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Vol. 20 No. 2 1980 $2.20 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM, 6·8 COLLEGE STREET, . TRUST PRESIDENT, JOE BAKER; MUSEUM DI RECTOR, DESMOND GRIFFIN VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 1980

Dispersed within serpentine (green) from the Although once distributed throughout a major part of , the , Sarcophilus Dundas area of W. is the altera­ harrisii, is now found only in Tasmania. This scavenging, carnivorous is equipped with very powerful tion mineral (lilac). Stichtite was first jaws and consumes bones, skin, fur and feathers, usually leaving little trace of its victim. Photo by described from Tasmania and named after Robert J. E. Wapstra. Sticht, then manager at Mt Lyell Mine. Illustration about twice normal size. Photo by Greg Millen/The Australian Museum.

CONTENTS

EDITOR FROM THE INSIDE 33 Barbara Purse Editorial ASSISTANT EDITOR G. Dennis Campbell A VIGOROUS AND AGREEABLE PEOPLE 35 by Peter Murray ART DIRECTOR Leah Ryan TASMAN AND A DUTCH DISCOVERY 39 CIRCULATION by Peter Chapman Bruce Colbey THE § OF 43 by Patsy Adam-Smith

Annual Subscription: Australia, $A8.00; New ATALE OF TWO CONTINENTS 49 Zealand, $NZ11.50; other countries, $A9.50. by Lin Sutherland Single copies: Australia, $A2.20, $A2.65 posted; , $NZ3.00; other countries, $A3.40. GEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OFTASMAN IA 53 New Zealand subscribers should make cheque or money order payable to the New Zealand Govern­ Centrefold ment Printer, Private Bag, Wellington. Subscribers from other countries please note that LIFE WHERE WATERS MEET 59 moneys must be paid in Australian currency. by Alan Dartnall Opinions expressed by the authors are their own and do not necessarily represent the policies or GARDEN IN ISOLATION 63 views of The Australian Museum. by Robert H. Green

COVER: Athol Burgess, of Cape In THE THY LAC IN E-AN UNSOLVED CASE 69 Bass Strait, holds a spit of fledgling short-tailed shear­ by Eric Guiler waters, Puff/nus tenulrostrls. Although once one of the main commercial ventures in the of Bass Strait with all life stages of this taken indiscriminately for food, fat and feathers, the collection of eggs and SHRIMPS IN HIGH PLACES 71 mature birds is now prohibited, and the six-week catch­ ing season of young birds, a picturesque and Important by Gerald Silvey annual event for the people of the , Is stringently ·controlled by the Tasmanian and Birds Protection Board. Photo by P. Adam-Smith. IN REVIEW 75 FROM THE INSIDE

,, , ;I,;,"' Upper slopes of Cradle Mountain in Cradle Immediately after the Second World War, I went to Tasmania to work and lived in Mountain St Clair National Park and the that island state for four years. I went as a stranger to a strange region expecting to find mountains to the NE (above). Wind, ice and rain have sculpted the rugged and majestic terrain the hostility of the to be reflected in the inhospitality of its people-I left, with that characterises much of Tasmania. Photo by great reluctance, with firm and generous friendships which endure to this day and with a Bruce Jenkins. compelling interest in the smallest Australian state which had proved to be one of the most fascinating areas of Australia I had ever known. That is why I am happy to see this The Gordon (above right)-perhaps just as majestic from a technological point of view. special issue of Australian Natural History devoted to Tasmania and the islands of Bass Although maintaining present, and ensuring future, Strait and am proud to be associated with it. power supplies, hydro-electric development on the island evokes certain environmental consequences To have visited the region, laboriously climbed the mountains and hills, bathed in the that cause grave concern to many people. Photo by Lin Sutherland/The Australian Museum. waters, talked and worked with its people and learned to love and respect all, has whetted the appetite for more knowledge. This special issue provides some of that knowledge. Here is a record of the people who belonged to the land, the people who came later and developed it, the monuments of the past, the causes of the present, and here is a record of the ground on which those people live, the waters they sail and the wonderful diversity of the natural life around them. In these, one may seek and find a reason for the seeming isolation of this vital part of Australia, and a reason for the steadily growing unity between the people of the 'apple isle' and the people of the mainland. Flora, and landforms are all threatened with change, and some perhaps with extinction, from the impact of industrial development, hydro-electric power, mining and wood-chipping. The Tasmanians' opposition to the more destructive influences has made headlines in the national press and drawn others from all over Australia into joint action for conservation.

Despite the limitation on topics imposed by space restrictions I believe this issue of Australian Natural History gives readers a comprehensive picture of our smallest state, of its plants and animals, of its geology, primary industries, early explorers, the culture of its original Aboriginal occupants-now, sadly, extinct-and other aspects of the environment. Each subject has been rigorously researched by authorities in the field who present their views without editorial censor. The coming together of these views is purpose in itself, for the information gathered into a single issue of this magazine will engender interest and contribute to the sum of knowledge needed to protect and con­ serve the Tasmanian heritage-the heritage of all Australians. Barbara Purse Editor

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34 AUSTR ALIAN NA TURAL HISTORY A VIGOROUS AND AGREEABLE PEOPLE

The isolated world of the Tasmanian Aborigine was suddenly opened up with the coming of European man, and within two generations the race and culture was no more. This article by Peter Murray, Curator of Anthropology at the Tasmanian Museum in , depicts the Tasmanians as "having been resourceful, flexible and well-adapted for life on the Island of Tasmania" and provides a brief account of the life of the Tasmanian Aborigines from the time of their arrival on the extreme southern end of the by Peter Murray Australian continent until their contact with European explorers.

Distribution of Tasmanian tribes (left) at the time Twenty-five thousand years ago, bands of Peninsula of New Britain . It is possible that the of European contact and some associated cultural Aborigines occupied an immense lowland plain Tasmanians and some Melanesians express traits. All tribes except in the northeast used the that stretched from the southern coast of Vic­ many of the genetic features that were once canoe raft. Conical bark 'tombs' were noted by common to a w idely dispersed 'Old Mela­ Peron on , off the east coast. toria to the northwest coast of Tasmania. This Windbreaks made of woven bark were grassy expanse and the wide river valleys that nesian' population that occupied the Sunda used by tribes occupying the warmer drier eastern wound down from the glaciated uplands to the Shelf, Australia, and possibly even certain half of the state, while in th e northwestern portion south supported large numbers of marsupial Pacific continental islands. Tasmanian stone and sou theast as far as conical huts herbivores that were hunted by the Aborigines technology was clearly derived from a 'flake were made. Rock carvings are confined to the until the last few thousand years of the waning and core' tradition similarly distributed. This northwest of the island. The map also shows the . A rise in sea level caused by the technology, called the 'Kartan' culture in location of several archaeological sites. Drawing by melting of continental ice sheets resulted in Australia, was largely superseded on the Peter Murray. the inundation of the plain. By 12,500 years mainland after the separation of Tasmania. Composite engraving from various water col­ ago those bands whose hunting range lay to ours (above) made by the artist Petit on Baudin's the south of the newly formed strait were The earliest reliably dated evidence of the 1801 -1802 expedition to Tasmania. The engraving totally isolated from the Australian mainland. Kartan culture in Tasmania comes from the depicts many aspects of Tasmanian life with They were the direct ancestors of the next lowest levels of Cave Bay Cave on Hunter reasonable accuracy. Note the stance of the male Island off the northwest coast. This site (third from the right). the manner in which 350-500 generations of people who occupied children were carried in kangaroo skin capes, the the island of Tasmania until the death of demonstrates that Aboriginal man was present woven bark shelters, the small cooking fires and the in 1876. 75 km inland on the Bass Plain 22,000 years spears. Food remains consist of shells of red ago, where they hunted a species of small abalone, Notohaliotus ruber; warrener, Subninella gregarious . Archaeological evidence undulata; and tibia and tarsus of wallaby, Fully modern who closely re­ from caves show that Aborigines hunted a Macropus rufogriseus. sembled the Tasmanians both physically and large kangaroo species (Macropus titan) at culturally were present in Australia by at least about the same time 250 km to the southeast 40,000 years ago. remains from Lake near the very centre of Tasmania and were Mungo in western NSW and the nearly perfect clearly contemporary with other extinct Keilor cranium from an ancient terrace of the such as Sthenurus and Pro­ Maribyrnong River near probably temnodon. Between 10,000 and 15,000 represent the same basic population from years ago higher w inter temperatures and in­ which the Tasmanians were derived. creased rainfall culminated in the replacement of by a variety of forest, scrub and The ultimate source of this population is sedgeland communities. This succession still guess-work. Tasmanian skulls show resulted in greatly reduced carrying capacities tantalising similarities with those of certain for the land, and the largest and most Melanesian people living today on the Gazelle specialised marsupials became extinct. VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 35 Subsequently, the Tasmanians came to faces with charcoal moistened with saliva. rely heavily on the sea for their subsistence. Adult males rubbed red ochre over their faces Sites at Rocky Cape and in the Carlton River and upper torso. All men and women past the Estuary show that by 8,000 to 9,000 years age of puberty had cicatrised (scar) designs, ago this same agency which had separated usually composed of a number of regular lines the Tasmanians from the people and culture of on the shoulders, arms and abdomen. Their the mainland came to dominate many aspects hair was styled in several ways. Men coated of their lives, remoulding their culture and each lock with grease and red ochre. These modifying their distribution and numbers. shook like bangles with every movement of the head. However Baudin described one man European explorers found the Tasmanians who had his head shaved except for a thin strip living close to the shore sheltered by simple that trimmed the circumference of his scalp. windbreaks constructed from loosely woven Women paid less attention to their hair, usually sheets of Eucalyptus bark. Women were seen cropping it short with a stone flake or diving and wading in the icy waters of the sharpened shell. D'Entrecasteau Channel for abalone and rock lobsters which they carried ashore in open The Tasmanians might be viewed in the work baskets to be placed on the small cook­ context of an experiment to see what happens ing fires. Heaps of shells denoted similar to a culture with a stone age technology repasts going back through the centuries. operating in complete isolation within a closed but highly productive- ecosystem. One in­ In 1 802 's expedition teresting theory is that Tasmanian culture anchored at Port Cygnet in the mouth of the stagnated and degenerated over the last . There on Bruny Island and some­ 12,000 years due to a lack of outside contact. what later on the central east coast at Oyster This idea is based on certain archaeological Cove, the French scientists and explorers evidence indicating that Tasmanians stopped made generally friendly contact with the eating scale fish and discontinued making natives and had the opportunity to examine ground bone artifacts several thousand years and describe them. ago. To this is added some speculative embellishment: Are the tattered kangaroo skin Baudin observed that Tasmanian men and cloaks mere rudiments of more sophisticated women were slightly shorter than average tailoring abilities of the past? Were other Europeans and were of generally good propor­ cultural elements known from the mainland tions except for having thin arms, spindly legs possessed and eventually lost by the Tasma­ with little calf and stomachs that protruded nian due to the inexorable thermodynamic pro­ roundly. Their hair was invariably frizzy. Bau din cess of 'winding down' in a closed system? remarked several times that they were paler in colour than Africans, resembling more the However, a closer look at Tasmanian people of the Caribbean. One child had light technology seems to denote what I would call brown skin. They generally had broad noses a striking example of 'closeness of fit' in a that were unlike those of Africans, although cultural adaptation. Tasmanian spears, for some had 'long well-proportioned noses'. example, are technically simple for sound j Their wide mouths displayed perfect teeth with adaptive reasons. Smoothed, straightened the incisors being ground flat. There was little and pointed tea-tree shafts (Leptospermum ) ' sign of disease, only some burns, large ulcera­ and Melaleuca spp.) were made 3-5 m long for tions on the legs and a mutilated finger. aerodynamic stability. Small diameters were selected for lightness and reduced wind Baudin found the Tasmanians to be resistance. Several of these spears could be generally vigorous and agreeable people with carried in a free hand. The design strategy wc;1s a lively and restless glance. The Frenchmen for hunting in brushy country where spears are were greatly amused by the usual standing easily lost during the chase, and where more posture of Tasmanian men in which they held than one attempt at partially concealed game is and stretched out their foreskin while standing highly advantageous. at rest or in conversation. As a consequence Baudin remarked, the " prepuce is very long". Tasmanian stone technology has often been described as the most primitive pos­ Despite Tasmania's cold, damp winter sessed by modern man. One of the questions climate, the Tasmanian Aborigines wore most often asked about Tasmanians is, why nothing of practical value to protect didn't their stone technology continue to themselves. Adult women wore a kangaroo evolve? It did in a subtle way- by adapting to skin cloak that covered one shoulder and the specific needs of the culture in relation to sometimes part of the breasts. Young girls and available resources. Stone suitable for making boys went completely naked. Men only rarely tools is widely distributed in Tasmania. Simple wore cloaks. Both men and women wore flakes struck from a nodule of good quality attractive shell necklaces and daubed their silicious stone make perfectly efficient tools for almost any purpose provided there are plenty of flakes from which to choose.

Tasmanian Aborigines painted by Thomas Bock More specialised ways of making tools in 1832: Manalargenna (top). holding a firestick, his relate to the relative scarcity of stone, available hair and beard is coated with a mixture of red ochre time for production and competition for and grease, his necklaces are composed of kanga­ resources as well as advances in technique. In roo sinew rolled in red ochre; Fanny (centre). wear­ Tasmania the factors of scarcity and competi­ ing mariner shell necklaces and kangaroo fur, note tion were minimised by the even distribution of cicatrices on her arms; and Timmy (bottom), note the human mandible amulet suspended on a grass resources. Even so, a variety of discrete tool string necklace and that he is carrying a firestick and types were made including several kinds of a waddie or throwing stick. scrapers, a notched piece- or spokeshave, 36 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY spurred or denticulated flakes, large flake and core choppers and stone grinders.

Perhaps the most remarkable Tasmanian innovation is a unique kind of temporary water craft composed of three roles of paper bark, or sometimes a kind of reed bundled together by a network of twine. This streamlined canoe­ raft, capable of holding several adults, could be constructed in a few hours. Canoe-rafts were used to cross the wide estuaries that formed barriers to movement up and down the Tasmanian coast and for making regular voyages to , some as far as 1 7 km off­ shore. This canoe was an extremely efficient way of increasing the amount of exploitable coastline. At the same time, the temporary nature of the craft left the incessantly mobile foragers unencumbered and unrestricted in flake implement their overland movements. waddies A temporary water carrier made from a strip of bull kelp (Durvil/ea potatorum) is another uniquely Tasmanian utensil. The natural flexibility of this throw-away container was also an asset for collecting water from shallow springs and seeps. Bull kelp strips were also used to make shoes for sore feet. Similarly, women constructed a kind of instant basket by tying a bundle of sedge or grass together at each end and lashing to these ends spears a smaller bunch to form a sturdy handle. The large bunch was then spread and used for canoe raft carrying items.

The question of whether or not Tas­ manians possessed a fire-making technology can also be examined in an adaptive context. Tasmanians were not observed to generate I fire by any of the methods practised by people I on the mainland. They transported live and carried firesticks instead. If their fires went out, they reignited their firesticks from a I i nearby bush fire or by borrowing from another ' \ band. The firestick is more likely to be an kelp water container adaptation to living in a cold wet temperate climate rather than evidence of a primitive or I degenerate kind of technology.

The Tasmanians also made some carefully constructed permanent items. Their basketry five dialects of the Tasmanian language. Euro­ Some examples of Tasman ian material culture is identical to neatly twined baskets made by peans loosely termed each of these geo­ from collections in the Tasmanian Museum : flake certain mainland Australian women. Good graphic groups a tribe. These 'tribes' were implement collected from a surface site in the quality string and rope was also made, probably similar to groups of linguistically (length. 70 mm) ; waddies or throwing sticks. one is stout and has a roughened end although hair string was not used, possibly affiliated bands living in the highlands of New (length, 633 mm; mass. 265 g). the other is more because of its tight curl. Guinea and on the Andaman Islands. Tas­ tapered and is smooth along its entire length manian linguistic groups probably maintained a (length, 660 mm; mass . 120 g); model of a Tas­ The presence of a single, plentiful food degree of cultural and genetic uniqueness that manian canoe raft made by a Tasmanian at Oyster type usually determined the location of may have been adaptive in a totally isolated Cove (length. 900 mm). real canoes were made occupation sites for the Tasmanians. The mud cultural system. I estimate about one-third of about 4 or 5 m long from paper bark or reed; kelp oyster and mussels were staple foods along the vocabulary was shared between bands of water container (drawing from a model). approxi­ the entire southeastern and eastern Tas­ the extreme south and those of the west and mately 15-20 cm in diameter; Tasmanian basket (height, 210 mm; diameter, 140 mm) ; and spears northwest, and approximately half between manian coastline. In the northwest, west and from Melaleuca spp., the longer spear is 4.46 m southwest, abalone and turban shells pre­ the bands of the south and southeast. Each and weighs 773 g and the smaller is 3.52 m and dominated as food. These reliable, but tribe had some different customs and local weighs 737 g. Drawings by Peter Murray. monotonous. resources w ere supplemented adaptations of which various food prohibitions by a variety of other marine and non-marine figure prominently. Also, west and northwest , , birds, bird eggs, coast dwellings differed from those found marine and terrestrial mammals and plants. elsewhere. and for some as yet unexplained reason, the northeastern tribes did not make The Tasmanians lived in small bands con­ or use the canoe-raft. sisting of from 30 to 60 individuals. At the time of European cor:itact, 70 or more of these The little information that is known about bands roamed through nine territories com­ early Tasmanian beliefs and religion include a prising the coastal margin and major river short list of evil personifications. a few valleys of the island. The several bands mythological fragments having celestial con­ associated with each territory spoke one of notations and some descriptions of disposal of VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 37 Line drawing (left) of selected motifs from the dead. They practised magic to control several northwest coast petroglyph localities. These weather and sickness, and to both cause and probably relate to Tasmanian mythology. Some prevent life and death. motifs appear to represent astronomical and meteorological phenomena while others may repre­ sent female figures and animals. A particularly rich Amulets-consisting of mandibles, thigh­ area for petroglyphs is at Mt. Cameron West in bones and skulls of infants-were carried or northwestern Tasmania (below). Drawings by Peter worn both as remembrances and magical Murray and photo by P. Bassett-Smith. charms. These were sometimes applied to ailments in an effort to draw out the evil This old photograph (bottom) taken at the influence. In serious illnesses various parts of Oyster Cove Settlement illustrates the effect the body were lacerated with a stone tool. On European contact had on Tasmanian Aborigines; an the more practical side, they used splints to effect th at ultimately had more severe reper­ cussions for the survival of their culture. Photo by set broken limbs and had performed success­ F. R. Nixon. ful amputations. They practised cremation of the dead and in some areas made bark 'tombs' for the remains.

Only their rock art remains to remind us of some aspect of their nonsecular lives. These petroglyphs, confined to the west and north­ west coasts of Tasmania, are composed of a number of recurring motifs in the form of cer­ tain boldly executed geometric designs that refer to astronomy, women and animals.

, The few recorded elements of Tasmanian culture and society seem to me to indicate a resourceful , vital and ingenious system, rather than a degenerate one on the way to collapse. The Tasmanians possessed a culture and technology that was apparently in equilibrium with the ecosystem.

