Rocky mountains and cliffs engulfed in slow-moving clouds, dense and virtually untouched forests, and 100-metre-tall trees that are near-licked by pebbly beaches are among some of Tasmanias most iconic features.
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While many who live in or visit the state rarely get to see the expanses of everything Tasmania has to offer, members of the Launceston Walking Club have been pondering upon them for 75 years.
For 47 of those years, the club have shared the marvels they have witnessed over the years as part of their Wilderness Film Show, which will happen this year from October 28 until October 23 at the Launceston Conference Centre.
The show has been a feature of the club's calendar and has proven to give life to the walking scene across Tasmania.
Club committee member Peter Stackhouse said such was the quality of the film the show produced, and the quality of the views they often saw, Ansett had used their footage as part of a marketing campaign to showcase Tasmania.
He said the walking club itself had also played a significant role in highlighting the wilderness of Tasmania, which has now been coined by the phrase "Keep Tassie Wild", exhibited by Tourism Tasmania as the number one selling point for the state, underscored hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and brought tourists to Tasmania for decades.
"Going back 30 to 40 years, the wilderness wasn't really a thing ... There were lots of people getting out in the bush in Tasmania, but it wasn't an industry and it wasn't a catchy phrase to to coin," Mr Stackhouse said.
Ahead of the film show, and with the club's 75th year in the back of their mind, walking club members Mr Stackhouse, Kerry Scott, Jenny Sharp and Darren Meader talked about what walking meant to them, and some of the experiences they had relished during their trodden-travels.
Mr Scott said he had kept an excel spreadsheet of all of his walks which he had tallied to more than 5000km across the ground and 1000km vertically.
The walking group made expeditions to some of the state's most vertical and least-scaled peaks including Cradle Mountain, the Abels, peaks in the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Ben Lomond and several others.
In 2020 the club chalked up 66 trips in the club bus, which covered 17,000 kilometres - but that did not include the distance travelled once arriving at the location.
Members of the groups had during the year travelled to the daunting Eldon Range, well off the beaten-track.
What happened during the trek would be a feature of the upcoming film show, and Mr Stackhouse detailed how difficult it had been.
"There's an epic walk of about nine days down in the Elden Range, which is in the south-west, and that was done in January," he said.
"The walkers struck some rough weather and a tent got blown out on night three, and so two guys got really, really wet and cold. They toughed it out for a couple more days, but they felt for their safety they thought, 'perhaps we should get the chopper into picking up'."
Mr Scott said a feature of is time in the walking club was picking up information off of fellow travellers. He said there were several walkers who had completed the Abels - some the highest points in Tasmania.
Then there's people that have just walked and walked, nearly all over Tasmania ... it's incredible.
- Launceston Walking Club member Kerry Scott
Ms Sharp said being able to share the walks the club had been on was an integral part of the film show.
She said by running the show, viewers could get an understanding of what was out in Tasmania to discover.
"Sharing it with people who no longer walk, or can't get out, or who don't go out ... for them to be surprised and to enjoy the wilderness and see what's out there, that's one of the points of it," she said.
Walking had enabled the club members to see vistas not seen by other for years, or even decades in some instances, and while the four of them had varying reasons for their vivacious appetite to get out and walk around Tasmania as part of a group, seeing hardly-seen parts of the state was a pervasive theme among them.
Mr Stackhouse said he often would immerse himself in the moment and spaces around him to recognise how privileged he was to be able to see such places.
"Take the Florentine peak for example, we were on boulders there that are a range of sizes from a car door to a car. I often stop, there are a few people that just like walking and getting there, but if you stop and smell the roses it's really quite incredible," he said.
The four members detailed an eclectic mix of fellow walkers who were experts in various things from botany, to geology, to water races and caves, but what they continued to return to was the fact walking enabled each individual to experience things individually and take from those experiences what most impacted them.
With 75 years of history behind them, those individual experiences were expansive. And Mr Stackhouse said there had been examples in the past, like how Ansett had jumped on archival footage of the Tasmanian wilderness, of the group having nurtured or written history.
Mr Meader described how photos of the wilderness turned up in museums from time to time, and how the latest instalment of the film show might one day provide the same experience of nostalgia he had when seeing walkers that had come before him - wearing bags of leather straps or rudimentary tents - to walkers yet to set foot on Tasmania.
"When you look at those old movies, slides and footage, you think, 'that's what it was like back then, I'm glad we're doing it this way now'.
"But we've done the same thing in recorded history and you think, 'what's it going to look like 60 years from now what's bushwalking going to be?'"
And while the club waits for the memories it is making to become history, its members are relishing in each walk and appreciating tracks that were made from them as long as one-hundred years ago. They are at once reliving, sustaining and making history, and the film show is their way of sharing it.
Tickets for the film show are required, and can be purchased from www.eventbrite.com.au/e/walking-wild-tasmania-tickets-98542153233.
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