The smell of damp eucalypt accompanies the gentle drip of water. Hardened leather boots squelch through muddy trails. A pack creaks and groans as a puffing bushwalker toils their way uphill.
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These are the sounds that can be heard if you venture into some of the globe’s most beautiful wild places, Tasmania’s national parks.
More than 100 years ago, the vast button grass plains and towering dolerite cliffs of Tasmania’s wilderness were the playground of hunters and prospectors.
On August 29, 1916, Mount Field and Freycinet were declared Tasmania’s first national parks, changing the way the state's wild places were to be enjoyed.
The two national parks were the first of 19. Through all the changes a century brings, the reason they captivated people in 1916 remains the same today.
Before 1916, Freycinet had a chequered environmental history. The 1800s saw the peninsula used for coal and tin mining. It was also a favourite haunt for whale fisherman who established whaling stations on the edge of the ocean.
The era saw the beaches littered with rotting blubber and painted with drying blood.
The early 20th century saw a shift, with the area instead drawing keen naturalists.
Since then, Freycinet has become synonymous with tourism in Tasmania. Hundreds of thousands flock to the park each year to ogle pristine white sand and crystalline waters.
Mount Field’s beauty and accessibility to Hobart made it a natural choice for one of Tasmania’s first national parks.
Mount Field is known for its spectacular autumn displays, which set the hillsides alight in red and orange as the fagus plants turn for the winter.
Tasmania’s National Parks are interwoven with a cast of charismatic and quirky characters, and their imprint can still be seen today.
The iconic Cradle Mountain - Lake Saint Clair National Park owes its existence and a large part of its infrastructure to a host of hunters, prospectors and a keen botanist who first saw the area's natural value.
Such was botanist Gustav Weindorfer’s amazement at Cradle Mountain, he is purported to have declared: “This must be a national park for the people for all time. It is magnificent and people must know about it and enjoy it.”
In the early 20th century men were drawn to Tasmania’s high country with the lure of mineral finds and the luxurious winter furs of native wildlife, which were coveted in England and Europe.
The well-kept secret of the island state's spectacular scenery was soon to get out. The arrival of portable cameras saw images of Tasmania’s majestic high country appear in papers across the country.
The imagination of arm-chair adventurers was captured, and so began the nature tourism industry that Tasmania is known for today.
Visitors seeking someone to take them through these wild areas made contact with the people who knew the area forwards and back; the hunters who built their lives around the beating sun and driving rain and snow that dictated life in the high country.
So, in the early 1900s, the hunter became the guide. “Some of these hunters were very entrepreneurial,” Tasmanian historian Simon Cubit said.
“Not only did they become guides, they in fact ran businesses and they built buildings in the mountain to accommodate.”
This scenery, that so captured the minds and hearts of the people, led to the declaration of the national parks.
These hunters-turned-guides built much of the infrastructure still in place today. Places like Kitchen Hut, Old Pelion Hut and Du Cane Hut were built to accommodate these first tourists.
“The Hunters were people who were very practical, they were very comfortable being in the bush. They knew how to build huts, they knew how to cut tracks and so up until the 1950’s ex-hunters were employed as, well some became rangers,” Mr Cubit said.
It was only in the latter half of the 20th century rangers became the professionals they are today.
It was two such ex-hunters who cut the now famous Overland Track. Between them, Bert Nichols and Lionel Connell cut and marked the trail that now sees more than 7000 visitors each summer.
This exponential increase in visitation has not only changed the ways parks are used, but has demanded change to how they are managed.
“In this day and age the very thing that is attracting people to those areas is meaning that management has had to change to cope with the sheer volume of people wanting to experience those values,” Parks and Wildlife Service regional manager north Chris Colley said.
The conservation focus has also changed. “The reason for having national parks has changed, you know, the things we value for parks,” Mr Cubit said.
“In those days (early 1900s) it was all about scenery, now it's probably about biodiversity. So the whole philosophy of conservation has changed and therefore management has changed.”
Mr Colley hopes in another 100 years, the natural assets we value today still exist. He said the rapidly changing technology is providing quantum leaps in park management.
“We have this amazing and rapidly growing database about all aspects of our parks and reserves and the ability to be able to interrogate that ... almost in real time is incredibly powerful and I think that’s going to significantly influence where and how we go in the future,” he said.