The disintegration of Tasmanian culture did not begin until after European contact. It was well underway by 1820, and by the mid-1 830s when the few remaining Abori­ gines were confined to a settlement on the end was clearly in sight. Torn from their land and placed in an unfamiliar and regimented environment, those who had not succumbed to influenza, pneumonia, the common cold, epidemic tuberculosis or venereal disease wasted away psycho­ logically. When their culture was removed from the context in which it served for thousands of years, its meanings were destroyed and while the last few Tasmanians appeared to have tried very hard indeed, they ultimately failed to readapt their culture for survival in a Euro­ pean context.

FURTHER READING Bowdler, S. 1974 . An account of an archaeo­ logical reconnaissance of Hunter's Isles northwest Tasmania, 1973-4. Ree. Q . Viet. Mus., Launceston, No. 54, 22 pp. Geode, A. and P. Murray. 1977. Man in south central Tasmania: evidence from a cave site in the Florentine Valley. Mankind, 11 : 2-10. Hiatt, B. 196 7 -6 8 . The food quest and the economy of the Tasmanian Aborigines. , 38: 99-133, 190-2 19. Jones, R. 1977. The Tasmanian paradox. In R. V. S. Wright (ed.) Stone tools as cultural markers. Australian Inst. Aboriginal Studies, Canberra. Peron, F. 18 10 . Voyage de decouvertes aux Terres Australes. 2 vol. translated by Richard Philips, . Plomley, N. J. B. 197 1. Friendly mission, the Tasmanian journals and papers of 1829 -183 4 . T.H.R.A. Supplement. Roth, L. 1899. The Aborigines of Tasmania. 2nd ed., Halifax.

38 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY TASMAN AND A DUTCH DISCOVERY In the mid seventeenth century the world of the Tasmanian Aborigine was to be touched for the first time by European man. The Dutch 'discovery' of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) initiated a new era-the modern era-that has seen the island's recorded , colonial and penal settlement, statehood and environmental exploitation and the demise of the Tasmanian Aborigine. As a Senior Research Assistant in the History Department of the , Peter Chapman is interested in the initial reactions of the European imagination to Van Diemen's Land and the consequences of those reactions for later Australian history. His account of the discovery voyage by the navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman places European man's impact upon Tasmania into an by Peter Chapman historical perspective. The discovery of Van Diemen's Land may Apart from Van Diemen, the inception and be seen as the southernmost thrust of the indeed the success of the southern voyage of great Dutch maritime initiative following the Abel Janszoon Tasman (1603-1659) also revolt of the Protestant from owed much to the advice and expertise of Catholic Spain in 1 581 . Seventy-seven years Frans Jacobszoon Visscher, recognised as a of bitter, intermittent warfare were to pass master pilot and hydrographer and who before the Spanish recognised the complete accompanied Tasman on the voyage as Pilot­ independence of the Netherlands in 1648, but major. His Memoir concerning the Discovery by the beginning of the seventeenth century of the South-land appeared in January, 1642 the Dutch were already mounting a startling and included the suggestion which was to challenge to the long-established Spanish and shape the outline of Tasman's voyage, namely Portuguese maritime empires in the Pacific. 1 to use as a forward re-victualling base and to sail south from Mauritius at the end The thrust had been coming from indepen­ of August, which would leave the southern dent seafaring syndicates in the privateer summer for exploration, and continue south till tradition but in 1 602 became far more 52-54 degrees of latitude. Thence, if the formidable with the co-ordination of these south-land had not been discovered, the groups into the United East Company expedition was to sail east until it did so, or with full powers of 'commerce and war' and until it reached the longitude of , the Dutch monopoly of the East. The company whence it might sail northward. Visscher's pursued trade and war with such vigour that by memoir contained am bitious projects, in­ the Twelve Years' Truce of 1609 between the cluding a suggestion the expedition might Netherlands and Spain it was conceded that make a southern circumnavigation to discover the Dutch be allowed to trade freely in the "the Southern portion of the world all around East. Henceforward, development was rapid: the globe, and to find out what it consists of, in 1 61 9 Batavia was founded by the able whether land, sea, or icebergs, all that God Dutch Governor-General Jan Coen, command­ has ordained there", in the event the explorers ing the straits of Sunda and forming a base for were to find enough to occupy their time in the the maturation of an ambitious vision of an ex­ more modest journey. panding trade empire extending from Formosa to . Tasman, who had been born in the Groenigen village of Lu tjegast in the While the first Dutch contact with Australia Netherlands, was now an experienced was that of the Duyfken in 1605, touching on mariner. For the previous nine years he had Cape York on a voyage off the coast of New been voyaging and trading in the East Indian Guinea, the decisive about the seas, and there had been episodes which in­ 'great South-land' (dubbed Austrialia by the cluded dangerous encounters with natives. In last great Spanish navigator, Quiros, in the 1 639 he had embarked on a major voyage of 2 previous year ) were to follow under Coen's exploration as second in command to the Portrait of Abel Janszoon Tas man, the successors, Van Speult and Van Diemen. navigator Matthijas Quast, a harsh long voyage discoverer of Van Di emen's Land, from Historical six hundred miles east of and deep into photographs relating to Tasmania by J. W. Beattie, There were numerous voyages of explora­ the North Pacific which cost the lives of nearly Hobart, 191 2, in the Mitc hell Library, Sydney. tion in the seas to the north of Australia, but it half the ships' companies. Beattie's photograph is of an oil painting in the was not until the Governor-Generalship of possession of L. G. Cockhead Esq. of Hobart. The Anthony Van Diemen at Batavia (first appointed Quast's voyage had included an un­ original was bequeathed to the Royal Empire in 1 636) that there was an attempt to explore successful quest for the legendary islands of Society in 1 94 7. the 'South-land' by probing from the south. Ri ca de Oro and Rica de Plata, rumoured to be Like his predecessors, ambitious to expand "Rich in . . . and ". Instructions the Dutch trading empire, Van Diemen was issued to Tasman by Van Diemen for his 1642 perhaps the ablest of the early Governor­ voyage in search of the " remaining unknown Generals at Batavia and issued wise advice to part of the terrestrial globe" had referred to the his captains; to treat the natives "with great sister latitudes of the silver and gold rich coun­ kindness, wary caution, and skilful judgement. tries of and Peru , and had advised him , Whoever endeavours to discover unknown should he encounter people in the lands of his lands and tribes had need to be patient and discoveries, to enquire of them "what com­ long suffering . .. " 3 This was to be prophetic modities their country yields. likewise enquir­ advice for the early explorers and settlers of ing after gold and silver whether the latter are Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. by them held in high esteem; making them

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 39 believe that you are by no means eager for shall then have reached the 220th degree of "This land being the first land we have met with precious metals, as to leave them ignorant of Longitude ... " He also opined "We cannot but in the South Sea, and not known to any Euro­ the value of the same".4 Yet while it is clear think that if we find no land up to 1 50 pean nation, we have conferred on it the name that ultimate economic exploitation was a Longitude we shall be in open sea again , of Anthony van Diemenslandt in honour of the prime aim of the expedition it is fair to note that unless we should meet with islands; all which Hon. Governor-General, our illustrious master, Van Diemen again counselled gentle behaviour time and experience being the best of who sent us to make this discovery ... " (Van toward native populations. teachers will no doubt bring to light . . . " As Diemen's Land was formally re-named Tas­ Tasmania lies between 40 ° -45 °, and be­ mania in 1 856 after transportation of convicts Tasman sailed with two ships, the 0 to the colony ceased and it became self­ Heemskerck and Zeehaen, from Batavia on 14 tween, by Dutch reckoning, 205 °-21 O August, 1642. They arrived at Mauritius on 5 longitude, these directions would have led the governing.) They were now rather south of September but the necessity for an extensive expedition to strike or sight either the north­ , and proceeded south, refit detained them there till well after west corner of the Tasmanian coast or the while gales and heavy seas made landing im­ 6 Visscher's optimum departure date and they Bass Strait islands. possible until they rounded the southern end did not leave until 8 October. Soon they were of the island where a further storm forced beating into heavy seas and stormy weather, Tasman accepted the thrust of his Pilot­ them from a promising anchorage in 'Storm' and by 6 November, having reached latitude major's advice, commenting on 7 November: Bay and drove them south and east round 49 ° 4', progress was deteriorating. Tasman "wind still westerly, with hail and snow, so we . They eventually anchored noted in his journal " . .. a storm from the west, had to run on with a furled foresail as before, off Visscher Island, near Cape Frederick with hail and snow . . . the sea ran very high and as we could not make any progress in this Hendrick (so named by Tasman after the and our men begin to suffer badly from the way, we deemed it best to alter our course to Stadtholder of the United Provinces) on the severe cold . . . " 5 Buffeted by south­ northward ..." 7 On the following day he con­ north-east corner of on 1 southwesterly winds, it was clear that the firmed they should "shape our course north­ December. On the following day Tasman sent expedition was not able to make Visscher's east as far as 44 ° S Latitude and then keep a Visscher ashore in command of a pinnace and original prescription of a minimum southern due east course as far as 1 50 ° Longitude". a cock-boat-the first Europeans to set foot on latitude of 52 °. Van Diemen's Land, eighteen men in all. Tasman crossed the 1 50th longitude on Visscher now recommended a change of 1 8 November without further incident, but as course which was to directly to the dis­ Visscher landed at what is now known as covery of Tasmania: he suggested they run he then elected to steer a rather more Blackman's Bay but which Tasman named southerly bearing than that suggested by northward till the 44th degree latitude, and . He returned with his Visscher, never running further north than then "stick to the 44th degree S. Latitude party intact in mid afternoon having discovered running east until we shall have passed the 42 ° 25', in effect laid a course which would fresh water, an "abundance of excellent take them directly to the central west Tas­ timber" and bearing "various samples of 150th degree of Longitude, and then run north manian coast, which was sighted on 24 vegetables which they had seen growing there as far as the 40th degree S. Latitude, remain­ November: "In the afternoon, about 4 o'clock, in great abundance . . . " Perhaps of more ing there with an easterly course, until we we saw land , bearing east by north of us, at immediate interest to Tasman however was about 1 O miles' distance . . . the land we Visscher's report that "they had heard certain sighted was very high; towards evening we human sounds, and also sounds nearly resem­ also saw east-south-east of us three high bling the music of a trump, or a small gong, not mountains, and to the north-east two more far from them, though they had seen no one" mountains, but less high than those to and "that they had seen two trees about 2 or 2 ½ fathom in thickness, measuring from 60 to southward . . . " These mountains were to be 65 feet from the ground to the lowermost named after Tasman's ships by Flinders, 1 56 branches, which trees bore notches made Tasman·s discovery ships, Heemskerck and years later. Zeehaen, from Historical photographs relating to with flint implements, the bark having been Tasmania by J . W. Beattie, Hobart, 1912, in the removed for the purpose; these notches, Mitchell Library, Sydney. This photograph is of an oil Next day they sailed to within a mile of the forming a kind of steps to enable persons to go painting by Capt. Forrest of Hobart from the original shore and took soundings of "clean, fine white up the trees and rob the bird's nest in their drawings in Tasman's diary. sand" and Tasman recorded in his journal: tops, were fully 5 feet apart, so [we] con­ cluded that the natives here must be of very tall stature, or must be in possession of some sort of artifice for getting up ... in one of the trees these notched steps were so fresh and new that they seemed to have been cut less than four days ago. " 8 This was the first. tenuous, European 'contact' with the Tasma­ nian Aborigines, and though Tasman and his party sighted no Aborigines, they had no doubt from the fires that struck up in woodlands of the vicinity that they were under constant observation during their brief stay in Tasmania. 9

On 3 December, the following and last day of Tasman's stay in Tasmanian waters, he claimed the land formally for the company. Heavy seas made this ceremony difficult and in the end the ship's carpenter Pieter Jacobaz was obliged to swim ashore bearin g a "pole with the Company's mark carved into it. and a Prince-flag to be set up there, that those who shall come after us may become aware that we have been here, and have taken possession of the said land as our lawful property . . . " He planted the pole "about the centre of the bay [modern Prince of Wales Bay] near four tall

40 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY trees easily recognisable and standing in the ~ 10 .i " form of a crescent ... " ~ ""\. . i ) This ended Tasman's effective exploration of Tasmania. On 4 December after further un­ l•,\_~/ favourable winds deterred him from making a i ~ further landing for water, he sailed eastwards, naming Maria and Schouten Islands and Van der Lyn (later ) as he did .o so. He had failed to detect either the Derwent estuary or the connection or otherwise of Van Diemen's Land to the 'South-land' to the north, but his voyage of discovery was by no means over. On 13 December he discovered New Zealand, touched on the northern end of the southern island where, despite his usual cau­ tion, he lost four of his men in an encounter with Maoris, explored but did not penetrate the gulf between the islands, and charted the western coast of the northern island. Leaving ~ ' <> ~-1,.,-,.~~~~:;:1:,r?/e,--~~-., ~t-½7.• ~ ~~,,r-:-5~~ ~"'-<"i- ,t-..~~~'--+ , .~, ~~~-1. C,-.~~~~,t,~~~~~ ..J IJ this at Cape Maria Van Diemen (so named, like Maria Island, after the Governor-General's ..,, 'C ~ ~ wife) he sailed home via the Tongan Islands (a t- } '-. further discovery) to arrive at Batavia on 1 4 'C June, 1643, concluding his journal on the ·; following day: "In the morning at daybreak I went to Batavia in the pinnace. God be praised and thanked for this happy voyage." Tasman's career subsequent to these ex­ Chart of the surveyed coast of "Anthony Van peditions, while not attended by the disasters Diemens Landt" from Abel Janszoon Tasman's Governor Van Diemen and his Council which attended later explorers of Tasmania Journal of His Discovery . .. (full title given in note 5 however showed less gratitude for what was a (Du Fresne was killed and eaten by Maori at the end of the article). , 1898, in the remarkable navigational achievement. While cannibals; D'Entrecasteaux died on his Mitchell Library. Tasman's first sight of Van commending him for his voyage, they were homeward voyage; Bligh suffered both the Diemen's Land was a point on the central west coast unable to mask their disappointment at the lack on 24 November, 1642. From here he sailed mutiny of the Bounty and deposition as southward , rounded South West Cape, continued of promising economic discovery and com­ Governor of ; Flinders was eastward and eventually anchored on 2 December mented dourly that he "had been to some imprisoned for nearly seven years on Mauritius at Cape Frederick Hendrick. Leaving the anchor­ extent remiss in investigating the . . . nature by the French when he called there in 1803), age, Tasman sailed northward past Maria and of the lands discovered and left the main part was certainly anti-climactic. The unpromising Schouten Islands to about Freycinet Peninsula and 11 of this to some more inquisitive successor" . report of his second voyage had again drawn then continued eastward to discover New Zealand. Nevertheless, Tasman (and Visscher) was criticism from Van Diemen as to the "need for commissioned to make a further voyage of a closer investigation by more vigilant and discovery in 1644. This time his route fol­ courageous persons than hitherto employed 15 lowed the north Australian coastline from the on this service ..." , and while he was pro­ top of -(approaching it moted to Commandeur in 1 644 and given from the west and skirting the southern command of two further expeditions, to Dambi coastline of New Guinea), westward, charting in 1 646 and Siam in 1647, these were lesser the interior of the and con­ missions and his commission was to terminate trading ventures, still satisfying perhaps that tinuing westward beyond North West Cape to sadly on a third expedition in 1 648-9. This urge which led him to his great journeys. He latitude 24. Although, as with Van Diemen's was a privateering raid to check the Spanish died in Batavia in 1659. Land, Tasman failed to discover the strait presence in the Philippines, and while the (Torres Strait) separating New Guinea from object of the mission (the storming of fort at Despite the reservations of the East India Australia, assuming it to be part of the con­ Albay on Luzon) was accomplished success­ Company, Tasman's first voyage in particular tinent. this was another great pioneering fully, in the aftermath Tasman, who was later remained an enduring ac hievement. While it voyage. However, like the previous expedi­ accused of "banqueting and carousing", so was commemorated in the ornate form of a tion, it was not one which returned tangible lost his temper with two delinquent (Dutch) marble mosaic of two hemispheres set in the profits to the East India Company, indeed, of sailors that he attempted (and was nearly suc­ floor of the Amsterdam Town Hall (1655), such prospects Tasman could only write of the cessful in so trying) to hang them with his own accounts of the voyage and abstracts from his "naked -roving wretches, destitute even hands-an excess which led to his disgrace in journal were published in numerous editions of rice ... miserably poor, and in many places the following year (1649). Ignoring his plea and translated into French and English.17 12 of a very bad disposition . .. " , a far cry from that he " had put the halter round the sailors These were the languages of the later thP. precious metals desired by the Directors neck as a 'deterrent menace' ", the Batavian explorers of Van Diemen's Land who were, in of the Company. Council of Justice deprived him of his rank and turn, both to make an intimate acquaintance­ pay and ordered him to "declare in public court ship with Tasmania's mysterious inhabitants18 Indeed, while Governor Van Diemen in with uncovered head" that he had attempted and chart its coastline to the point of at last Batavia was eage·r to continue explorations to sentence the sailors "extra-judicially, of his uncovering its island form and claiming it for 16 of the 'South-lands', the Directors of the own will and against all forms of law" , a their own'9. an with dire con­ United East India Company in Am sterdam sentence which resulted in Tasman·s loss of sequences for the Aborigines. were beginning to consider these expensive certain civic positions as well . and hitherto profitless voyages of discovery a Meanwhile, news of the discovery was not poor return on investment. "These plans," While he was fully re-instated in 1 651 , limited to nautical accounts. Swift. in writing they wrote to him, "somewhat aim beyond our this was the end of Tasman's public career Gulliver's Travels (1726) located Lilliput "to mark . .. the gold and silver mines that will best with the company. He continued to live in the north-west of Van Diemen's Land . . . 20 serve the Company's turn have already been Batavia with his second wife in comfortable 30 degrees 2 minutes south" , an arid locality found ..." 13 Van Diemen died in April 1645 circumstances, residing on a large estate perh aps (in southern Australia). but evidence and the great initiative to the south was quietly which included a pleasure garden of six acres. of the secure establishment in the Euro­ abandoned. No European was to set foot on However he maintained his lifelong interest in pean imagination of the remote land Tasman Tasmania for another 150 years. 14 the sea to the end, engaging in mercantile had discovered.

