Mount Misery? The naming of mountains is an odd thing. Why this amazing patch of wet forest has been named in a such a way that infers it will be the worst day out imaginable I do not know. Perhaps the person who did the honours of naming it was in a really crappy mood when they were there. Maybe it rained on them and they got a few leeches on their legs. When they returned home, all wet and grumpy and itchy the name Mount Misery was chosen, out of spite… Or not.

Mount Misery overlooks Huonville in the southern end of Tasmania. Access is via the Huon Bush Retreats in Ranelagh. The road up is pretty steep and just a dirt track, I went up in a 4wd and I don’t think I would attempt in my normal little 2wd. So if you try to and don’t make it, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

There are 14 square kilometres of habitat reserve here which are either covered by private conservation covenants or by public reserve.

There are no entry fees, however they do ask for a donation to assist with the management of the reserve. Don’t be that person who never leaves a donation, conservation of natural areas isn’t a cheap process.

Depending on your mood for the day there are a few different walks you can do. Either a quick 5 minute trip to the lookout, or a few hours trek up to the top and back. Monday’s walk for us was just the quick 30 minute loop around the ‘Tall Trees Track’ which leaves from the car park.

Five hours later we were back where we began…

Naturalists are slow-moving creatures

Tearing around a track at a hundred miles an hour just isn’t always the way to go. Sometimes you need to sit down and smell the fungi, get to know the moss and enjoy the silence. Quite often this can extend the recommended walking time by a few hours, but as long as you take a thermos, coffee and good company it’s perfectly acceptable.

Fungi season is starting to kick in around the place about now, and there was a nice little selection to spot and photograph. This is the reason short walks take such a long time you see. When you spot one fungus, you need to sit down and inspect it, check out it’s gills, it’s colours, the colours of it’s spores, the shape of its cap, what it is growing on and how big it is. Once you have some of these features worked out, then you can go about looking for an ID. At the start of the season, the ID’s don’t always flow that easily. Over summer the brain has made way for other things and tossed a lot of fungi taxonomy out. It comes back though, usually, I hope. While you are sitting there paying attention to one species, your eyes adjust to the small, leaf litter world and all of a sudden you see different ones everywhere.

A bright green perfect tuft of fluffy moss then catches your eye. Bryophyte ID mode then kicks in. Leaf arrangement, shape, size, is the margin toothed, is there a sporophyte and if so what does that look like, is it emerging from the tip or down the shoot, how it is growing, what is it growing on… This is all before the camera even comes out and you hunt for that perfect shot. Trying to incorporate an artistic eye along with an accurate representation of all the parts.

Then you notice a leech moving across the damp ground towards your hand. Time to turn your attention there, take a quick video or photo, watch it stand up and wave it’s head around like a heat seeking missile looking for that warm blood. Depending on how freaked out you get by leeches, you either quickly wipe your hand over any bare skin to check for slimy lumps of leech, or you spend the next 10 minutes checking every fold of skin and clothing for any hitch hikers.

That is why 30 minutes turns into five hours.

Wet sclerophyll forest

According to the Mount Misery information around the place, there is temperate rainforest, wet sclerophyll forest, dry sclerophyll forest, grassland and sub alpine heathlands within the reserve. We only got through the wet sclerophyll. The speed at which we went, it would take weeks to get anywhere near the next vegetation type.

There are many different types of wet sclerophyll forest, some people call them wet eucalypt forest, mixed forest, tall forest and probably quite a few other names. Sclerophyll means ‘hard leaves’, which majority of the dominant plants in a ‘sclerophyll’ forest have, just like the Eucalyptus species which we all know and love. In a nutshell, these forests aren’t rainforests, these are dominated by an eucalypt species, such as E.regnans or E.obliqua, and may or may not have an understory made up of typical ‘rainforest’ plants.

I was always taught that a wet sclerophyll forest had a understorey of broad leaf shrubs such as Pomaderris sp., Bedfordia salicina and Olearia agrophylla. Where a mixed-forest has an understory of rainforest species such as Atherosperma moschatum, Nothofagus cunninghamii or Eucryphia lucida yet still has large old growth eucalypts over topping it. A temperate Tasmanian rainforest on the other hand, has no Eucalyptus species in it. Probably a bit of semantics, and in the general scheme of things it is probably really only important if you are surveying or doing conservation work. Still interesting to know about though.

The other giveaway is the wet bit. Even in summer, most wet sclerophyll is still kind of damp, if not wet. The lush ground cover of mosses and ferns may have shrivelled up a bit or dried out, but it shouldn’t be crispy like lettuce you have left in a paddock. These are my favourite forests to be in. I like the lack of sun, and the coolness, not to mention the incredible diversity of mosses, liverworts, lichens, ferns and of course, fungi.

Look up and down and all around

Next time you are out wandering the bush, look at it in layers. Even if you don’t know the names of the plants, you would be able to see the differences. Take note of what the canopy is, are they big eucalpts or something else?

What is the next layer, the shrubby ones which aren’t big trees but aren’t little ferns or ground covers. Roughly how tall is the middle layer? Sometimes it can be 10 metres or so, other times it could just be one or two. If you know the types of plants then awesome, but just a mental note can do, or some photos. Then the next time you are in a different type of forest compare it to the last one you were in. Before you know it you will be seeing different types of trees and shrubs all over the place!

You can then add in the ground layer. But only add that one in when you are prepared to spend five hours on a 30 minute walk…

The section of walk we did is suitable for the whole family. Could potentially be muddy and slippery in some parts after rain, but that’s half the fun right! Maybe take some aeroguard to ward off any mozzies or leeches if those things bother you. Huon Bush Retreats also have all kinds of accommodation from tent sites to self-contained units. I didn’t see any, because they are all very well hidden and secluded, but the photos on their site look good. I can’t actually make any comment on whether they are or not, because I have not stayed there before. Wouldn’t mind camping up there for a few days though.

Important points to remember

Dogs are NOT allowed on Mount Misery. Make sure you leave them at home. Not locked in the car with a bowl of water, because that would be bad.

Our natural areas are precious, and we need to ensure they are cared for and looked after to the best of our abilities.

• Take your rubbish out
• Leave the plants as you find them,
• Leave the animals to be wild and don’t feed them or chase them with sticks
• Stay to the formed tracks so you don’t trample all the wonderful tiny plants, fungi and moss
• Most importantly, enjoy it and appreciate the wonderful forests we have at our back doors.