Getting back to the shack
IHAVE always had the feeling that Tasmanians own more shacks per capita than is the case in the other states.
Shack culture has been a huge part of Tasmanian life for more than a century. It is hard to find figures confirming this since so many shacks are offgrid and non-compliant, mere humpies and shanties of no financial value, tucked away where they might not be expected.
But during the recent lockdown the facts seemed to speak for themselves as the Premier felt compelled to spend much of his time telling Tasmanians not to go to their beloved shacks.
Tasmanians and their shacks were not easily parted and, despite the threat of hefty fines, the sacred connection was not readily severed. Some miscreants just could not resist the call of the wild.
So, no wonder last week when our rulers finally relented there was a back-to-theshack surge of thousands of Tasmanians.
This week I took my teenage son Jim and Dusty the dog back to our shack at Bronte Park in the geographic centre of the state.
For me, Bronte Park will always be my heartland. It is the source of many of my earliest memories as a Hydro-kid. It is where Santa and the Easter bunny distributed goodies to eager children bussed in from nearby villages, Tarraleah, Butlers Gorge and Waddamana.
When I was a three-yearold, Bronte was the capital of my world. All good things happened there, including cracker night. Back then in the good old days when it came to explosives the Hydro could always be relied on.
The Hydro villages were transient places. When the work was finished few families remained but many who moved on to the big smoke had grown to love the plateau and built holiday shacks there. Others like me and some of my Bronte neighbours, were drawn back after a life away.
A visit to the shack community at the back of Bronte village explains the original morphology of the Tasmanian Highland shack. Many simply grew up around an old caravan, a tramcar or a bus. Successive generations might add a lean-to and then a lean-three or four and there you have it – the quintessential Highland shack.
One hallmark of a good shack is an even better woodpile. There are Bronte ‘shackies’ who spend more time ‘wood hooking’ than they do hooking trout. But their woodpiles are a work of art and a source of great pride.
Another labour of love is the never-ending shack maintenance. When first built many shacks were better than camping but only just. They were thrown together from scrap by owner builders whose enthusiasm was way ahead of their skill set. But amazingly decades later they still afford shelter from the stormy blast and happily continue to escape any overzealous scrutiny from the council building inspector.
Surely, he wouldn’t dare intrude! This is Tasmanian folk heritage. These shacks are sacred to a mob who have held them tightly for generations and no politician should ever dare touch them.
I have some great mates who live full time on the plateau, in waterfront shacks where the land and the view anywhere else in the world would fetch more than a million dollars. One of them, Greg Beecroft, also has the best job in the world. He manages Australia’s premier private trout fishery, the celebrated London Lakes.
Greg emerged from lockdown this week in better form than many of my city mates.
In a sense plateau people have been self-isolating for much of their lives. “It’s that kind of place,” he told me. “We don’t usually have a lot of distractions. The pub burned down a couple of years ago, so people tend to be self-contained. And we have always been used to isolation. We get snowed-in up here every winter.”
During the lockdown there was a time when even Greg started to describe his situation as ‘isolation squared’ but he still reckons he came out ahead.
“I lost a lot of business when my trout-guiding clients couldn’t get here. But still I saved heaps because I couldn’t go to town and luckily enough, I continued in the job of managing London Lakes.”
Greg Beecroft has always been one of those ‘the beer glass is half full’ kind of blokes. Back in the late ’60s we both went to Launceston Matriculation College. When I was 16 and the legal drinking age was 21 he introduced me to my first Boags beer. Because he thought I might like it.
‘Croftie’ was a leading light at LMC and his girlfriend was the most beautiful in the school. He was always lucky and still is. I wouldn’t play poker with him and he catches more trout on the fly than anyone I know.
Nor did the ‘Croftie’ luck run out during lockdown. “I guess I was lucky during COVID. I could not have been in a safer and more peaceful place. And I kept the job of looking after one of the world’s best fishing lakes,” he told me this week.
How did he cope not seeing people? “I certainly wasn’t depressed and no I was never lonely. I had all those big beautiful London Lakes trout for company.”
Eons ago Greg and I left Launceston for university in Hobart. He chose to study the dismal science of economics and luckily (as things turned out) gave it away after a year.
Life had better things in store.
But could it ever be said he chucked in ‘the real world’ for a cosy lakeside shack in the Tasmanian high country?
Never. ‘Croftie’ is a clever man who chucked in the so called ‘real world’ for something much better. A place of radiant light, sublime dawns and raging sunsets, a place where the only sound is the wind in the trees, the crackling of a log fire and the soothing music of lake water lapping on rocky shores.
Get yourself a shack on the Central Plateau and all the rest gets thrown in for free.
Along with the isolation.