VOLUME 2 0 NUMBER 2 4 1 Chart of "Frederick Henricx Bay with Maria's entire Australian coastline, and adopted by Gover­ (1925). pp. 195-202, and in the same journal C. Island" from Abel Janszoon Tasman 's Journal of His nor Macquarie of New South Wales in 18 1 7; see Lords' more convincing reply ( 1926). pp. 25-34. Discovery . .. , Amsterdam, 1898, in the Mitchell C. M. H. Clark, A , I. (Melbourne 11 . Cited in J. E. Heeres, Life and Labours of Abel Library. The present-day name for the bay illustrated 1962), pp. 182 and 317. Janszoon Tasman , p. 114, in Heeres and Coote, by Tasman is Blackman's Bay and the name 3. Beaglehole, p. 139. Abel Janszoon Tasman's Journal . .. 'Frederick Henry' is now given to a bay in the 4 . Beaglehole, p. 145. 12. Beaglehole, p. 158. northern section of further to the west. 5. Tasman, The Journal of Abel Jansz Tasman 13. Beaglehole, pp. 159-160. Tasman's anchorage (illustrated by the ships on 1642 with Documents Relating to His Exploration of 14. I.e. the Frenchman, Marrion Du Fresne on 6 Tasman's chart) would correspond to a position in Australia in 1644, entry, 6 November, 1642. This March, 1772. south Marion Bay. Controversy surrounds the exact accessible edition is a very fair rendering of 15. Heeres, p. 118. point where the first Europeans did set foot on Tasman's Journal, but serious readers should con­ 16. Heeres, p. 125. Tasmania. Both Tasman Bay and th e adjoining North sult the classic and now very rare edition by J. E. 1 7. There were at least seven such editions by Bay (small bays on the south coast of Marion Bay) Heeres and C. H. Coote, Abel Janszoon Tasman 's 1770 including Arnold Montanus, De Nieuwe en have been proposed as probable landing points. Journal of His Discovery of Van Diemen's Land and Onbekende Weere/d of beschrijving van America New Zealand in 1642 with Documents Relating to en 't Zuid-land (1671 ); Dirk Rembrantzoon Van His Exploration of Australia in 1644 being Photo­ Nierop, Een Kort Verhaet uyt het Journael van den lithographic Facsimiles of the Original Manuscript in Kommandeur Jansen Tasman int ontdekken the Colonial Archives at the Hague with an English 'tonbekende Suit-lant (1 674) and Nicolaas Wilsen, Translation and Facsimiles of the Original Maps to Noord en Oost Tartarye (1692). which Added Life and Labours of Abel Janszoon 18. La Billardiere of D'Entrecastreaux's 1 792-3 Tasman by J. E. Heeres LL. D. (Amsterdam 1898). expedition, and Francois Peron, of Baudin's 1801 REFERENCES AND NOTES 6 . By 'Dutch reckoning', 220° was equivalent to expedition, left invaluable accounts of the Tas­ 160 ° west of Greenwich. manian Aborigines in Relation du Voyage a Ja 1 . For ingenious reconstructions of earlier, con­ 7 . Tasman, entry, 7 November, 1642. Recherche de La Perouse (Paris 1800) and Voyage ventionally Portuguese initiatives about Australia 8 . Tasman, entry, 2 December, 1642. de decouvertes aux Terres Australes (Paris (yet to be conclusively proven) see The Secret 9. Tasman's phrase is puzzling: "at various times 1807 -17), respectively. Discovery of Australia (Adelaide 1977) by K. G. and points in the wood they also had seen clouds of 19. Tasmania was claimed for the British Crown by McIntyre; and I. McKiggan, The Portuguese Expedi­ smoke ascending. So there can be no doubt there Governor King of New South Wales in 1802; he was tion to Bass Strait in A.D. 1522, Journal of must be men here of extraordinary stature." fearful of being anticipated by the French. Australian Studies, No. 1, June 1977, p. 2. Possibly some hollow eucalypts were burning from See Historical Records of Australia, Series I, Vol. 111 , 2. J. C. Beaglehole, The Exploration of the Pacific the centre with the flames emerging high up the p. 737: Despatch, King to Hobart, 23 November, (London 1966), p. 94. Landing at the New trunk, giving the illusion to the Du tch, unfamiliar with 1802. Hebrides in May, Quiros had declared "all the lands such trees or such bushfires, that the trees had 20. Gulliver's Travels, chapter I, Oxford Standard which I have sighted and am going to sight ... as far been litten high up? In view of the later behaviour of Authors (Oxford 1956) p. 18. In Swift's earlier Tale as the Pole ... shall be called Austrialia del Espiritu the Aborigines toward the French their 'invisibility' is of a Tub (1705) the author of 'A Project for the Santo . . . " But the name was in honour of the house surprising. Perhaps all the Dutch saw were Universal Benefit of Mankind' wrote prophetically of of Austria; the popularisation of modern 'Australia' bushfires. his intention "to print by subscription . . an exact from 'Terra Australis' owed much to the French 1 0 . This was most probably on the northwestern description of Terra Australis lncognita . .. this work advocate of colonial expansion, Charles de secti on of Tasman Bay (formerly Prince of Wales will be of great use to all men . . because it con­ Brossess, author of Histoire des navigations aux Bay) . For the view it may have been the adjoining tains exact accounts of all the provinces of that terres australes (1757), an d was first applied by North Bay, see G. Halligan's hypothesis in Papers & spacious country, where by a general doom, all , the first circumnavigator of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania transgressors of the law are to be transported ... "

42 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY THE ISLANDS OF BASS STRAIT The inhabitants of the islands that dot the channel between the Australian mainland and Tasmania are a hardy people-one that has survived a turbulent history in an often inhospitable environment. Patsy Adam-Smith OBE has had a twenty-five year relation­ ship with the islands of Bass Strait which started in 1 954 when she sailed these waters for six years on a trading vessel. She later lived for periods on the islands, worked with CSIRO bird-banding teams, and to this date returns each year for 'the birdin' season'. Her article indicates an intimacy with the islands and their people that is matched by few by Patsy Adam-Smith outsiders.

On the 39th parallel-the edge of the As day dawned on 8 February, 1797 Cap­ Roaring Forties-the strait that divides tain Hamilton saw, for the first time since he Tasmania from the mainland is about 21 O km in left India, a place where he could safely run his length north to south and 560 km east to west. ship aground. He called it . All that remains of the land that once joined the When his crew were safely ashore he had continent to the island state is the high moun­ them salvage the rum and place it on a nearby tain range that today presses its peaks up island which he named . The wreck through the Bass Strait to form 1 20 islands or of the named a host of other rocks from the Victorian to the Tasmanian points and before the saga was done another coast. The 42 islands of the Furneaux Group ship was lost, the stage was set for the birth of lie at the eastern entrance to Bass Strait, only a whole new race of people, two of the three-quarters of an hour flying time from greatest navigators in Australia's history made Melbourne, half an hour from Tasmania yet important discoveries and the first settlement relatively still as isolated as when settlement south of Sydney was begun. there, was the first south of Sydney. Scarcely 20 km separates any rock or island from the Two little ships, Francis and Eliza, were Glennies. to the and the Furneaux sent from Sydney on 16 May, 1797 to rescue on to . the crew of the Sydney Cove and salvage the cargo and arrived 11 June, 1 797. The Eliza The Furneaux Islands were named after disappeared without trace on her voyage back Captain who discovered to Sydney. The Francis on her second sal­ them when sailing with Captain in vaging trip in February, 1798 had Matthew 1773. They were charted, but roughly, on a Flinders on board "to make what observations map that as yet did not separate Tasmania he could among these islands relating to from the mainland of Australia. It was the com­ anchorages etc. " On his return to Sydney he ing of Guy Hamilton, an eighty-year-old Scot conferred with about his obser­ mariner, that set in motion the group's vations and experience of the tides and cur­ swashbuckling era that has hardly ended. rents and the two men agreed to prove their theory that Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) was Hamilton was the Master of the Sydney divided from New South Wales. This they did Cove (renamed in 1 796 as a cunning compli­ in October, 1798. ment to the founding settlement in New South The Sheerwater, here taking on cargo off Wales). One of the East India Company's more In the wake of the wreck of the Sydney Flinders Island, is one of the most familiar and expendable vessels, she was old and un­ Cove came desperadoes, lured to the islands audacious of the small ships in Bass Strait during seaworthy, just fine to risk sending with a by hopes of what the wreck would yield and by this century. Photo by P. Adam-Smith. speculation cargo, the first ship to attempt to reports of the life in the sea brought back by open trade with the colony. The company Flinders. The islands became the mecca of knew the cargo the colony might best buy and time-expired convicts, deserting or abandoned when the old ship wallowed out of the Hughli, seamen and any man who needed to reject India, on 1 O November, 1 796 she carried society for private reasons. As well, there 7 ,OOO gallons of rum and whisky. were the sealers. When Matthew Flinders returned to Sydney in 1798, he reported the The old man sailed down into the Roaring vast numbers of fur seals in the Straits. Forties, south of Tasmania, not then known to "Seals," he wrote, "the weight of an ox," be an island, and from the first onslaught of abounded in the waters of Bass Strait. The those wild waters she began to open up. In the sealers raced southward to reap the harvest. cold wastelands of the southern seas some of Before Australia rode on the sheep's back she the Lascar crew died at the pumps, the had wealth from the seal. second mate was swept overboard and the ship's sails were rent. Hamilton dragged her "The wild geese ... were always shy. The around the south coast of Tasmania and kangaroo seems to abound, and those . . . headed her north. Within twenty-four hours a remarkable badger-like animals are equally gale of hurricane-force hit the distressed ship numerous." So writes Flinders, the most and water poured in. In the dark of night the reputable explorer of his day, in his journal on gale drove her through Banks Strait (the ship's 17 September, 1798. But that all men of the company were unaware of its existence, they period shared the common lack of interest in being the first recorded travellers to pass survival of a species or, indeed, the pain of an this way). a rocky, inhospitable shore, even , is illustrated on the same page of his now uninhabited. journal: "The terrors of the young cubs (seals)

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 43 4 4 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY Most of the ships sailed out of Sydney. Once off the islands, they put gangs ashore to kill, skin and extract the oil from the seals. The most novel method of catching seals was utilised and, with it, the most brutal treatment of the natives from the nearby coastal lands of Tasmania. From the earliest time of white settlement, the coastline had been raided for native girls, and now they put them to work.

An early chronicle has told how the girls divested themselves of their kangaroo-hide frocks and smeared their body with oil from the blubber of the seals. They then slithered along the rocks and lay among the seals. They used their arms as flippers, imitating the seals' movements, at times even feigning sleep. When the animals were no longer suspicious, the women arose at a signal and clubbed to death as many seals as they could before the remainder escaped into the sea. The first children of the white sealers and the girls they raided from the native tribes were growing up when the hand of the Establishment was signalling an end to the lawless days. The most ironical, astonishing thing of all the sad sagas of the abducted girls is that they lived, some to a great age, while the women who were cleaned, fed, corsetted and taught to be 'civilized' pined away and died, leaving poor old Truganini to live alone until she died, the last of her people, in 1876.

A young islander (above) explores the remnants who had not yet dared take to the water The vast numbers of wildlife on the of a bygone industry-the sealers' fry-pots on Great afforded a good deal of amusement; they Furneaux Islands have been a joy to visitors Dog Island. Photo by P. Adam-Smith. huddled together in among the rocks, putting and were a source of food to the early settlers. up a dozen noses through the cavities, and The animals had walked over in the ages when expressing their fears of their tormentors by Bass Strait was dry land, and what are now the piteous looks and moans. One of the elder Furneaux Islands were a mountain range far in­ would sometimes assume courage enough to land. As the waters began to rise 15,000 bark in a tremulous tone, and indeed became years ago only a remnant of the animals on the very fierce on our walking away from them. We rich plains survived on the larger islands. killed as many large ones as there was time to skin." Fossil bones found on Flinders Island have shown that the boomer, the eastern grey His report was leapt upon so rapidly that, kangaroo, Macropus giganteus, lived on the by the time of his next trip to the islands in the island just after the period of the rising of the at the close of 1798, he was accom­ waters. This kangaroo no longer exists on the panied by the Nautilus , Captain Bishop, who Bass Strait islands, nor does the , came for the seals. This man established the Dasyurus viverrinus, or the barred bandicoot, first settlement south of Sydney when he set Perameles gunnii, whose fossil bones have up sealing operations in Kent Bay on the been unearthed on Flinders Island. The three southern coast of . There, still exist in Tasmania, however. The ­ were made rough huts with beds, the nucleus kangaroo, Aepyprymnus rufescens, now of a processing plant and a vegetable garden. found only in and a small area of Within five months he had 9 ,000 seal skins northern New South Wales, was also once on ready for the market, and this was the signal the islands. The disappearance of these for a wholesale migration of sealing men. By species from the Bass Strait islands was not 1803 there were 200 men working, some caused by man but rather was due to the from boats, others from the shore where the limited areas available both for them to thrive seals came to rest. and for their foodstuffs to grow. For the same reasons, those animals that did survive have Originally three different types of seals evolved different forms to their kind on the lived in the Straits and all three were relent­ Australian mainland. lessly pursued for their oil and fur. The , Mirounga leonina , and the hair On Flinders and Cape Barren Islands two seal, Neophoca cinerea, were taken in such species that survive-albeit precariously­ numbers that their kind are no longer seen in are the red-necked wallaby, Macropus thes.e seas, and the , Arctocephalus rufogriseus, and the little Tasmanian The lighthouse on Swan Island (top left) off the pusillus doriferus, is only left in small numbers. pademelon, Thylogale billardierii. The wallaby NW tip of Tasmania keeps vigil at the southern part Almost 100,000 seal skins were shipped from is still found on the Australian mainland but the of the Strait. Photo by P. Adam-Smith. Bass Strait to Sydney between 1 800 and pretty little pademelon is found only on Bass This restored church (bottom left) situated in 1806. Indeed the extermination was so rapid Strait islands and Tasmania, having been rich pasture land on Flinders Island was originally that the American whalers who arrived to take hunted to extinction on the mainland before built by exiled Tasmanian Aborigines in 1842. Photo part in the spoil left the Straits early in the the beginning of this century. The wallaby is by P. Adam-Smith. first decade. shot for bait by cray-fishermen as was the VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 45 A mother gannet, Morus serrator, regurgitates most beautiful bird of the waterways, the the eggs were once gathered for cooking, but breakfast for her babies waiting in the gannetry at gannet, Marus serrator. that has been banned for many years. (above). Although now almost deserted, the gannetry once maintained a population in the In 191 2 a survey of Cat Island, a tiny Another form of wildlife that abounds on thousands. Photo by P. Adam-Smith. to the east of Flinders, by the Royal Austra­ the islands is one that many feel they could lasian Ornithological Society, recorded well do without. The snakes of the Furneaux 10,000 gannets. It was once one of the most are plentiful, healthy and lethal. They have set densely populated gannetries in the world and up their own divisions and although both tiger In the past a flight of Cape Barren geese, is one of the oldest. The gannetry on Cat and copperhead snakes live on Flinders Island Cereopsis novaehollandiae (below), was too often Island is built on a bed of guano estimated to the two do not share any other island; either seen only through gunsights. Today, the increase in be nearly five metres deep-evidence of the one or the other have sole occupancy of each numbers of this species testifies to a more balanced long period that the birds have been nesting of the other islands. Lady Jane Franklin, the view that acknowledges recreation, conservation there. The guano gives the whole nesting area Saint Patrick of Van Diemen's Land, after her and preservation. Photo by P. Adam-Smith. a dazzling white appearance, making good voyage to the Furneaux in 1 842, offered a camouflage for the white fluffy young chicks, bounty of fourpence halfpenny a tail- but so as well as thsi white-plumaged adults. In 1975, many were collected that the offer had to be thirteen gannets nested on Cat Island; a withdrawn. The Rev. Brownrigg recorded that ghostly relic of their 10,000 ancestors. on alone 8,00 0 snakes were killed in eight years. Because of this menace, A happier story is that of the inc:rease in birders no longer work Chappell Island. On this numbers of the Cape Barren goose, Cereopsis island in 1952 Trooper Lew Bailey and five novaehollandiae. For 150 years it has resisted men with three guns and three sticks killed destruction and, with its numbers now 1 43 tiger snakes in two hours-all over six reported to be upwards of 9,000, this species feet long. may well survive. When the seals were exterminated the The name, Cape Barren goose, is inaccu­ islanders fell on hard times. Ships no longer rate because the bird is distributed not only on came to hire extra hands or to trade. It was all islands of the Furneaux Group but breeds then they turned their attention to the strange as far west as the Recherche Archipelago and grey bird that came to the islands from the sea occurs on islands near Albany, Western Aus­ every September. They had watched it come tralia. It is as big as a domestic goose with a in its myriad thousands at dusk; the short-tailed wing span of up to 1 .5 metres and weighs up shearwater. Puffinus tenuirostris. to about 5.5 kilogrammes. Its flesh is said to be delicious, having none of the gaminess These birds are believed to be among the usually attached to wild birds, and for this it has most numerous of any species. One flock been hunted unceasingly since it was first Matthew Flinders saw was estimated to have discovered in 1 792 by the French naturalist been 151,500,000 needing 75,750,000 J. J. de Labillardiere who called it cygne burrows to lodge them. Allowing a square yard cendre. Labillardiere took the skin of one of to each burrow, he reckoned on their covering the geese back to Europe with him and pre­ more than 18½ square miles. The ship­ sented it to the Paris museum. It was the first wrecked crew of the Sydney Cove had of many to be taken to Europe. John Gould eaten the bird and the sealers that followed wrote in Birds of Australia that he killed a pair had eaten it; usually the adult bird was of geese on on 1 2 January, taken, and from its flavour it became known 1839, but added that, far from being still as muttonbird. numerous, the bird was "almost extirpated". As with other birds, particularly muttonbirds, In the Northern Hemisphere explorers had

46 AUSTRALI AN NATURAL HISTORY noted the same species of bird in Arctic waters and it was there that it was given its scientific name by the Dutch ornithologist Conrad Joseph Temminck in 1835, although it had been noted and described by many earlier voyagers.

In June and July of each year fishermen in those waters have frequently reported great groups of the birds feeding on the surface of the sea. But for many years the breeding grounds of these birds remained a mystery. It seemed unlikely that the northern birds and those of Bass Strait were connected because if, in fact, they were the same birds, they would have taken five to six weeks to fly more than 11 ,OOO km, from the time they were last seen in the southern islands in April, and the time they were first seen north of Japan and the Aleutian Islands in June.

Dr Dominic Serventy of Perth, who is the ; ;:· ·,:~· world authority on the short-tailed shearwater, . , ~ ... . , .:Jai\ has studied these birds-lived with them is a -.• -~ more appropriate term-for a quarter of a century. He has placed leg bands on some hundreds of thousands of birds to identify them. Each band carries a serial number and a request to contact the Fauna Board. In this way, by checking the number against the bird, burrow, and island pinpointed in a detailed card index system, the patient doctor knew where every bird and its mate lived, when they went to bed, when they were unfaithful, when their young were born and when the young matured and scratched a nest for themselves.

The birds come to the Furneaux Islands in mid-September to scratch out their nests, and, if possible, occupy the same burrow each year. Then suddenly, in the first week in November, they desert the islands and every burrow is empty. It stays that way until the latter part of the month when they swoop ashore in a huge brown cloud and descend, each to their own burrow. Then the females lay their single eggs. The banding scheme has shown that females begin to breed at from five to seven years; males from seven to eight years. For a bird of its size, it has a long period of immaturity. As the bird spends most of its life on the wing, coming in to land only to breed, it develops a great power of flight. It has been known to wander over distances of nearly a thousand kilometres and move away from the islands in search of the plankton and krill which form most of its food intake. For a century before this work was commenced the islanders had known much about the bird. They certainly knew of its remarkable pre­ egglaying exodus.

Leaving with a 3 AM start, these short-tailed shearwaters, Puffinus tenuirostris (top right). are scrambling up a rock for a take-off into the wind. Photo by P. Adam-Smith.

Dominic Serventy's patient observations (right) have rewarded him with many of the secrets of the short-tailed shearwaters in the Furneaux Islands. Photo by P. Adam-Smith.

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 47 they have not needed to eke out an existence by part-time work at sea on fishing boats.

