the ancient forests daunting and alien, describing the Australian landscape as dreary or monotonous. Yet Australians today love their environment, as epitomised by the popular Aussie song Home Among the Gumtrees:

I’ve been around the world

A couple of times or maybe more

I’ve seen the sights, I’ve had delights

On every foreign shore

But when my mates all ask me

The place that I adore

I tell them right away

Give me a home among the gumtrees

With lots of plum trees

A sheep or two, a kangaroo

A clothesline out the back

Veranda out the front

And an old rocking chair

Words and Music by By B. Brown/W. Johnson
© 1975 MUSHROOM MUSIC PTY LTD

Of course there have been vast changes since the early settlers arrived, now the plum trees and sheep intermingle with the gum trees and kangroos. But somehow this speaks to a common experience. Initially immigrants, whether arriving by choice or not, feel separate from their new land, alien even, and yet in a few generations we have integrated what we brought with us with what we came to, and feel intimately connected.

But what about our tree’s impressions of walkers on the Three Capes Track. Those early walkers – we see them too, rustling in the huts at 5am, looking restless at the next hut when we finally arrive many hours after them. What is their relationship to the natural environment, do they stop to really engage? It’s almost as if it’s race track, must get there first! The hut bunks are allocated so that’s not the reason... maybe it’s a flow over from their busy capitalist consumer lives? Another version of “nature as a resource”, somewhere to build physical fitness, shape up our bodies. How many steps have I done today? How many calories have I burnt?

And the square things pointing at the trees... the scurge of smartphones. Viewing our lives through the lens of the small screen, separation by stealth... the billionaires highjacking not only our money but also our time and attention. I don’t have any answers here, and I’m not about to give up my smart phone, but it certainly got me thinking.

I ponder what the natural environment means to me. I’m aware I’m influenced by the notion of the “landscape as picturesque” – a legacy of my European heritage. I frame each photo by carefully lining it up within my screen so that it looks balanced, centred, pleasing, like a painting. Isn’t that so exquisite I exclaim! I’m an observer, appreciating nature from a perspective, separate from, not part of.

As pretty as a picture! JF 2025

Then there’s the psychological aspect. As a psychologist interested in the relationship between people and nature I’ve dwelt quite a lot on this. I’ve supervised theses on the relationship between pro-environmental behaviour and eco-anxiety – do we feel better when we engage in environmentally related actions? Well not necessarily, we might to an extent feel some sense of relief by recycling or riding our bike (don’t get me wrong, these are also good things to do, and every little bit helps). But we might actually feel more distressed, others don’t care, it’s hopeless, the problem is too big for me to solve. Again, we are holding nature at a distance, viewing it as something to be saved, or something to save us. But are we really connected to the natural world in these endeavours? Or are we still living as if we are separate?

There’s also the idea of “nature as healing” - that spending time in nature will help us to feel better. By osmosis almost. We instinctively know this is true. For myself, going for a walk or swimming in the sea is like a re-set. I feel the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, my eyes are rested by the greens of nature, the blue of the sea. I hear the sounds of birds, the rustle of leaves, my foot fall on the earth beneath. But to treat this as a prescription, is this the answer? Again, research is mixed on this. The world around us has changed, spending time in nature may trigger grief or despair. I know this is true for me as well. The bay on Waiheke Island where I took my children when they were young is no longer the same. Now my grandchildren are estatic when they turn over a rock and find a crab, whereas previously they were scuttling everywhere. The rock pools once teaming with life are almost bare. The anenomes and little rock fish are gone, just a few baby starfish and tiny shellfish remain. We call it solastalgia – grief for an environment now lost. Maybe this is what attracts us to wilderness areas such as national parks and hiking trails. We know that here we will find a relatively untouched natural environment. This is important, but as the trees have pointed out, how we relate to it also matters.

I think again about the Aboriginal people who lived in harmony with this very same natural environment over tens of thousands of years. What was their relationship? Of course we know the answer, they lived as part of nature, intimately connected, not separate. This may seem like an unobtainable or fanciful notion to aspire to in today’s man-made constructed technological world, but are there any lessons here?

Clouds, capes and trees JF 2025

The idea of actively fostering our intimate connection with the natural world has a long history. The Japanese call it shinto, a nature-based way of life that celebrates the energy and interconnectedness of nature. Similar to indigenous cultures the world over, shinto recognises a spiritual essence in mountains, rivers, rocks and trees. Now this sounds more like what the tree is seeking from us – an intimate connectedness. How do we achieve it in today’s world?

I think the answer lies in the small things. Gratitude for an apple we are eating, welcoming the rain which is giving life to the plants, even though we hoped to get the washing dry today, appreciating the last rays of the sun as it sets over the city skyline. It may also encompass our relationships with each other, gazing upon our children or grandchildren as they play, our partner as they do the dishes. Recognising we are alive thanks to everything around us, we are all part of the same life force.