kunanyi: story of a mountain
SUNRISE GIVES THE imperceptibly curved eastern face of kunanyi / Mt Wellington an orange glow. Even when the mountain is topped with snow its dolerite columns remain exposed, their sheerness accentuated. Despite kunanyi’s proximity to nipaluna/Hobart, Australia’s second-driest capital city, the mountain often performs the important act of catching and shedding fresh water.
Millions of years ago, a hotspot in the Earth’s mantle allowed magma to penetrate a surface of silt, sand and mud. Faulting lifted the dolerite intrusion and, over aeons, erosion crafted kunanyi. A particular cluster of tors (rocky outcrops) on the summit contains basalt – evidence of lava flow. And one of the mountain’s countless boulder fields is the state’s most well developed periglacial terrain – an area that’s subjected to repeated freezing and thawing.
While there are 50 peaks higher than kunanyi in Tasmania, it’s the highest in the Wellington Range of the state’s south-east. Its various fragile ecosystems support a diversity of wildlife, including vulnerable species such as the eastern quoll, grey goshawk, and a freshwater crustacean known as mountain shrimp that is endemic to an area extending barely beyond kunanyi’s tarns.
Precipitation on the summit can seep for hundreds of metres through dolerite and sandstone until the water hits mudstone and emerges at The Springs, a popular meeting place and picnic area. From here, it travels another 9.5km along the Hobart Rivulet to the River Derwent, which empties into Storm Bay and joins the Tasman Sea.
On kunanyi’s western side is the source of the North West Bay River. It flows down a riverbed through subalpine heathlands, snow-gum forest and over Wellington Falls to drain into North West Bay, and thence to D’Entrecasteaux Channel, near Bruny Island.
The cultural and spiritual bedrock of kunanyi is Aboriginal. The palawa/pakana – First Nations peoples of lutruwita/Tasmania – have been here for