Few of the older Straitsmen have not been down to the sea in ships. " It's island life," Bill Riddle says. "If you're a Straitsman you're a sailor, a fisherman, a shearer, a farmer, a birder, the lot. It's life." Not many of today's-or yesterday's-Straitsmen made money, but they did live a full life. Today, the descendants of families who have been on the islands for generations still do all the things, all the trades, that Bill Riddle did as a boy.

Crayfish, Jasus /alandii; edible shark; barracouta or snoek as it is also known, Leionura atun; and the Australian salmon, Arripis trutta, are the four most commercially important 'fish' in the seas around the Furneaux. Most of the fishing is done within sight of the islands, rarely more than 24-32 km from the home port. Crayfish, known in other countries as spiny lobster, is a major export­ earner. The tails, deep frozen, are exported, mainly to the USA, and the meat from the legs and carapace is picked out and frozen for sale to restaurants for seafood cocktail and crayfish mornay. The cost of fish can be as high as a man's life, and nowhere on are men, and their women, as aware of this fact than here where they see ships go out that never return.

King Island, standing sentinel at the western entrance to the Straits, is different from the Furneaux in almost every way. A flat island, 60 km long from north to south, 20 km broad, its settlers are engaged in dairying, pastoral pursuits and at the scheelite mine. Its assumed rainfall of 33 inches (84 cm) and temperate climate deny dry periods, but the winds sweeping in uninterrupted from 20,000 km away is said by locals "to blow the horns off a bull". Until recent years Currie has been the main 'safe' harbour if any can be called safe on this island that has been known for over a century as 'The Marine Graveyard'.

Of the five inhabited islands in the Straits only three have sizeable populations­ Flinders, Cape Barren and King Islands. boasts a 'health retreat', and a married couple run stock on Three Hummocks in the Hunter Group.

Whereas the early sealers were called the Banditti of the Straits, today's settlers are the Toilers of the Straits. Transport, distance and the hard life imposed by island living have put a stamp on them: in some respects their bravery, stoicism and disregard of the danger that is rarely absent in their dealings with the The sea has much to say in the everyday life of They that go down to the sea in ships, that do elements make them kin to the Shetland the 'Toilers of the Straits'. The high rise and fall of business in great waters, these see the works Islanders, the men of Arran or the women of tides, as noticed also by Matthew Flinders, leaves the Orkneys. ships high and dry at , Flinders Island of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. (top). For some islanders, the only transport from Psalm 107:23-24 their homes is by small ships (above). Photos by The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters P. Adam-Smith. Few of the farmers who took up land after Of the petrel and the porpoise. In the end the Second World War go down to the sea. is my beginning. The scheme that opened up tracts of land for T. S. Eliot farming attracted men who wanted to farm and who needed land. A good proportion of these FURTHER READING new settlers succeeded and have become an Adam-Smith, P. 1964. There Was a Ship. enduring part of the population of the Rigby, Adelaide. Furneaux Group, but, mainly because their 1 965. Moonbird People. Rigby, farms were of the size and had the facilities to Adelaide. make them a viable economic proposition, --1976. Trader to the Islands. Seal Books.

48 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY A TALE OF TWO CONTINENTS

The present varied landscape of Tasmania gives evidence of the island's long and often turbulent geological history. Lin Sutherland, Curator of the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology at The Australian Museum, has had an absorbing interest in the since 1961 when he began studies at the University of Tasmania. During his employment at the Launceston and Hobart Museums and later at The Australian Museum he has concentrated his studies on volcanic rocks, with par­ ticular emphasis on fragments of high pressure rocks which were brought up by the lavas. These studies and that of co-workers are valuable contributions to the description by Lin Sutherland of the geological processes that have affected (and are still affecting) Tasmania.

This majestic erosion remnant, Mt. Pelion East Tasmania is geologically fascinating. For under gravity. Past winds have blown sands in Cradle Mountain Lake St. Clair National Park, its compact size, the island shows an extra­ into . Even extra-terrestrial impacts have owes its existence to resistant dolerite columns now ordinary variety of rocks and is a mini-treasure left their record. All these events have played left resting on . Photo by Chris Green. house of minerals. It is the end of the their part, sometimes many times, over the Australian continent, with only the lonely one thousand million years of Tasmania's and wastes yawn­ geological history. ing beyond. Its geology reflects past con­ nections with both eastern Australia and The geological structure of Tasmania may , producing a landscape of familiar, be simplified into two broad units. The older yet distinctive, form. Here we see Perrno­ basement rocks, marked by episodes of strata of strikingly similar age and type folding, intrusion of large masses and to those of the Sydney Basin, but disrupted mineralisation, are overlain and blanketed by a and overwhelmed by hard outcrops of younger cover of sedimentary rocks invaded dolerite, a feature found in Antarctica. by dolerite (a dark silica-poor igneous rock) The final fascination lies in the intervention of intrusions and covered by basaltic lavas. The Bass Strait. Here past fluctuations of seas marked contrast between the horizontal cover periodically exposed land bridges to the and the folded strata of the underlying base­ mainland and allowed animals to migrate ment rocks is seen in many geological sec­ before subsequent isolation by sea rises. tions through the island. Exposures of the basement rocks, mostly in western Tasmania, Tasmania's rocks, minerals, structures reveal ridges of hard rocks lying along the and fossils illustrate the contrasting geological directions. The drainage systems, etched by events that shaped it. Past sea floors, oceanic greater erosion into the softer flanks, cross the deeps, shorelines, rivers, , swamps and ridges through successions of spectacular delta systems have contributed a variety of gorges. In the cover rocks, mostly in central sediments and fossil remains. Volcanic erup­ and eastern Tasmania, resistant layers of tions in island chains or continental settings, dolerite and numerous block faults result in and intrusions of molten beneath the plateaus and scarps in a tiered landscape. surface have created a wide range of igneous rocks and structures. Mineralising fluids have The oldest basement rocks in Tasmania, a deposited -bodies in host rocks. Deforma­ core of metamorphosed rocks tions during the rigours of mountain building extending through the central western have imprinted folds and faults within rocks. regions, date back at least 800-900 million Shearing and recrystallisation under more years. They include , and extreme conditions of pressure and tempera­ phyllites (recrystallised and sheared sand­ ture have produced suites of metamorphosed stones and ) and some amphi· rocks. Burial has converted plant and animal bolites (recrystallised dolerites). Repeated remains into fossil fuels such as , oil and deformation and fracturing during earth gas. Uplifts and rifting have tilted and faulted movements have crumpled and squeezed the the terrain. Glaciers have scarred the land­ less massive schists and phyllites into intricate scape and dumped their debris. Groundwaters folds and crenulations. The highest grades of have leached and dissolved rocks leaving in­ occur in the central area soluble residues or of minerals in around , as a result of moun· soils and caves. Slopes have slid or crept tain building during the Frenchman .

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 49 Basaltic lavas pouring out from in the sea floors produced rounded pillow forms on contact with water. These lavas, beautifully exposed at City of Melbourne Bay, , are the source of worked for in nearby beach sands. Molten chambers formed below the large rifts. The rocks crystallised within them were later thrust upwards, altering into sepentinite and shearing into fibrous veins of . The rocks intro­ duced nickel and osmiridium, the latter being sought during a mining boom to supply nib tips for fountain pens from 1 91 0-1954.

Volcanic island chains in some of the troughs erupted silica-rich (rhyolitic) lavas, coarse explosive deposits and hot ash flows. Granite cores rose into these volcanic piles or in small isolated masses at Mt. Murchison, Mt. Darwin, Elliot Bay and around Dove River. Mineralising fluids invaded and altered the host Younger Precambrian strata, flanking the rocks, particularly along fault and shear zones, old core, were laid down between 570-800 so extensively that geologists have argued for million years ago on partly subsiding sea floors decades about the exact nature of the original sloping off the highlands. Quartzitic sand­ rocks. Massive sulphide ore bodies are mined stones and slaty mudstones dominate the suc­ as -lead around Rosebery and as cessions, but some basaltic volcanic rocks ores at Queenstown, originally being and calcium-magnesium carbonate rocks worked for gold in their ironstone gossan (dolomites) appear at the top. The oldest cappings. Mt. Lyell struck a timely silver ore fossils found in Tasmania are preserved in the bonanza in its early development and, like the dolomites as algal colonies called stroma­ Rosebery working, produces gold and silver tolites. Most exposures are seen in north­ as by-products. Elsewhere, numerous small western Tasmania, where beds accumulated deposits of iron, copper, lead, zinc and barium to 11 ,OOO metres in thickness before being ores are found in the Cambrian rocks. deformed by mountain building during the Orogeny. The oldest in More placid conditions returned to Tasmania, about 750 million years old, along Tasmania during much of the Palaeozoic era western King Island, have been affected by through the , and early these movements. Swarms of dolerite dykes, periods, between 380-500 million injected into northwestern Tasmania during the years ago. During the Ordovician, earth Cradle Mountain itself (top) is a dolerite -an folding, are dated around 720 million years. movements had largely ceased, and the igneous intrusion of columnar dolerite-perched The movements were sufficiently strong to uplifted highlands were being rapidly eroded. upon sedimentary rocks and folded metamorphics. overturn the folds or break them along thrust Debris, spreading down scarps into the old in the foreground lies in the, meta­ morphics basement. Photo by Bruce Jeflkins. faults in a number of places and intense rifts and shallow seas in large alluvial fans, enough to metamorphose the rocks into quart­ formed , siliceous conglomerates and Periods of crustal upheavals-mountain build­ zite, schists, phyllites and along a . As the land eroded further and ing-with the intervention of molten igneous rock narrow belt extending northeasterly through became submerged, the supply of detritus from deep within the Earth resulted in repeated the Pieman and Arthur Rivers. This belt con­ dwindled until shales, and finally carbonate deformation and fracturing in the rocks. Illustrated tains the large iron ore body at Savage River, muds and skeletal deposits of shelly fossils, (above) is a pattern formed on a small scale by the ore being mined and pumped as a slurry accumulated in extensive tidal flats and shoals several episodes of folding in metamorphic rocks in through a pipeline over 85 km of rugged ter­ to form widespread . Fossils in South-west Tasmania. The white bands represent rain to Port Latta. The estimated reserves of these beds include sponges, polyzoa, large thin layers of more solid rock (recrystal­ lised sandstone) in the more easily deformed ore approach 1 00 million tonnes. coral colonies (but no reefs), , phyllite rock (sheared ). Drawing by Gill gastropods, pelecypods, trilobites, ostracods, Brady/The Australian Museum. Geological events in Tasmania became sea lilies, echinoderms, annelid worms and more varied in the Cambrian period, between algae. They reflect abundant life in warm 500-570 million years ago. Extension of the shallow waters. The limestones are quarried continental area caused rifting and developed for manufacture of cement, paper and troughs which deepened into actively sub­ agricultural lime. Cavern systems within them siding oceanic floors. The main trough passed contain many beautiful displays of cave forma­ through the Dundas region, west Tasmania, tions and are open to tourists around Mole with subsidiary troughs passing through Creek and Gunns Plains. Adamsfield, south Tasmania, and Dial Range, Fossey Mountain, Smithton and east King Rhythmic sedimentation formed sand­ Island in north-west Tasmania. The typical stones and shales during the Silurian-early sedimentary rocks of these troughs are slaty Devonian periods, but some was mudstones, alternating with sand­ deposited at a late stage at . stones and breccias, derived from oceanic Fossils again indicate shallow waters teeming muds interspersed with coarser debris with life. In contrast, the contemporaneous brought in by underwater landslides. In some sedimentary beds of north-east Tasmania are places the avalanches eroded and re­ typically mudstones with sparse graptolite deposited earlier Cambrian sediments, ex­ fossils and sandstones with transported posed by active uplifts along trough margins. material containing poorly preserved Fossils appear mostly as impressions of fragments of stunted corals, polyzoa, trilobites (extinct marine arthropods) brachiopods, sea lilies and primitive plants. associated with some primative This sharp change is attributed to later shells and floating colonial organisms. sideways movement along a fundamental fault 50 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY under the Tamar Valley, which brought the deeper water beds from the Victorian region SOME TASMANIAN FOSSILS against the shallow water beds of the Tas­ manian margin.

Such movements were part of the last great episode of mountain building in Tasmania 2 which warped and broke the rocks about 380 million years ago during the Tabberabberan Orogeny of eastern Australia. With uplift and final release of pressure, molten granite rose up to form large intrusive masses within the basement rocks.

The granite rose in several pulses over about 1 5 million years, mainly concentrating in 135 northeastern, northwestern and western Tasmania. Gravity measurements over some of the masses show that they may extend Jurassic down 1 2 km to their original zones of melting in the lower crust. The molten granites 185 probably came in at temperatures around 750-800 °C, baking and mineralising the country rocks along their contacts. The granite Triassic has been used as a building and monumental­ stone, with the attractive red variety at Coles 225 Bay producing 2000 cubic metres of rock. Important lodes include the famous Mt. f Bischoff deposit, discovered in 1877 by the ') 275 perseverance of 'Philosopher' Smith. It became the single largest tin mine then known in the world. Huge reserves of tin ore are now mined in large operations at and ------~-~--·~_- _c_a_rb_o_n_if_e_r_;_~-~- Cleveland, but the ore is scattered in sulphides making its recovery difficult. Tin and veins are mined at Storys Creek and Rossarden. Scheelite ore is mined for h Devonian tungsten from replacement zones near a 400 granite contact at Grassy, King Island.

Some of the lead and zinc deposits in Silurian Tasmania are zoned around granite bodies. The most celebrated are the and 440 Dundas fields west of the Heemskirk granite. They produced over 5 million tonnes of silver­ Ordovician bearing , with the Dundas ores com­ monly showing higher zinc. Some of the lead 500 mines reached abnormally high silver con­ tents, up to 70 ounces per tonne, and pro­ duced 30,000 fine ounces during the life of Cambrian the field. The boom, starting in 1887, collapsed soon after the turn of the century 570 when lodes proved fickle at depth. Some lead m millions of years deposits at Dundas developed splendid crystallisations of orange-red and the yellow-chrome variety of cerussite. They Pre Cambrian are regarded as the finest occurrences of two of the most beautifully crystallised minerals known and are greatly prized by mineral Superimposed upon a geological lime scale are g. Psychroptilus burrettae, early ; Hellyer collectors. illustrations of several fossils found in Tasmania. River, NW Tas. ; wing span approx. 5 mm . Numbers given in the right-hand column are millions h. Notoconchidium tasmaniensis, internal impres­ Gold was discovered in Tasmania near of years before the present time. Drawings by S. sion of brachiopod shell; Wynyard, NW Tas.; Fingal in 1852, and the early gold rush quickly Robinson/The Australian Museum. width approx. 2 cm. proved associations of alluvial deposits with a. Zaglossus robustus , extinct spiny anteater; i. Lecanospira tasmaniensis. planispiral Montagu, NW Tas.; height approx. 20 cm. gastropod; Ju nee, SW Tas.; height of specimen quartz reefs. The lode at Beaconsfield pro­ b. Wynyardia bassiana, early marsupial skull; approx. 3 cm . duced 854,000 ounces of gold between Wynyard, NW Tas.; length approx. 1 O cm. j. Favosites marginatus, coral cross-section; 1877 and 1914. Thirty reefs around Lefroy c. Eucrasatella memanae, pelecypod valve; Liena, NW Tas.; diameter approx. 3 cm. gave 172,000 ounces, but gold grades Memana, Flinders Is. ; height approx. 6 cm. k. Ptychagnostus buckleyi, blind trilobite; declined quickly at depth. The northeastern d. Dicroidium, seed fern frond; SE Tas.; length Christmas Hills. NW Tas.; length approx. 9 mm. lodes yielded 527,000 fine ounces, with approx. 13 cm. I. Dendograptus, dendroid colony; Huskisson nearly half coming from the Golden Gate Mine e. , leaf; Henly River, W River, W Tas.; width approx. 2 cm. Tas.; length approx. 12 cm. at Mathinna. m. Baica/ia, algal colony; Trowatta, NW f. Grantonia hobartens/s, brachiopod shell; Tas.; height of specimen approx. 15 cm. Granton, Hobart, SE Tas. ; width approx. 5 cm. The chapter on the folded basement rocks came to a close as ice-sheets formed in the late -early Permian periods, be- AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY 51 tween 280-300 million years ago. The mov­ ing, melting ice deposited the first of the overlying cover rocks on the old worn surface. Coarse debris, dropped into the sea by glaciers, was deposited in layers with fine clays. Glacial beds up to 600 m thick, be­ tween Wynyard and Hellyer River, contain occasional fossils, including one of the oldest known in the and tracks of crustaceans. Deposition of sediments continued through the Permian period in seas, estuaries and coastal water­ ways intermingled with some fall-out from melting icebergs and distant volcanoes. Some of the mudstones, limestones and sandstones are rich in marine fossils such as brachiopods, polyzoa, pelecypods, gastropods and sea lilies, and others are freshwater deposits with plant fossils. Coal measures and oil shales have been mined. The shales were inter­ mittently worked by several companies be­ tween 1910 and 1934 to produce 360,000 gallons of oil.

Freshwater deposits characteristic of the Triassic sections of the cover beds consist of sandstones, shales, clay pellet con­ glomerates, feldspathic sandstones containing volcanic material and coal seams. Plants are common fossils, but in some places amphi­ bian, and fish remains have been found. An important fossil site at Old Beach near Hobart has allowed palaeontologists to reconstruct details of an animal and plant community. The massive sandstones provided building stone for historic buildings and bridges, but are J10W often used as decorative stone. The coal measures are the most exten­ sive workings for Tasmanian coal mines, and have yielded over 9 million tonnes of bituminous coal.

The fossil and floras in the pre­ Jurassic cover beds of Tasmania show links with continents now widely separated. They assist in reassembling the old shape of the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, then com­ prising , Antarctica, , India and South America.

Dramatic dolerite invasions broke through rifts as Gondwanaland started to break up in the Jurassic period. A stupendous volume of molten rock was generated under Tasmania and eastern Antarctica. Five thousand cubic kilometres of melt rose into Tasmania between 165-1 70 million years ago with several pulses from many different feeders spreading trans­ gressively through the cover rocks as sills and dykes. The chilled base of a dolerite sill, cap­ ping Triassic beds, can be seen on the Pinnacle Road to Mount Wellington. Gravity measurements have located the exact posi­ tions of many of the underlying feeders for the The world's finest specimens of the rare lead dense dolerite and these show a high con­ chromate mineral crocoite are from Dundas, centration throughout the Hobart district. Tasmania. The bright red crystals of crocoite (top) grew from the interaction of mine solutions con­ Some sills reach over 450 m in thickness and taining lead with from associated needed 100,000 years to cool down from rocks. Photo by Greg Millen/The Aus­ 11 ,000°c to 200° c when cooling joints tralian Museum. would appear in the solidifying rock. A period of erosion followed for 30 million years, eating This lunar-like landscape (above) includes Mt away the Jurassic land surface. The resistance Lyell and the mine workings near Queenstown, of the solid dolerite to erosion commonly W Tasmania. In addition to the direct results of leaves it capping high areas and also makes opencut mining on the terrain, the roasting of to release valuable metals yields sulphuric acid it very suitable to quarry for road me.tal fumes that have denuded this area of . and aggregate. Photo by Robert Jones/The Australian Museum. Continued on page 5 7

52 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY GEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OF TASMANIA An Illustrated Summary in Colour by Lin Sutherland and Sally Robinson The Australian Museum, Sydney Prepared in conjunction with Australian Natural History Special issue on Tasmania, March-April 1980

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Block stream of dolerite fragments, Contents Include: Mt Wellington. Photo, J.l. Davies Geological Landscape Map Sections through the Island Metallic Mineral Areas Fossi I Fuel Sites Structures of the Island, Bass St. Underlying Crust & Mantle 144°E 145°E 146°E 147°E 148°E

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SOUTHERN OCEAN FOSSIL AND HYDROCARBONS ecoal -tc * Gas&Oil

Geological comp,la11on by F.L. Suthe rland lrom "Geology of Tasmania, 1962, "Atlas of Tasmania. 1965. 'Geology and Mineral Resour ces of Tasmania; 1967 and ta1er sources. An Design by S. Robmson

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FLINDERS IS I KING IS GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES IN TASMANIA • •

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Top Par t of Oce an Crus t Continued from page 52 In the Cretaceous period, significant events affected the margins of Tasmania, but were limited inland. Major rifts formed deep troughs in the Bass Basin structure, which filled with over 1 200 m thickness of sediments. Much of the sediment contains volcanic fragments which seem to come from voluminous volcanism concentrated near the Otway and Gippsland regions, north in Vic­ toria. Minor results of this activity were the for­ mation of small intrusions of , diorite and possibly granite around Cygnet, Cape Portland and western Tasmania. These date around 1 00-1 40 million years and are asso­ ciated with swarms of dykes. The eastern margin of Tasmania formed by rifting. From here, sea-floor spreading created new as the opened separating from Tasmania between 85-60 million years ago.

Rifting extended further into Tasmania by the Tertiary period. It formed the western margin of the island along the great split which started to separate Australia from Antarctica about 50 million years ago. From this, sea­ steam explosions formed excellent examples These shells on an ancient seashore-the floor spreading gradually opened up the of pillow lavas, pillow breccias and water-laid Permian strata of Maria Island-include primarily the present Southern Ocean. This oceanic crust luffs, typical of emerging volcanoes. Fossil clam Eurydesma and a few extinct brachiopods was sampled off Tasmania in 1973, during the forests were overwhelmed by volcanic fall-out (left). Photo by Alex Ritchie/The Australian Museum. global Deep Sea Drilling Project at Site 282, at at Macquarie Plains. A spring deposit, overrun a depth around 4000 metres. It is composed by lava about 25 million years ago at Geilston The tarns and U-shaped valleys (above) in Mt of basalt lavas with pillow structures formed by Bay, Hobart, preserved the oldest fossil mar­ Fields National Park indicate that this was a site of a chilling on the sea-floor. On land, the rifting supial remains yet recovered from Australia. former glacier. Photo by Anthony Friend. uplifted plateaus and reactivated many earlier The Tasmanian volcanoes brought up many fault systems. The cracking under tension fragments of deep, high pressure rocks imposed strong cross joints expressed as broken off by the ascending lava. These give columnar organ pipes in the dolerites and clues to the lower regions under Tasmania. blocky cliffs, and tessellated pavements in the sedimentary strata; all seen to great effect The river systems in Tasmania were estab­ manian highlands and resulted from strong around Tasman Peninsula. Fault troughs lished by the end of the Tertiary, after some periglacial frost action. A circular formed through Bass Basin, Tamar Valley, diversions of their courses by the lava outpour­ discovered recently near Mt. Darwin is not a Midlands, Boobyalla, Macquarie Harbour and ings. Buried courses, known as deep , glacial feature, but is believed to be a Derwent Valley and accumulated sediments have been mined in some areas for heavy meteorite crater. The impact of this about washed in by ancestral river systems. Leaves metals. These and superficial alluvials are im­ 710,000 years ago fused the country rocks and wood are typical fossil remains in these portant sources of gold and tin, particularly in into spatter called . sediments, and mussel shells appear in the northeastern Tasmania which has provided Tamar beds. Oil and gas prospects are found 250,000 ounces of gold from around Lisle Tasmania's size waxed and waned as sea­ in Bass Basin beds, but so far no commercial and 30% of the State's total lode and alluvial levels fluctuated between glacials and inter­ deposits have been tapped. tin. Gemstones recovered from alluvials in­ glacials. Seas dropped as much as 135- clude quartz varieties, topaz derived from 180 m below present levels during glacials as Seas transgressed Bass Basin and granites and sapphire and probably the polar ice caps expanded. Retreats of Bass northern coasts of Tasmania during mid­ released from basalts. Strait linked Tasmania to through the Tertiary times. Their deposits contain fossils of present northeastern islands. This assisted tropical shells, relatives of those now found Glacial cycles dominated the Tasmanian migration of animals from the mainland. Fossil much further north. These fossils are easily scene during the Quaternary period over the remains of large Pleistocene marsupials, such seen at Fossil Bluff, Wynyard, a site also noted last 1 -2 million years. There is evidence for as diprotodonts, giant kangaroos, giant spiny for chance discoveries of fossil whales and the three stages of Pleistocene glaciation. The anteaters and marsupial lions, all now extinct, transported remains of an early fossil mar­ first began over 26,000 years ago; the have been found in swamp and cave deposits supial. A late Tertiary undersea graveyard con­ second, around 14,000 years ago, was the dating back between 8,000-54,000 years. ' taining fossilised bones of several members of most extensive, when icefields and glaciers Recent archaeological excavations show that the whale family and teeth of extinct sharks is covered large areas, particularly in the central Aborigines occupied a cave on an exciting recent find, being dredged by and western highlands. The last glaciation 24,000 years ago and must have migrated scientists 3 km off SE Flinders Island. between 7,500-10,000 years ago left many down the land link prior to this. The Tasmanian prominent features. Cirques, moraines and Aborigines worked stone extensively for tools, Between 15-40 million years ago, Tertiary lakes provide some of the most imposing and well over a hundred and fifty quarry sites basalt lavas erupted from many of the struc­ scenery. The lake country of Tasmania, with have been identified. tural weaknesses in Tasmania, being _par­ over 4,000 lakes, is unique in Australia and is ticularly voluminous over the large Bass Basin a legacy cut by a 200 metres thickness of ice Sea-level rises periodically severed structure. Over 220 vents have been located, on the Central Plateau. Splendid views of Tasmania from the mainland during inter­ mainly as eroded cones and plugs. Some glacial landforms can be seen from many glacials, isolating the animal populations. Old volcanoes collapsed back into their vents; one tourist parks and reserves such as Cradle sea caves, shell beds and beach deposits , can be visited at Sandy Bay in Hobart itself. Mountain, Lake St. Clair and Mt. Field. The have been found at various levels up to 45 m j Volcanic 'bombs' can be seen in vent deposits Henty Geological Reserve near Queenstown above present sea level. Tasmania assumed l in a tourist feature at Margate. Where vents features erratic boulders brought down by the its familiar form about 6000 years ago when erupted into seas, or into river valleys dammed ice. Block streams, or rock rivers, form post-glacial seas rose to their present level, I by earlier lava flows, chilling with water or another conspicuous feature around Tas- partly submerging valleys and producing a : VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 57 '. The development of drainage in relation to coastlines, and geological events that have WARM COLD modified river courses during the Cainozoic era HIGH SEAS LOW SEAS (Tertiary and Quaternary) is pictured (left). Drafting and artwork by G. A. Brady and S. Robinson/The Australian Museum. Fossil foram drawing from P. J. ~ Quilty; volcanic bomb and perched erratic based on University of Tasmania Geology Department infor­ Fossil forom - an mation brochures. important microscopic protozoan animal Evidence of fairly recent earth movements can from tropicol be seen along the Fault at the southern Tertiary seas end of , SW Tasmania (bottom left). Photo by Sally Robinson/The Australian Museum.

cross - section of Sherbornina alkinsoni ( x40) drowned coastline. Beach ridge and systems wreathe this new coast around sand traps. The predominant southwesterly wave attack has tended over time to concentrate sands with the greatest proportion of towards the northeastern coasts.

In final reflection, Tasmania blends both broad and local geological events to give diverse scenic charm. This partly independent behaviour continues. The island is drifting slowly northwards tagging behind Australia as the Southern Ocean continues opening by 7-8 cm per year. However, recent .studies of coastal deposits suggest that since the last interglacial, the island has been behaving abnormally, slowly rising and tilting up to the north east. Whether this is a prelude to further rifting or volcanism, only time will tell. FURTHER READING Banks, M. R. 1965. Geology and mineral deposits. In Atlas of Tasmania. Lands and Volcanic bomb Survey Department, Hobart. formed by ro tation -- 1978. Foundations of our scenery. The Perched erratic of molten lava geology and landforms of Tasmania. left by melting flung from vent Teacher's guide and 13 wallets of slides Pleistocene glacier of Tertiary and regional notes. Tasmania Media HENTY RESERVE MAR GATE GEOLOGICAL SITE Centre, Education Department, Hobart. Blainey, G. 1954. . Mel­ bourne University Press. GLACIERS 0 100 km VOLCANOES Davies, J. L. 1967. Tasmanian landforms and gob Quaternary climates. In Landform studies from Australia and New Guinea. ANU Press, Canberra. Derbyshire, E., M. R. Banks and J. L. Davies. 1 965 . Glacial Map of Tasmania. Royal Soc. Tasm. Pub/., No. 2. Jennings, I. B., A. J. Noldart and E. Williams. 1967. Geology and mineral resources of Tasmania. Geol. Surv. Tas. Bull. 50. Johnston, R. M. 1888. Systematic account of the geology of Tasmania. Govt Printer, Hobart. Royal Society of Tasmania. 1977. Landscape and man. A symposium published Hobart. Spry, A. H. and M. R. Banks (eds.). 1962. The geology of Tasmania. J. Geol. Soc. Aust. 9, 2. Tasmanian Department of Mines. 1969. Cata­ logue of the minerals of Tasmania. Geol. Surv. Ree. 9. Williams, E., M. Solomon and G. R. Green. 1976 . The geological setting of metalli­ ferous ore deposits in Tasmania. In C. L. Knight (ed .) Econom ic geology of Aus­ tralia and New Guinea-1 , Metals, 56 7 -581 . Australas. Inst. Min. Metal/. Monograph 5. 58 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL H ISTORY LIFE WHERE WATERS MEET As Tasmania is completely surrounded by oceanic waters, marine organisms repre­ sent a significant, and interesting, portion of this state's . Alan Dartnall, now a freelance zoologist and designer in Townsville, became interested in the role of hydrodynamics in the distributions of aquatic animals while at the University of Tasmania. In this article he takes us behind the scenes of a scientific investigation of Tasmania's marine environment that attempts to contribute to the rationalisation of Australia's marine biogeographical units, and to unravel the complex mechanisms that by Alan Dartnall control the distributions of some of their organisms.

The island of Tasmania lies at a meeting As we move southwards across the place of oceanic waters. Along its southern Queensland border, the marine scene begins and western coasts a rugged coastline has to change. Mangroves are still present but the been sculpted by great waves driven by the great coral associations have disappeared, wind engine of the West Wind Drift. This and different animals appear on the shores. On water is cold and originates in the sur­ reaching Wilson's Promontory in Victoria we face subantarctic waters south of the Sub­ observe that the coastal scenery is much more tropical Convergence. rugged than in the far north and that large brown seaweeds are visible at low tidal levels Further north, eddies peel off the East on the open coasts. Mangroves at this latitude Australian Current during summer and send are no more than a curiosity, restricted to pro­ warmer water south along the east coast of the tected backwaters of Port Philip Bay. continent keeping the eastern Tasmanian waters about 2 °C warmer than those of the A short hop across Bass Strait lands us on west coast. a shore with a mixed fauna containing animals characteristic of the shores of southern Bass Strait, a shallow link with continental Australia and of southern coasts. Sea stars are Australia guarded at each end by islands, is an more abundant here than in the far north area of complex currents and mixed waters. where corals, sea urchins and sea cucumbers The Strait receives subantarctic water, water predominate. which may originate in the gulfs of and cold fresh water from the rivers Striding southwards along the east coast of northern Tasmania. In summer water from of Tasmania two features are noticeable. the East Australian Current moves westwards Firstly, a nearly continuous band of great through the Strait. brown algae can be seen washing back and forth in the waves at low tide level. Secondly, a Water movements around Tasmania are band of bright orange lichen colours the rocks not yet well known. Recent work by CSIRO above the high tide mark. This band of lichen is Division of Fisheries and Oceanography in­ rarely seen on the coast of continental Aus­ volved tracking free-floating buoys by satellite. tralia and is so characteristic that a marine Maps of the buoys' tracks have shown that biologist lost on the coasts of Australia could A world of its own, the waters along the eddies from the complex water masses of the deduce his position to 3 ° of latitude with coastline of Tasmania support an interesting array of East Australian Current follow irregular pat­ some confidence. marine life. The rocky shores present a vertical terns and may persist for periods longer than a sequence of organisms which can be read like an open textbook, telling a story of the struggle for sur­ year. Other work has postulated that changes A further step southward takes us to the vival of marine animals and plants against a complex in the patterns of marine climates may fluc­ southernmost tip of Tasmania. We pass along of environmental factors. Dark lichen bands can be tuate around oscillations of about two years, an extremely rugged coastline punctuated by . seen in this shot of the coast of Isles de Phoques, and longer term trends have also been the southward pointing fingers of the Freycinet lying south of the entrance to . detected. It is apparent that the patterns and and Tasman Peninsulas and split by the river Photo by A. J. Dartnall. trends of water movement around Tasmania valleys of the Derwent and Huon. As we await further research effort. walked south we will have observed that the proportion of beaches along the coastline What is clear, however, is that Tasmanian decreases until in the far south less than 1 0% waters are colder than most around the rest of of the coast consists of sand beaches. Australia. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the animals and plants that live around the Our journey over, we are now able to coasts of Tasmania often are different from examine the marine environment of Tasmania northern species. more closely. On rocky shores the plants and animals are distributed in horizontal bands or Perhaps this is best observed by taking a zones. Surveys around the coasts by Dr E. R. scientific walk along the east coast of Guiler of the University of Tasmania, Miss Australia. If we start at Cape York and walk E. C. Pope of The Australian Museum and southwards, the of the Great Barrier Miss I. Bennett of the University of Sydney Reef lies on the left hand. The waters are have provided a picture of the zonation of the shallow and warm and support a rich marine organisms of Tasmanian rocky shores that has life characterised by a great development of enabled comparison with shores throughout corals. The shore lines are mostly sand and Australia and the rest of the world. mud, and estuaries and coastline are bordered by mangrove forests. The broad picture of Tasmanian littoral

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 59 zonation may be summarised as consisting of four main horizontal bands. Each band contains a characteristic suite of animals and plants.

At high levels of the shore which are only rarely covered with sea water, lichens pre­ dominate. The orange lichen mentioned earlier is the highest in the marine series. A sooty black growth follows and then more lichens among which are found two species of small grey winkles, Littorina unifasciata and L. praetermissa.

Below the level of lichens and winkles a zone inhabited by barnacles and limpets is found. Two barnacles, Chamaesipho columna and Chthama/us antennatus, are characteristic of this zone, and they occupy much the same . :·:. . .. level on Tasmanian shores as they do on the ~ . ... ~ - - mainland. The limpets, Cel/ana solida and .. ...~ .. - . , Patelloida /atistrigata Jatistrigata are also found in this zone. They are accompanied by species of Siphonaria which are limpet-shaped pulmonate snails.

T awards the lower shore a weed mat occurs. The mat consists of species of Corallina and occupies the place on the shore which on the mainland is filled with dense growths of encrusting tube worms.

At the lowest levels of the shore, large brown seaweeds are a conspicuous feature. The kelp Durvil/ea potatorum is characteristic of the western and eastern coasts while species of Cystophora are dominant on the north coast bordering Bass Strait.

Broad geographical differences in the species composition of zoning organisms are also found at the other levels of the shore described above. For example, among the pulmonate limpets of the upper mid-tidal zone Siphonaria diemensis is found all round the Tasmanian coastline. In all areas except on the north coast it is accompanied by S. tasmanica. Three species are found on the rocky shores of the east coast where the previous two species are joined by S. funiculata. A different distributional phenomenon is seen among the barnacles of the same zone. Their numbers become ·fewer as one proceeds southwards and Chthama/us antennatus disappears altogether in southern Tasmania.

Other differences in zonation pattern may be caused by aspect, exposure and the slope of the shore. Wherever there are flat or gently sloping surfaces at the upper mid-tidal level and the wave action is not too extreme, con­ spicuous mats of mussels, Brachiodontes rostratus, occur. A bright orange lichen (top) colours the rocks above the high tide mark at The Gulch, Bicheno, on The sandy shores of Tasmania have not the east coast of Tasmania. This lichen is charac­ been studied in detail. We do know that surf­ teristic not only of a level on the shore but also of a beaten beaches support a very characteristic quite specific latitude along the coast of Australia. fauna including small crustaceans (often species of amphipods, Exoediceros spp.) and A small section of the mid-tidal level (above) on small bivalve molluscs, Donacilla angusta. the shores at , halfway between the Forestier and Tasman Peninsulas, exhibits a These animals are speedy burrowers and are portion of Tasmania's marine biota. Limpets, adapted to regain position where surf waves Siphonaria, are numerous along the rock platform, are continually washing them from their while clumps of seaweed, Corallina (here bleached habitat. Their success may be gauged from white); a purple sea anemone, Actinia tenebrosa; the fact that sampling surf swash with a dip net and several chitons are found within the pot hole. often produces hundreds of specimens. There Photos by A. J. Dartnall. are obvious difficulties to working on such high

60 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY energy beaches, and Tasmanian sand faunas possible to sample the shore and offshore remain a fruitful area for research. waters within a reasonably short period. A number of recent investigations have been Sheltered shores along Bass Strait, the carried out in this manner. Dr R. King, then of embayments of the southeast and the en­ the , studied the closed waters of and Macquarie distribution of intertidal zone-forming algae Harbour on the west coast trap and hold fine along the east coast of Tasmania. His results sed1ments. Apart frcm their characteristic did not support the idea that the marine fauna fauna of burrowing invertebrates these areas and flora of Tasmania were sufficiently distinct are often the places where the greatest to warrant the preservation of the Maugean The Maugean marine province (shaded, below) provincial unit. It appeared that as one encompasses Tasmania and sends tentacles of growth of sea grasses, Zostera mue/leri and faunal similarity into southern and southeastern Z. tasmanica, occurs. These beds provide a traversed southward the algal flora gradually Australia, overlapping the zones of warmer waters. sheltered habitat for many invertebrates and became depauperate, and species with cooler The provincial name is derived from that of Mauge fishes, and the production from sea grass water affinities became more apparent. Also, who was surgeon to Baudin's expedition to Tas­ beds is important in the ecology of much of the the distribution patterns of algae did not show mania in 1802. He died on 21 April of that year dur­ nearshore fauna. Estuarine and bay flats are any changes that could not be explained by ing the expedition and was buried on Maria Island. also important because they provide much of reasons other than discontinuity of habitat. the food of wading birds such as the curlew Dimorphostylis subacu/eata var. praecox Most of the work upon which the concept (bottom) is one of the cumacean crustaceans of sandpiper and the red-necked stint. Tasmanian sublittoral sands. Note the enlarged of the Maugean province rests has been head and thorax and the elongate tail terminating in a Biogeographers are interested in the dis­ based on intertidal investigations. Behind all telson and a pair of uropods (only one is shown in tributions of living things and attempt to find the ideas about the presence or absence of this lateral view). The rear four pairs of walking legs out reasons for the similarities or differences biogeographic marine zones lies the assump­ are shorter than the first pair that are used to between the faunas and floras of different tion that large-scale mechanisms exist which manipulate food. The long second antennae are areas. They are also interested in the control the distributions of animals in the sea. characteristic of the males of most cumaceans and mechanisms which favour the presence of one Such mechanisms might be temperature, are often carried tucked under the edge of the species in an area and not in another and in the salinity, water movements, the patterns of carapace and tail. Drawings by A. J . Dartnall. origins of species and associations of species prevailing global winds or combinations of all through time and space. of these-in short, marine . Com­ binations of factors are more likely to control In the early years of this century, workers the distributions of organisms than single mapped the distributions of the animals that factors, and these are particularly diffi­ they had collected and described, and com­ cult to investigate. Thus biologists look for pared the composition and distributions of the recurring species or associations of species fauna of one area with another. In Australia a to identify regions and systems that contain number of marine biogeographic areas were such complexes. drawn up from the distributional melting pot. The marine fauna of southeastern Tasmania An important next step would be an in­ was contained in a unit called the Maugean vestigation of a group of offshore animals to province, whereas the Peronian and Flinder­ find out whether their distributions are con­ sian provinces identified fauna! units with tinuous or discontinuous and if the latter, southeastern and southern mainland Australian whether they match any other distributional distributions, respectively. Not all scientists scheme. The group chosen for investigation and naturalists agreed with this interpretation by the present author was a small order of and many workers to this day split the marine crustaceans called the Cumacea. Cumaceans fauna and into two com­ ponents; a northern tropical one and a southern temperate component. Any further Tasmanian distinctiveness, it was argued, was in fact an expression of the alteration of a northern fauna at the southern limits of its temperate range. Later, I. Bennett and E. C. Pope pointed \ out that workers had ignored the presence of \ the cold-loving giant kelps on open Victorian \ coasts. It was also quite obvious that the Tasmanian intertidal areas contained animals and plants whose distributions extended beyond the island into the warmer climes of . In other words, the distribu­ _--~ tions of cold-loving marine organisms from . . .: ::·.· ------Tasmania overlapped those of warmer waters. Thus the old Maugean marine zone, once restricted to southeastern Tasmania, grew to encompass the remainder of the Tasmanian coast and extended its tentacles into New South Wales and along the south coast of Australia at least as far west as the gulfs of South Australia. There was strong evidence for this scheme because the distributions of crabs, molluscs and echinoderms, among others, seemed to support it.

The eastern Tasmanian coastline is ideal for a study of distributions along a transect. Given co-operation from the weather, it is 61 VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 rarely exceed 1 5 mm in length and are of distinctive shape-with an enlarged head and thorax and an elongated tail. Apart from a few carnivorous species, cumaceans are either filter-feeders or deposit-feeders. The cumaceans of shallow water sands found dur­ ing this study were mostly deposit-feeders.

One would expect that if the distributions of cumaceans paralleled those of the littoral algae then the number of species would gradually decline from north to south. This did occur in spite of the fact that as northern species dropped out southern species entered the samples. However, when neigh­ bouring stations were compared with each other a different picture emerged. Although most stations were similar to each other, other stations were distinctively different. The discontinuities discovered occurred close to the latitude of Maria Island and from the tip of the Tasman Peninsula southward. The numbers of species of cumaceans (above left) that live in shallow water offshore sands along It is suggested that the discontinuities in the east coast of Tasmania and their 'distinc­ cumacean species distribution reflect the tiveness' (above) are illustrated. Note that the effects of a major mechanism-the wave number of species grows fewer as one progresses energy regimes which affect Tasmania. Re­ southward and that, with respect to species com­ cent work has identified a number of wave position, neighbouring sampling stations are most distinctive at the level of Maria Island and southward energy regimes around the island. Each from the Tasman Peninsula. A 0% distinctiveness regime is controlled by the distribution of indicates that stations are similar to each other. predominant winds which in turn affect the Diagrams by A. J. Dartnall. distribution of oceanic waters. The picture is complicated because land modifies the flowing Recent research indicates that there are seven patterns of oceanic water, and major gyres wave energy regimes (centre left) around the coast (rotating water masses) may spin off eddies of of Tasmania. It is proposed that each of these water of one set of characteristics into water coastal energy compartments are also ecological units upon which we should base future investiga­ of different characteristics. It appears that the tions and management schemes for the marine en­ distribution of cumaceans as well as possibly vironment. Diagram by A. J. Dartnall modified from other groups of Tasmanian marine animals may one produced by J. Davies. be controlled by such mechanisms as tem­ perature, salinity and nutrient property which One of man's main use of the sea is food pro­ are in turn controlled by wave energy regimes. duction, and Tasmanian waters are no exception. It is also probable that the dispersal of Principle items in the Tasmanian catch are abalone, hydrodynamic energy from each wave regime southern rock lobster, commercial scallop, Pacific oyster, mussels and fish. Potential resources are controls the composition of the sea bed and sea urchins, cockles, crabs and squid. Squid fishing thus the habitat where organisms live. The gear is pictured (below) with lines running from coastal and shallow water interface is one of inboard drums carrying multiple unbaited jigs. Suc­ the great sinks of wave energy. We are familiar cessful development and management of Tas­ with the effects of breaking waves upon mania's waters depends upon knowledge of coasts and man-made structures. It may seem biology and meteorology, and of their complex inter­ an obvious truism but these forces affect the relationships. Photo by J. Grant/Tasmanian denizens of the marine world as well. Fisheries Development Authority.

It appears that the old concept of the Maugean marine province may stand, but it needs testing by more detailed work on the effects of environmental hydrodynamics on marine animals. If the concept of wave energy regimes applies around the coasts of Tas­ mania, the old provincial distribution units are of little use. Only when we have more informa­ tion relating animal presence, growth and reproduction to the controls exerted by marine meteorology and its vagaries will we be able to produce detailed management schemes for marine exploitation and conservation.

FURTHER READING Australian Broadcasting Commission. 1969. Bass Strait: Australia's last frontier. Banks, M. R. and T. G. Dix (eds.). 1974. Resources of the sea. A symposium con­ ducted by the Royal Society of Tasmania at Bicheno, Nov. 2-4. Williams, W. D. (ed.). 1974. Biogeography and ecology in Tasmania. W. Junk, The Hague. 62 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY GARDEN IN ISOLATION Since 1960 R. H. Green has been Curator of Zoology with the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. In the course of this position, he has been in_volved with numerous field studies, seeking to learn more of the distribution, population structure and general ecology of the fauna of Tasmania. As a direct result he has published numerous papers about Tasmanian animals. In addition to general museum duties, he is presently involved in a forest ecology study related to the wood­ chip industry and in several specific studies of vertebrate and animals. For the 20 years prior to his appointment at the museum, he was engaged in the Tasmanian midland's pastoral industry as a sheep breeder and woolgrower. In 50 years of living close to nature, of observing, listening and learning, he has acquired a broad general knowledge of Tasmania's environments and has developed a deep and lasting affection for its flora and fauna. His article introduces us to these environments and their by Robert H. Green interesting and often unique denizens. The rugged and mountainous Tasmanian predominant in many places. Over-mature terrain, most of which originally supported hardwoods, Eucalyptus spp., are often heavy forests of giant hardwood trees, present, their decaying, broken tops standing presented a difficult challenge to the early above the forest canopy. The understorey and pioneers. Relatively small areas of the island shrub layer varies in density and may include were suitable for land clearing, agricultural musk, Olearia argophyl/a; cheesewood, development or domesticated stock grazing, Pittosporum bicolor; native pepper, Drimys but wherever such land did exist, it was soon lanceolata; Gunn's persoonia, Persoonia taken up and settled for various farming gunnii; laurel, Anopterus glandulosa; and soft pursuits. Most settlements developed on the tree fern, Dicksonia antarctica, the latter often fertile hills along the north and east coast growing as high as three metres, especially in and in the lowland valleys of the centre and gullies where it may dominate. south. It occurred in a haphazard manner to eventually form a vast mosaic of cleared The forest floor is generally littered with farmland among forested hills. decaying timber, heavily carpeted with dense, wet, green moss which extends up onto the The central highlands and most of the trunks and branches of the trees. This in turn western or southern half of Tasmania were provides natural, well-secreted cavities as found to be too mountainous or the soil un­ dwelling places for several species of small suitable for agricultural development even by terrestrial mammals as well as a specialised present day methods, and early mining and rainforest invertebrate fauna. timber cutting in these regions were very limited in extent and therefore did not greatly The wet forest is dominated by affect the flora and fauna. More recently, the hardwoods such as the stringybarks, Eucalyp­ Ghostly relics of a former, more widely dis­ tus delegatensis and E. obliqua; white gum, tributed, wet sclerophyll forest in Surprise Valley, W development of a woodchip industry and the Tasmania, stand in stark contrast to recent forest building of large for water conservation E. dalrympleana ; and mountain ash, E. regeneration. Because of the mountainous terrain and the generation of electricity have created regnans. In favourable conditions, the canopy and/or poor soils, many such areas were unsuited new pressures which may, in the long term, may be 70 m or more above ground. for agriculture, and the forests have been main­ produce important changes to the population tained as a timber resource. These areas also pro­ and distribution of the plants and animals. In the north-west of the island E. ovata vide excellent habitats for many native animals. occurs prominently in the wet forests, and the Photo by John McDougall/The Australian Museum. Tasmania, with a total area of about Tasmanian blackwood, melanoxylon, 65,000 square kilometres, is relatively well though now significantly reduced by milling for endowed with National Parks and Nature its attractive furniture timber, is common in Reserves. These total 682,731 ha and en­ wet situations. compass a diversified sample of the state's terrain, flora and fauna. Included is the Silver wattle, Acacia dealbata, generally a 12,787 ha , short-lived tree, often occurs in patches and 1 , 500 km to the south south-east of the island usually represents an early stage of succes­ of Tasmania. In the west, the prevailing sion. Such patches often develop following weather and distribution of annual fires or other damage to the forests when of up to 300 cm supports mostly wet vegeta­ resulting increase in the amount of light then tion. The east is mostly dry vegetation with as able to penetrate to ground level permits the little as 45 cm a year. wattle to propagate and flourish. It produces a and wet sclerophyll forest predominate in the spectacular golden splash of colour when it west, broken up and interspersed with areas blossoms in spring. of wet sedgeland. The understorey and shrub layer is com­ The rainforest is generally dominated by posed of many species, and its composition is myrtle-beech, cunninghamii, with dependent upon such factors as rainfall, sassafrass, Atherosperma moschatum; aspect, light and the stages of regeneration leatherwood, Eucryphia lucida; celery-top following logging operations or other such pine, Phyl/ocladus asp/eniifolius; and horizon­ canopy disturbances. Dogwood, Pomaderris tal scrub, Anodopetalum biglandulosum, being apetala; waratah, Telopea truncata; and

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 63 lion and the accompanying accumulation of vegetation, the buttongrass plains, as they are locally known, become highly fire prone in the dry summer months, and it is at these times that they have been subjected to repeated burning. In more recent years, deliberately lit and controlled burns have been undertaken by forestry personnel in off-peak periods in order to reduce the accumulating fuel and fire hazards so as to provide fire breaks for the protection of adjoining forests.

In the central highlands, at elevations about 1 ,OOO m, there occur treeless areas of moorland, fell field and bog. Here, only alpine plants resistant to snow, ice and winter winds can survive.

The eastern half of Tasmania supports mostly dry sclerophyll forest and woodland with small areas of coastal heathland, princi­ pally in the north-east. Isolated pockets of rain­ forest occur in parts, the principal area being around Mount Barrow at altitudes between 400 and 1 ,OOO m.

The dry sclerophyll forests are dominated by eucalypts with E. obliqua, E. viminalis, E. The land often reclaims its own. This 1972 pic­ mountain berry, Cyathodes parvifolia, occur ovata and E. globulus being well represented ture (above) shows the extent of deterioration of commonly as well as juveniles of rainforest and widely distributed. Wattles, Acacia spp.; Ernie Bond's 'Gordonvale' homestead in Upper species. These may form an early stage of honeysuckles, Banksia spp. ; and sheoaks, Gordon Valley since his departure from the bush in succession which, given time and protection spp., occur in some areas usually as 1950. Actually, relatively few areas of west and from fire, would eventually climax as rainforest. an understorey. The shrub layer is usually far south Tasmania were cleared for agriculture and stock grazing . And among what few homesteaders The wet sclerophyll forest is prolific, both less dense than that of the wet sclerophyll and there were, many appreciated and were concerned botanically and zoologically, and supports a is sometimes reduced to grasses, Poa spp., with the natural wildlife of the area; although, great proportion of the island's flora and fauna. littered with an accumulation of dried bark, most not to the extent as was Ernie. Photo by twigs and leaves of eucalypts. It is highly fire Anthony Friend. The forest is often prone, especially in the dry summer months, referred to as being 'fire-based'. Fire has and repeated burning often reduces signifi­ always been with us and was probably used cantly the number and species of plants which more extensively by the Aborigines in the days may otherwise propagate in the shrub layer. In before European settlement than it is today. It many areas bracken-fern, Pteridium esculen­ At elevations over 1,000 metres in central is believed they burnt the vegetation to main· tum, is prominent, being encouraged by Tasmania (below). where winter brings wind, snow lain forest clearings and tracks and to make it repeated burning and uninhibited by an and ice, only the hardiest of the alpine plants easier for them to move about the country and established shrub layer. It occasionally stands survive squeezed between the boulders. Photo by to catch animals. Haphazard firing of the Chris Green. to two metres high and forms shelter and vegetation is partly responsible for the present hiding places for the larger marsupials. patchwork distribution of the forest in many areas. Though factors such as rainfall, aspect The less dense ground cover also pro­ and soil are all influential and provide vides suitable habitat for the larger marsupials necessary elements for the establishment of which depend on their size and mobility to particular vegetational communities, fire also avoid capture. The dry sclerophyll forest fauna plays an important role in pruning back the en­ often survives low intensity fires by sheltering croachment of rainforest, in the maintenance in hollows or holes in the ground, or, in the of treeless sedgeland areas and in helping in case of the more mobile species, by moving the propagation of many sclerophyll forest away from the fire or back tracking on to plants which reseed after or otherwise benefit burnt areas. from periodic burns. The coastal heathland is represented by In the western half of Tasmania, from sea relatively small, though significant, areas and is level to an altitude of 1 ,OOO m, there are many an important habitat because it supports some areas of treeless wet sedgeland which occur specialised species of flora and fauna, in a mosaic pattern of distribution ," breaking up adapted to live primarily within its limits. With the areas of both rainforest and sclerophyll colonisation by European man, its extent has forest. The dominant plant is buttongrass, been considerably reduced by agricultural Mesomelaena sphaerocephala, which form s development and the establishment of holiday dense clumps of hummocky , coarse sedge, resorts. In spring and summer it provides a the seeding stems of which may grow to two wealth of colour and interest with the flow er­ metres high. It is haphazardly interspersed ing of many species of shrubs, and with rope-ru sh, Restio australis; cord-rush, orchids. Some of the most prolific and spec­ Lepidosp ermum filiforme and along the edges tacular are the pea flower, Aotus ericifolia and of streams and in drainage areas it grows with Bossiaea cinerea; tea-tree, Leptospermum heaths, Sprengelia incarnata and Epacris scoparium ; Tetratheca pilosa; boronia, Boronia gunnii; -myrtle, Baeckea gunniana; pilosa; banksia, ; and grass boronia, Boronia rhomboidea ; and tea-tree, trees, Xanthorrhea australis and X. minor. Leptospermum spp. The heathland is also a fire prone habitat. It After several years of post-fire regenera- was probably burnt every few years by the

64 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY Aborigines as regrowth reached sufficient tion and the arrival of European man have all density to carry fire. A long history of regular contributed to effect changes in the fauna. The burning has no doubt greatly contributed to result is the of a Tasmanian faunal the evolution of its present floral composition, unit, distinct in many ways and possessing its and survival in its present form is now depen­ own peculiarities and endemic forms. dent upon the continuation of such periodic burns. The heathland is a complex community Contrary to common belief, many Tas­ of opportunists which have evolved to utilise manian animal species are today numerically the successive conditions following fire. strong. This is no doubt fostered by the pre­ Though fire is so often obnoxious and destruc­ sent pattern of land utilisation and is evidenced tive in our eyes, it is none the less essential for in the numbers killed by motor vehicles on the the perpetuation of heathland ecology as we highways and byroads throughout the island. know it today. The rugged nature of th_e landscape, so much of which is unsuitable for agriculture and re­ Tasmania is well endowed with endemic mains undeveloped, continues to provide the flora. Most are beautifully illustrated by habitat requirements of the forest-dwelling Margaret Stones and described by Dr Winifred species. Agriculture has developed in rela­ Curtis in the late Lord Talbot de Malahide's six tively smaller areas, often by clearing forest volume edition of The Endemic Flora of from the valleys or from the areas of rich Tasmania. A total of 254 species are basaltic soil. This pattern of land clearing has delineated, though some have since been resulted in a mosaic-like distribution of open found growing outside Tasmania. Most are pastoral land bordered by forest. It provides a relatively small plants which grow at the higher greatly enhanced food source, both in quantity elevations. The mountain vegetation contains and in quality for those grazing marsupials an extremely high proportion of endemic which can hide in the forest by day and invade species and shows relationships with the the open pasture land by night. Most notable vegetation of both New Zealand and South among these are the , America. For example, the endemic cushion Macropus giganteus; brush wallaby, Macropus plants, Dracophyl/um spp., which grow on the rufogriseus ; pademelon, Thylogale billardierii; mountains at altitudes above 1,200 metres and brush-tailed possum, Trichosurus where snow lies for several months of the vulpecula. In recent years, the advent of aerial year, show a close affinity to New Zealand spreading of superphosphate and other ferti­ Rainforests (above) are normally characterised species. lisers on steep and otherwise inaccessible by tall trees with nearly a closed canopy and a floor woodland areas has also benefited the grazing covered with rotting logs and moss. The soft tree Of the 29 species of eucalypts in marsupials, increasing the potential carrying fern, Dicksonia antarctica, grows well (occasionally Tasmania, 15 are endemic. Most are relatively capacity for them just as it has for the reaching a height of up to three metres) in such small trees, a notable exception being the domestic stock for which it is intended. damp, shaded localities. Photo by R. H. Green/ large and widely distributed black peppermint, Queen Victoria Museum. Eucalyptus amygdalina. Among the gymno­ The development of agriculture has bene­ sperms, eight of the eleven native pines are fited other species, both directly and in­ endemic. In the banksia family 1 3 of the 16 directly-for example, the brown bandicoot, Tasmanian species are endemic, and in the lsodon obesulus, and barred bandicoot, heath family endemic species are notable in Perameles gunnii, marsupials which emerge at the genera Richea, Trochocarpa, , dusk from the shelter of their well-secluded Prionotes, Cyathodes and Dracophyl/um. nests to feed on worms, and ground­ dwelling insects. Observations have revealed The upper northern slopes of Cradle Mountain The floral emblem of Tasmania is the that they like to hunt over pastoral areas, (1400 m) (below) sport only ground and shrub leatherwood, Eucryphia lucida, an endemic apparently there rewarded by a good food strata of small cold-resistant alpine plants including shrub which grows to 30 metres in height. It is supply which no doubt includes a high propor­ heaths, sedges, grasses, mosses and liverworts. a rainforest species, and Tasmanian leather­ tion of pasture-eating insects. Photo by Bruce Jenkins. wood honey is exported widely.

The blue gum, E. globulus, occurs mainly in the dry sclerophyll forests and woodland areas of eastern and southern Tasmania with isolated pockets on the west coast and on King Island and the Furneaux Islands. Its large blossoms are prolific nectar producers and attract swarms of bees and other nectar feeding insects and birds. In the last Ice Age, Tasmania was joined to the Australian continent by the Bass Strait land bridge and formed part of a south­ eastern Australian peninsula. It is reasonable to assume that a common fauna then ranged over the region, the distribution of some species extending to the north and west of the continent. The present flooding of Bass Strait is believed to have commenced about 11 ,OOO years ago when the ice barriers receded and the ocean level rose. Tasmania has now been effectively isolated from the Australian mainland for about 10,000 years. In this relatively short geological period, changes in environmental conditions, the effects of isola-

voLuME 20 NUMBER 2 65 The carnivorous, scavenging Tasman ian The masked lapwing, Vanel/us miles, devil, Sarcophilus harrisii, is today in excep­ locally known as the spur-winged plover, was tionally high numbers, reaching pest propor­ an extremely rare bird in Tasmania in the nine­ tions in some areas when it kills new-born teenth century. No doubt its culinary quality lambs and attacks sick, injured or otherwise was a contributing factor to its low population, handicapped domestic stock. It finds an especially when it did not have the expansive enhanced food supply in the higher numbers areas available to it today, so of both native and domestic animals now graz­ necessary for its propagation and survival. The ing the improved pastures and in scavenging development of those large pastoral areas, on the carcases of those which inevitably die together with it having been afforded total pro­ from various causes. Likewise, the smaller tection, have enabled it to greatly expand its carnivorous and insectivorous native quoll, distribution and population. Today, it is prob­ Dasyurus viverrinus, is now common and ably the most conspicuous Tasmanian bird­ widely distributed. It preys upon small mam­ sometimes occurring in flocks of more than mals and birds but has also been observed one hundred when it congregates on agricul­ hunting invertebrates on pasture land. tural areas in . The Tasmanina native-hen, Gallinula mor­ The Cape Barren goose, Cereopsis tierii, occurred on the Australian mainland in novaehollandiae, once shot as a game bird and prehistoric times but is now restricted to restricted numerically by the limitations of its Tasmania. It is a flightless which feeds summer grazing areas, is yet another example almost entirely on green grass and lives along of a species which has benefited from pastoral the valleys and areas of semi-open land in the development. Like the native-hen, it is a graz­ vicinity of , creeks and rivers. In ing bird. At the conclusion of the breeding Aboriginal times its feeding grounds were the season, most birds leave the small isolated Among the most conspicuous of the mammals marsupial lawns established by grazing breeding islands to congregate in flocks during in Tasmania, because of its size and increasing kangaroos, and on the the summer months on areas where short abundance, is the brush wallaby (also known as naturally irrigated river flats and verges of green grass is available. In the Furneaux Bennett's wallaby). Macropus rufogriseus (above). creeks and lagoons. With the advent of pas­ Islands such areas are to be found on the Although primarily a sclerophyll forest-dweller, this toral development, especially along the fertile largest of the group, Flinders Island. Here in grazing marsupial has benefited from the mosaic river valleys, the native-hen was presented the last twenty years pastoral development pattern of agricultural development in the state. with a great increase in the area of its required has greatly enhanced the quality and quantity Photo by Bruce Jenkins. habitat, and its distribution and population· of its food, and its numbers have responded expanded accordingly. Like the introduced accordingly. Though an open season for The Cape Barren goose, Cereopsis shooting has not been declared for some novaehollandiae (below). now found in large , it became a pest to farmers because of numbers (even to the point of being a pest in the pasture it ate and damaged and was years, controlled shoots are occasionally some areas) on the islands of the Furneaux Group of subsequently classified as 'declared vermin'. It undertaken to scare and reduce localised Bass Strait, has also benefited from pastoral has recently been removed from the vermin populations when these become sufficiently development. Photo by John McDougall/The list but its numbers, though fluctuating, are still numerous to damage pastures and thus con­ Australian Museum. high in most agricultural areas. stitute a pest to farmers. The Furneaux Islands' population has probably never been greater than it is today. There are numerous other such examples of species which have benefited from the advent of European man and his impact upon the habitat, but it is also evident that others have declined. Spectacular among those which have suffered are the , Thylacinus cynocephalus, present status of which is unknown; the Tasmanian subspecies of the , Dromaius novaehollandiae diemensis, which was exterminated in its wild state by about 1865; and the dwarf emu, Dromaius minor, which lived on King Island in Bass Strait until finally exterminated by the early sealers about 1805. A reading of the accounts given by explorers and early pioneers, together with more recent informa­ tion, reveals a decline in water fowl, quail, pigeons and rosella. Again , shooting and trapping pressure for 'sport and culinary delights' may well have contributed, but the reasons are usually far more complex and often not fully understood. No doubt the inhospitable Tasmanian land­ scape was the cause of many a curse from men trying to clear and develop farming land, but it is because of this rocky, mountainous terrain that so much of the flora and fauna of ~he nineteenth century still exists today. Had its shores encompassed a fertile, undulating, rock-free island, it seems almost certain that the land-clearing pioneers would have swept across its face, leaving little if any of the native flora and fauna. In retrospect, those pioneer­ ing problems associated with land-clearing and 66 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY pastoral establishment have in many ways lesser long-eared bat, Nyctophilus geoffroyi, proved to be a blessing in disguise. has now been found to comprise two closely related species. Likewise, the little bat, The establishment of a woodchip industry Eptesicus pumilus, previously thought to com­ in 1971 has greatly increased the demand for prise only one species, has been shown to be timber and has brought with it clearfelling and in fact several closely related species, two of forest regeneration programmes on a scale which occur in Tasmania. very much greater than the previous opera­ tions. Its eventual effect upon the flora and One native Australian mammal has been fauna of the island is widely debated, and it introduced and become established in seems certain to produce the greatest impact Tasmania. This is the sugar glider, Petaurus upon the island's ecology since the arrival of breviceps, which was brought from the European man. mainland about 1835. It is now widely distributed and common, occurring from sea Thirty-four species of native mammals (ex­ level to the subalpine rainforest. Why it and cluding seals) are believed to occur in several other Australian mainland species had Tasmania. They comprise two monotremes, not established themselves in Tasmania before twenty marsupials and twelve placental mam­ the last flooding of Bass Strait remains a mals. Three species are endemic, two of mystery. which, the thylacine and the Tasmanian devil, once lived on the Australian mainland, as Fortunately, Tasmania does not have the evidenced by fossil remains, but both have , Ganis familiaris dingo, or the fox, Vu/pes The yellow wattlebird, Anthochaera paradoxa long since died out there. The status of the (above). is an endemic species to Tasmania and vulpes. These carnivorous predators, intro­ Bass Strait islands in open forests and suburban thylacine is doubtful, though the persistence duced to mainland Australia, undoubtedly had gardens. Its common name is derived from this of unconfirmed sightings suggests that it still a detrimental effect upon the native fauna as species' long pendulous yellow ear wattles, lives in the sclerophyll forests. The Tasmanian they settled into their niche. The Bass Strait whereas its Latin specific name refers lo the bird's devil a rare animal in the first half of this water barrier has prevented their spread to paradoxical resemblance to a crow. Photo by R. H. cent~ry, is now widely distributed and in high Tasmania, and the island's ecology is free from Green/Queen Victoria Museum. numbers. The third endemic mammal, the their predatory and competitory influences. long-tailed rat, Pseudomys higginsii, occurs commonly throughout the rainforests. About 300 species of birds have been recorded from Tasmania and the adjacent In addition to the three endemic mammals, The dusky antechinus, Antechinus swainsonii seas-about 43% of the total Australian (below), occurs mostly in rainforest, living among another nine mammals are generally con­ species. Exact numbers cannot be given as sidered to be endemic at a subspecific level. In the damp, decaying litter where it feeds upon ornithologists differ in their opinions because invertebrate and small vertebrate animals. Photo by the last 10,000 years of isolation, these have the study of bird speciation is not sufficiently R. H. Green/Queen Victoria Museum. diverged from their mainland relatives to such a degree that they are now separable on various morphological characters. They in­ clude the eastern grey kangaroo, M. g. tas­ maniensis; the brush-tailed possum, T. v. fuliginosus; common ringtail, Pseudocheirus peregrinus convolutor; the Tasmanian mainland population of the common , Vombatus ursinus tasmaniensis, and the Flinders Island population, V. u. ursinus; dusky antechinus, Antechinus swainsonii swainsonii; swamp antechinus, Antechinus minimus minimus; eastern swamp-rat, Rattus lutreo/us velutinus ; and the , Tachyglossus aculeatus setosus. Seven species common in Tasmania are now extremely rare or have a very restricted distribution on the Australian mainland. They are the , Thyloga/e bil/ardierii; southern potoroo, Potorous apica/is; little pigmy possum, Cercartetus /epidus; barred bandicoot, Perameles gunnii; native quoll, Dasyurus viverrinus; white-footed dunnart, Sminthopsis leucopus; and the broad­ toothed rat, Mastacomys fuscus. Of particular interest was the discovery in 1976 of the mouse, Pseudomys novaehollandiae, in coastal regions of eastern " and northern Tasmania. Though skeletal ,., material in subfossil deposits had shown it to have lived in the north of the island about 1 ,OOO years ago, its survival to the .. present had gone undetected. Previously it was only known from eastern New South Wales and Victoria. Recent collecting and research has shown that there are at least seven species of ~( insectivorous bats in Tasmania. What was for .• ,. many years believed to be a single species of ' .. VOLUME 2 0 NUMBER 2 67 advanced for them to reach agreement. Also, Leiolopisma pretiosa, both of which are com­ bird observers are continually finding mon and widely distributed. representatives of species not previously recorded from the island. The amphibian fauna comprises ten species of frogs and includes two endemics. There are now considered to be eleven Burrow's tree-frog, Litoria burrowsi, is species endemic to Tasmania. They are the confined to the rainforests in the west and Tasmanian native-hen; , Platy­ south of Tasmania. It is a large, green frog cercus ca/edonicus; dusky robin, Melanodryas which often climbs high into the foliage of vittata; , Sericornis magnus; Tasmanian trees. The Tasmanian froglet, Geocrinia thornbill, Acanthiza ewingii; yellow wattlebird, tasmaniensis, occurs throughout the island, Anthochaera paradoxa; yellow-throated but its greatest populations are in the highland. , Lichenostomus flavicollis ; strong­ It is a spectacularly marked, secretive little frog billed honeyeater, Melithreptus validirostris; with a characteristic bleating call which black-headed honeyeater, Melithreptus affinis; somewhat resembles that of a lamb. Sub­ forty-spotted , Pardalotus quadragin­ speciation among Tasmanian frogs is unclear, tus; and , Strepera fuliginosa. and authorities differ in their opinions. No About a dozen others are considered to be Tasmanian frogs are rare or endangered, endemic subspecies. though Burrow's tree-frog certainly seems the least plentiful. Thirteen foreign and two Australian species have been introduced and established The freshwater fish are represented by in a wild state, the latter two being the laughing lampreys, smelt, grayling, whitebait, native kookaburra, Dace/a novaeguineae, which is trout, eel, perch, pigmy perch, blackfish and now widespread, and the superb lyrebird, freshwater flathead. is high among Menura novaehollandiae which is restricted to the numerous species of native trout which two localities in the south. have evolved while locked into their respective lake and river systems, and several genera are The are the only birds to have died involved. out since the arrival of European man, but their populations were probably never great. Two The invertebrate fauna is equally in­ species which are now in low numbers with a teresting and diverse with numerous new limited distribution are the orange-bellied species still awaiting description. Because parrot, Neophema chrysogaster, and the forty­ many are tiny and inconspicuous, they are spotted pardalote. The former appears to be often unnoticed and forgotten, but they form a restricted to the west coast and King Island, vital link in the chain of life, as scavengers, moving north in winter to coastal Victoria and herbivores and predators, just as they in turn The green rosella, Platycercus caledonicus, a South Australia. Its nest has been found on are preyed upon by other animals. They too spectacular, endemic species, is common and very few occasions, and its life and habits are have evolved to include many endemic Tas­ widely distributed throughout the island. The not yet understood. The forty-spotted manian species and have adapted to the par­ sclerophyll forests are its more favoured habitat. pardalote is known to be in reasonable ticular conditions to form part of the overall Photo by R. H. Green/Queen Victoria Museum . numbers in several areas in the south, but interdependent and wonderful network in the these are very limited in extent. A small highly specialised flora and fau na of Tasmania. population was recently found on Flinders Island, but it certainly ranks among the rarer The vegetation and fauna of Tasmania are birds. extremely interesting and important. There are many habitat types within its relatively small Sixteen species of terrestrial reptiles are area and because of its geographical location, known to occur on Tasmania and its off-shore animals from Antarctic regions often visit islands. They include three snakes and its shores. thirteen lizards, four of which are endemic. Of particular interest are two of the recently The cold conditions have produced adap­ described endemic . The tations in both plants and animals. The alpine , Pseudemoia palfreymani, the only vegetation with its hard, dense growth, which Tasmanian representative of its genus, is con­ is a barrier against cold and water loss, has fined to Pedra Branca Island, a barren, many endemic species. Some mammals have precipitous and almost inaccessible rock about developed longer and thicker fur and are pro­ 30 km off the south coast. The island lacks portionally larger than their Australian mainland vegetation, but it is the breeding site for a relatives, adaptations which make them better colony of Australian gannets, Marus serrator. suited to live in a cold climate. Cold and isola­ Decaying gannet nests are also the breeding tion have thus contributed to and influenced places of certain species of flies and other the development of both plants and animals insects, and the is prob­ with the result that there exists today a high ably dependent upon the gannets' breeding degree of endemism. colony for its insect food. Because of the inaccessibility of the site, the lizard has not Within the relatively small island of been studied there, and very few specimens Tasmania, there is present a great variety of have been collected. vegetation and fauna, much of which is unique and most of which is generally abundant. The mountain skink, Leiolopisma greeni, described in 1975, has been found at only FURTHER READING four alpine localities where it appears to live Breeden, S. and K. 1972. Australia's south among rocks along the edges of streams. Like east. Collins, Sydney. the preceding species, it has not yet been Green, R. H. 1977. Birds of Tasmania. Mary studied in the field, and very little is known of Fisher Bookshop, Launceston. its life and habits. The remaining two endemic Williams, W. D. (ed.). 1974. Biogeography lizards are the spotted skink, Leiolopisma and ecology in Tasmania. W. Junk, The ocellata, and the small-scaled s kink, Hague.

68 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY THE THYLACINE­ AN UNSOLVED CASE

Fossil records indicate that the thylacine was once widespread on continental Australia and in New Guinea, but in recent times has been known only from Tasmania. Eric Guiler, a Reader in the School of Zoology at the University of Tasmania interested in marsupial ecology and physiology, organised a search for the thylacine in 1 961 and is currently working on a programme sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (Australia) to photograph a living specimen. His article recounts what is known of this animal's history by Eric Guiler in Tasmania and of its biology. When John Gould published in 1 863 this paint­ Few Australian species have captured the property. He and his successors were suc­ ing of (above) in Volume I of Mammals of attention of the Australian public as much as cessful in this, and the last capture on the Australia, London, he predicted a demise of this the the thylacine (or Tasmanian tiger) Thylacinus property was in 1914. largest of the indigenous Australian carnivorous mammals: " When the comparatively small island of cynocephalus, a dog-like marsupial. Does it Tasmania becomes more densely populated, and its continue to exist? Where does it live? What The persecution of thylacines occurred primitive forests are intersected with roads from the are its habits? The answers are not easy­ over all of Tasmania, reaching a peak in the eastern to the western coast, the numbers of this tragically little is known about the biology of period 1888-1908 when a bounty was paid singular animal will speedily diminish, extermination this animal, which, if it lives today, is one of the on their heads. A total of 2,184 animals were will have its full sway, and it will then, like the Wolf in rarest in the world. killed during the period. The statistical England and Scotland, be recorded as an animal of evidence furnished by the bounty indicated the past." As a position at the apex of a food pyramid only a small number remained by 1 91 O. would suggest, the thylacine never was an abundant species. Further, as far as we know, Since that time only a few thylacine its food habits were highly selective. It ate only corpses have been produced, the last one freshly killed prey, and even in this it being at Mawbanna in 1930, although persis­ specialised on the vascular tissues. Thus any tent alleged sightings and even rumours of fluctuations in prey abundance would have a captures have prevailed. One accidental killing corresponding and probably drastic effect of a young thylacine male at Sandy Cape (west upon thylacine numbers. Furthermore, the coast) was reported in 1 960 and probably pre-white man Tasmania with its uncleared was authentic. However, nothing now will land would not have supported as much native satisfy the sceptics other than a photograph game as does the present pasture/forest or a corpse. fringe country. Lending some support to the concept of its scarcity, in the early colonial A number of expeditions have searched days a capture or sighting of a thylacine for thylacines starting with the Fleay Expedi­ was sufficiently unusual for it to be reported tion in 1945, followed by the Tasmanian in diaries. Government Expedition of 1 961 and lately by the Griffiths-Malley search in the 1970s. In Thylacines were once relatively common addition, several very amateurish attem·pts in some areas. Northwestern Tasmania, mostly specifically to photograph the species have occupied since 1 820 by the Van Diemen's been made, mainly by people who knew little Land Company, was one such area. The early of the animal or of the problems associated settlers believed that 'tigers' killed sheep in with the exercise. To the present time none of large numbers, and so a 'tiger man' was these searches have been successful. It is appointed to kill thylacines on Company more likely that some lucky person with a

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 69 camera ready at the right moment will be the one to secure a picture of this elusive animal. Clearly, with such a rare species any attempt to kill one would cause such a stir as to be totally unacceptable.

At the time of the abrupt thylacine decline scientific study of wildlife in Tasmania was largely non-existent. The Tasmanian Museum did not have a zoologist on its staff, and the Foundation Chair of Zoology at the University did not start until 1910. It is hardly sur­ prising that we know so little of the biology of thylacines.

We can, however, build up a partial picture of the habits of thylacines from the snippets of information which are available. Probably the animals are largely nocturnal and hunt in pairs, though larger family groups may exist. Their prey is run to exhaustion, and the vascular tissues of the throat, nose, liver, kidneys and the inside of the ham are eaten. They have a rigid tail and probably do not run very fast. Anatomically, they cannot hop like a kangaroo nor perform prodigies of jumping in spite of the anecdotal stories to the contrary. The mating season reaches a peak about midsummer, and young (maximum number being four) are in the pouch from January to May. From June until the next breeding season the young run with the parents.

The decline of the thylacine in Tasmania remains a puzzle. One wonders whether the thylacine may have been on its way to extinc­ tion with the process being only accelerated by man . The species was once widely dis­ tributed over continental Australia as well as New Guinea, but since about 3,000 years ago it has been known only from Tasmania. No clear reason has been advanced for its dis­ appearance from Australia, and in view of the climatic stability over that period it is difficult to imagine why it became extinct. Recent evidence suggests that competition with dingoes was not a factor.

Be that as it may, the species never was abundant and even in its day of plenty would be regarded as fragile by modern criteria. It seems likely that persecution combined with The live thylacine (top) was photographed disruption of its way of life, as well as within an enclosure in Tasmania at the beginning of possibly a disease, was sufficient to tip an this century. Although this particular individual had already precariously balanced animal into been given a carcass of a domestic fowl for pur­ near oblivion. poses of the photograph, thylacines were branded as killers of poultry, sheep and calves, and a bounty was p_aid on their heads during the early settlement Had hunting by man been the sole factor days of Tasmania. Photo by Harry Burrell/The involved then it might be expected that with Australian Museum. the cessation of this activity and the total pro­ tection which the species has enjoyed since The 'trophy pose' (centre) of a sheep farmer 1 939 the number of thylacines would have in­ with his quarry near Mawbanna in 1 930 is the creased with abundant food. But this has not most recent photo of a wild thylacine. Photo by happened, and we are left with the question­ Don Stephens. does the thylacine still exist? Along with several red-bellied pademelons, Thyloga/e billardierii, and Bennett's wallabies, FURTHER READING Macropus rufogriseus, two freshly killed thylacines Fleay, D. 1946. On the trail of the marsupial (left) indicate a successful 'pest control' campaign wolf. Viet. Nat., 63: 129-1 35, 154-159, in Tasmania at the turn of the century. Photo by 174-177. J . H. Calaby. Guiler, E. R. 1961 . The former distribution and decline of the Thylacine. Aust. J. Sci., 23: 207-210. Macintosh, N. W. C. 1975. The origin of the dingo: an enigma, pp. 87-106. In M. W. Fox (ed.) The Wild Canids. Van Nostrand, New York. 70 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY SHRIMPS IN HIGH PLACES The freshwater environments of Tasmania-including lakes, tarns, creeks, streams, rivers and swamps-are particularly well endowed with crustaceans, from microscopic copepods to crayfish over 25 cm in length. Among this group of arthropods is the Tasmanian mountain shrimp, Anaspides tasmaniae, considered to be a 'living fossil' because of its primitive and relatively unspecialised structure. This high altitude dweller has found a haven in the lakes and tarns of central and south-west Tasmania. Gerald Silvey, a neurobiologist who for five years taught physiology to students of pharmacy at the University of Tasmania, was introduced to Anaspides by Bill Wilson with whom he collaborated on a study of the nervous control of the animal's behaviour. His article presents the known salient features of the biology and natural history of Anaspides, and its near relatives, and seeks to place this animal in perspective with respect to the evolu­ by Gerald E. Silvey tion of the malacostracan crustaceans.

The geological mechanisms that isolated compound eyes are stalked. Its gills are Australia and enabled the marsupials and exposed, plate-like cuticular extensions that eucalypts to flourish also ensured the survival arise from proximal segments of its legs. Par­ of an ancient group of freshwater mala­ ticularly striking are the animal's articulate or costracan crustaceans. Today, Tasmania with free segments, present not only in the its cool climate and wet mountains is an abdomen but also in the thorax of its elongate, enclave to species of this group whose straight body. Also notable are the eight pairs members are on the one hand structured of thoracic appendages, all of which are used simply, thus resembling their ancestors, but, in locomotion (rather than just the last four or on the other hand, are closely related to the five pairs as in decapods). Habitually a bottom most complex and behaviourally adept of the dweller, it prefers to walk rather than swim . All Crustacea. Their existence is significant but one pair of its legs, the eighth, are because it provides an opportunity to acquire biramous; one branch being a walking leg and from them interesting insights into a biological the other a flagellum-features typically found organisation that was once widespread and only in the most ancient, extinct crustaceans. which preceded a sophisticated organisation The abdomen ends in a tail fan, one function of that is now cosmopolitan. which is immediately apparent to anyone who has disturbed the animal. In response to distur­ The animals are the Anaspidacea, an order bance the animal rapidly flips away, the pro· This female Tasmanian mountain shrimp, of the Syncarida, one of the five major group­ pulsive surface being provided largely by the Anaspides tasmaniae, is about 4 cm in length. The ings of living malacostracan crustaceans. The spread tail fan. Indeed, the size, shape, species is characterised by eight pairs of thoracic Syncarida represent what is most simple and aquatic habitat and behaviour of Anaspides re­ appendages (seven of them biramous). lack of a carapace, exposed gills, free thoracic and primitive among the Malacostraca. They lack a mind one of a eucaridan shrimp but fundamen­ abdominal segments, stalked compound eyes and carapace, seven or eight of their thoracic tally the mountain shrimp is quite different. the two pairs of antennae with long flagella. Photo segments are free, and their thoracic appen­ by G. E. Silvey. dages are biramous or two-branched. The The Anaspidacea arose in the latter part of Eucarida, on the other hand, represent what is the Palaeozoic era in the Southern most complex and advanced. They possess a Hemisphere. Throughout their known ex­ carapace, their thoracic segments are fused, istence, they have been confined entirely to and their thoracic appendages are single­ Australia. They were preceded by the branched and often specialised. Included in Palaeocaridacea, a widespread group of syn­ the Eucarida is the order Decapoda: lobsters carids that lived in North America and Europe and freshwater crayfish, marine crayfish, during the Carboniferous period, but which did crabs, hermit crabs, prawns and shrimps. The not outlive the Palaeozoic. Palaeocaridaceans Decapoda are modern, highly specialised were characterised by all eight thoracic malacostracans that only began differentiating segments being free and the absence of furcal about 200 million years ago-a time when the spines on the telson, the medium appendage body plan of the contemporary Anaspidacea of the tail fan. was already established, possibly by as many years again before that. Compared to the Anaspidaceans are probably descended decapods, the anaspidaceans are ancient, from a group of Southern Hemisphere syn­ relatively generalised animals whose form carids, the Stygocaridacea. They were first dates to the early Carboniferous period. known as fossils from South America. Like the Anaspidacea, they have only seven free Within the Anaspidacea. one species is thoracic segments (the first of the eight being prominent: Anaspides tasmaniae. Anaspides fused to the head), but unlike the Anaspidacea lives throughout central and southwest they bear furcal spines, a feature of the Tasmania at elevations greater than 500 m and earliest malacostracans. C/arkecaris, a is commonly known as the mountain shrimp, a Brazilian stygocaridacean that lived in the sea name indicative of where it lives and what it during the Permian period, is a possible looks like. Adults are typically 3-4 cm long. ancestor of the Anaspidacea. Stygocarida­ Anaspides bears the two pairs of antennae ceans persist today in temperate regions of characteristic of crustaceans, but the flag ella South America below 30°S latitude. They are of these are long and nearly equal in length. Its quite small, less than 5 mm in length. Since the

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 71 Millions of The earliest anaspidacean species is Years Periods 0 Anaspidites, an animal known from a 200 ,, million year old Triassic fossil found in Hawkesbury River shale near Sydney. A naspides tasmaniae Anaspidites was a freshwater animal not much different in shape, size and skeletal form from Anaspides, and belongs to the same family group. Thus Anaspides is a type of animal that has remained relatively unchanged for at least CRET 200,000,000 years. :: The mountain shrimp is not the only living 135 Cl member in the Anaspidacea, although it has 0 received the most attention because of its size JURAS O Brachyura Anomura and abundance. There is a second species of 80 ri Anaspides, Anaspides spinu/ae, which is about two-thirds the size of the mountain shrimp and [Anaspidites/ V;Palinur~ T RIAS is known only from the bottom of Lake St. Astacur Clair. The species Paranaspides Jacustris is Anaspidacea 225---+- unlike other anaspidaceans in that it frequents I Decapoda PERM surface waters. It is about 2.5 cm long and its Pericarida ;7~~ body is characterised by a great bend which is 270 thought to help it swim. Paranaspides was once abundant in of the central Tasmanian highlands, but when the outlet of this lake was dammed in the 1920's, the /Clo,&"idac

The constancy and seclusion of the Tasmanian high country enable some of Anaspides' physiological systems to operate within their narrow limits. Reproduction is one such system. Anaspides lays its eggs singly on submerged moss and bark, under stones, and on roots and other forest debris in streams and tarns. The eggs, averaging 1 mm in diameter, are unusually large for a malacostracan the size of Anaspides. Vernon Hickman has shown that eggs laid in summer hatch after eight to nine months, and larvae emerge as miniature adults not quite 3 mm long. Larvae are complete in all their segments and in most of their appendages but differ from adults in having a median eye and sessile com­ pound eyes. Larvae develop during suc­ cessive moults and by the end of their first year are young adults 1-2 cm in length. Unlike most other malacostracans, neither parent protectively harbours eggs or young. The sur­ vival of the embryo and young is completely dependant on the environment. Osmotic and ionic regulation is another system that functions within narrow en­ vironmental limits. Roy Swain has found that Anaspides cannot adjust to solutions as con­ centrated as its own blood, which is 11 0 mM in sodium ions (about one-fourth the concen­ tration of sodium in sea water). Anaspides' blood, furthermore, is more dilute than that of other freshwater malacostracans. Freshwater cept for one brackish water species of A number of freshwater habitats are frequented crayfish, for example, have a blood 'sodium bathynellacean, all dwell in fresh water. Their by Anaspides including a tarn (encircled by snow) at ancestors, however, did not. Clarkecaris was the base of Mt Rufus (top) and Lake Hartz (bottom). concentration of about 220 mM, and they can Photos by G. E. Silvey. happily live for some time in a solution of a marine animal, and probably all the Car­ sodium ions of that concentration. The water in boniferous syncarids lived in the sea. This which Anaspides lives is soft-unusual for change in habitat from salt to fresh water Australian waters which are typically highly presumably occurred at the end of the concentrated. This is largely due to the high Palaeozoic era and led not only to dilution of resistance to leaching of the granitic rock the blood but also to the development of a which makes up the vast majority of the moun­ predominantly chitinous skeleton-one not tains of the Tasmanian southwest. Anaspides reinforced by minerals that were no longer is a strictly freshwater animal, able to select available in fresh water. and hold the common ions of sea water and blood at levels higher than the water surround­ Anaspides can adjust to one condition of ing it, but incapable of coping with salinity its environment that varies considerably. In its changes in its medium caused, for example, alpine pool habitats, the temperature rises in by concentration ensuing from evaporation. the course of a summer's day from overnight Fortunately this occurs rarely. How Anaspides lows of 1 0 ° C to 23 ° C. During the coldest succeeds and fails at regulating is unknown. winter month the temperature fluctuates be­ tween - 1 ° and + 1 °C. Thus the animal is Anaspides and other living syncarids, ex­ able to withstand cooling below freezing, and VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 73 The alarm response of Anaspides was traced tern generators in the central nervous system. from successive frames of movie film. When Which particular generator is selected is in touched by a rod (black bar) the mountain shri mp some manner related to the speed , power and flexes all of its thoracic and abdominal segments oxygen required by the animal. , (frames 3 and 4) to propel itself upward and for­ ward , away from the stimulus. The complete sequence takes place in less than one-tenth of a As a young animal and later as an adult, second. Drawing by G. E. Silvey. Anaspides is vulnerable to disturbance of its - environment. It is subject to predation by at least one organism, man. Presumably there are other predators but none has been demonstrated. It can also suffer dislodgement by currents in the water in which it dwells. heating greater than 20°C-a very wide When the animal is upset by touch, by vibra­ tolerance span. Usually, however, it lives tions in the water, and possibly by sudden within a temperature range of 0-8°C. changes in illumination, its body flexes rapidly and it is propelled up and away from the Following the discovery of Anaspides and stimulus before extending and swimming off. - recognition of its phylogenetic significance in This response is mediated by the lateral of two the 1 890's, the species was first described in giant nerve fibres that run the length of each its natural surroundings by Geoffrey Smith. He side of its ventral nerve cord. found that the animals usually progress by walking or running although occasionally they The lateral giant nerve fibre is nearly iden­ swim, rising to the surface where they turn tical in structure and function to that found in over on their backs. In this position, both the crayfish and other long-bodied decapods. young and adult Anaspides were seen by Undoubtedly the fibres are homologous. This Vernon Hickman to sort through particles means that the lateral giant fibre and the - floating on the surface, searching for food. evasive reaction it mediates predate the origin Smith also observed Anaspides to dart for­ of the Decapoda and very likely manifest an in­ wards or sideways but never backwards when heritance from a malacostracan ancestor. The they were alarmed. He noted that the flagellar fibre's behavioural significance is that it has exopods of the thoracic legs continually beat given Anaspides, an animal with a soft, and suggested that they assist in respiration delicate body and no appendages specialised by agitating the water about the gills-a con­ for anything that borders on the defensive, a clusion that remains to be demonstrated. mechanism for evading predators by rapid movement away from touch or nearby distur­ In the late 1 920's Sidnie Manton deter­ bance. mined that Anaspides of all ages feed upon algae and detritus and that adults add tadpoles The phylogenetic age and the structural and worms to their diet. This agrees with the and functional features of the mountain shrimp observation that the number of tadpoles in render it a precious contemporary animal. It is mountain pools is inversely proportional to the fortuitous that Anaspides has been harboured number of mountain shrimp. To feed, by an environment that has probably changed Anaspides scrapes particles free. These it col­ little, at least not to a degree that outstripped lects in the plates and spines of its mouth the animal's capabilities. The morphological parts. It may also bite particles by using the in­ and physiological bases of its behaviour are cisors of its mandibles. Manton was surprised extremely instructive for what they reveal 4 - to find that Anaspides did not generate cur­ about the form and function of transitional rents to carry small particles to its mouth, malacostracans, the descendants of Cambrian because her previous studies on preserved ancestors and forerunners of the modern, specimens led her to interpret its mouthpart specialised and highly successful decapods. structures as being suitable for filtering and The conservatism that dictated the retention of sieving. Paranaspides, however, also has an animal such as Anaspides, despite the in­ these structures and does use them to feed by troduction of new animals, can be appreciated filtering and sieving. for what it has left all of us not of an earlier, less complicated generation. From her field observations, Manton also pointed out that the mountain shrimp moves its FURTHER READING thoracic and abdominal appendages in a Brooks, H.K. 1969. Syncarida. In R.C. Moore metachronal rhythm- it moves its legs sequen­ {ed.) Treatise on Invertebrate Palaeon­ tially from back to front. This rh ythm is used for tology, Part R, Arthropoda 4, Vol. 1. pp walking and swimming. Recent films analysed 345-359, University of Kansas and by David Macmillan of the Universrty of Mel­ Geological Society of America, Lawrence. bourne and Bill Wilson and I of the University of Manton, S.M. 1930. Notes on the habits and Tasmania demonstrate that there are at least feeding mechanisms of Anaspides and three separate rhythms: one of the flagella of Paranaspides {Crustacea, Syncarida) , the thoracic appendages, another of the walk­ Proc. Zoo!. Soc. Lond. 1930: 791-800. ing legs, and a third of the swimmerets. These Silvey, G.E. and I.S. Wilson. 1979. Structure can be progressively coupled into one and function of the lateral giant neurone of another. While an animal is stationary, only the the primitive crustacean Anaspides flagella may beat. When the animal moves tasmaniae, J. exp. Biol. 78: 12 1-136. slowly, the flagella continue to beat, but not in Smith, G. 1909. On the Anaspidacea, living precise synchrony with the walking legs. Dur­ and fossil, 01. J. Microsc. Sci. 53: ing swimming and rapid walking, the swim­ 489-578 merets are recruited along with the flagella and Williams, W.D. 197 4 . Freshwater Crustacea. legs into a cyclical, forward-advancing wave of In W.D. Williams {ed.) Biogeography and sequential power and return strokes. This Ecology in Tasmania, pp.63-11 2, Dr. W. means that there is a hierarchy of cyclic pat- Junk, The Hague.

74 AUSTRALIAN NATURAL HISTORY IN REVIEW

The colour photos (overleaf) are from The The South-West Book: A Tasmanian the wilderness could be loved to death. Yet South-West Book and were kindly supplied by Wilderness. Edited by Helen Gee and Janet this seems a smaller risk to the South-west Helen Gee. Appreciation is extended to the Fenton, Australian Conservation Founda­ than the threats posed by yet more Lake publisher and editors for permission to repro­ tion, Melbourne 1978, 307 pages, illus­ Pedders, clearfelling of forests and mining. duce them. trated, $11 .70. The South-West Book explores the attrac­ tions of the Tasmanian wilderness; its land­ " A wilderness, in contrast with those scape, people and wildlife. It documents the areas where man and his works dominate the evolution and ecology of its plants and animals, landscape, is an area where the earth and its describes its geology and landforms and tells community of life are untrammelled by man, the story of its people-Aboriginal and Euro­ where man himself is a visitor who does not pean. The editors and the Australian Conser­ remain." ( Wilderness Act of vation Foundation are to be congratulated for 1964.) putting together an informative, readable and superbly illustrated account of one of the There is little of Australia which can fit world's great natural areas. I wish that such this definition of wilderness Am erican style. forceful and informed documents existed for Unlike North America, Australia is a flat, dry other places in Australia threatened by unin­ continent with infertile soils and weather which formed exploitation. The information exists­ is best described as erratic. Because of this, "scattered in the dusty corners of museum Australian ecosyste ms are particularly and library, held in the minds of bushman and sensitive to change and the impact of human academic "-but bringing it together attests to settlement has been far greater than in North the dedication of those who are fighting to Am erica. First the Aborigines with their use of save this part of Australia's heritage. fire to drive game and clear the bush and recently the colonisation of Australia by The South-west is an endangered land­ Europeans and their domestic animals have scape. As exemplified by the destruction of altered the continent to an extent that we can Lake Pedder, the is but guess at the nature of pre-Aboriginal and prepared to destroy the wilderness in the pre-European landscapes. same way that it sacrificed its Aboriginal in­ habitants in the last century. Perhaps the As distinct from the idiosyncrasies of in­ editors of The South-We st Book are correct dividuals (explorers, adventurers and the like), when they imply that the insensitivity of 'in­ the search for wildern ess is a recent social dustry' and 'government' arises from a lack of phenomenon. It is a love affair fuelled by information and that with knowledge will come affluence (mid-East oil) and driven by the rational decisions. If correct, this book pro­ mindless bureaucracy and unending pursuit of vides the information, the insight and the material possessions with which we encumber ethics required for rational behaviour. Yet , as our lives. A wilderness is a place where we the editors recognise, few of us have resolved can be human. the "conflict between the drive towards an ever higher level of material consumption and Th e South-West Book is about the Tas­ the feeling that beautiful natural areas should manian wilderness, but it could be about any of be protected and cherished" . the few remaining wild areas in Australia: places now unique in being remote, rich in This is a book that should be read. The wildlife and without significant human South-west of Tasmania is not just a presence. Of all the wilderness areas in wilderness, it is Australia as it was- and, Australia, the Tasmanian South-west with its perhaps, as more of it should be.- H. F. water, forests and mountains has the greatest Recher, Curator of Vertebrate Ecology, The attraction to people. There is a danger in this; Australian Museum.

VOLUME 20 NUMBER 2 75 Left Fern and fu ngus. Chris Bell

Bob Graham

Fungi. Bob Graham Thi s unusual flower. lsophysis tasmanica (Hewardia) is only found in the South- West of Tas mania. Chris Bell Waratah. Chris Bell Richea dracophylla, Pi cton Riv er. Bob Graham

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