photographer TONY ROBERTSON
One day many years ago, an Ulverstone man tried to reach the top of a Tasmanian mountain. It is a difficult ascent. There is no clear route, and the way is through a mixture of dense scrub and rocky ridges.
After several hours trying several ways to reach the peak, the man had a lucky break, finding what looked like an old trail. He pushed up it to a first ridge, but then called it a day and followed the trail back down, making a mental location map so he could find it again.
He returned another day – still many years ago – and pushed up onto a second ridge, then continued following the path, although it was so sketchy he frequently had to circle around to pick it up again. Then the weather closed in, visibility dropped to a few metres, and again the man retreated. However, he now felt confident that he could find his way to the top.
He waited for a favourable weather forecast, and returned early one weekend (this is still years ago), with an overnight pack. At the base of the climb, he found two other people looking for the way up. The man offered to show them the way, and led them to the first ridge, where he left them after giving them his name card – the man is a photographer. He also warned them to be careful when descending, as it was easy to get lost.
A few hours later, the man finally succeeded in reaching the mountain summit. He dropped his pack for a much-needed break. His phone rang. It was the two people he had left on the first ridge, and they were in trouble. They were lost, they had minimal clothing, and the temperature was dropping fast.
The lost pair got co-ordinates to their position from their phone, which they relayed to the man on the summit, who in turn managed to ring a friend who contacted emergency services. The search and rescue people contacted our man and wanted to help him find the lost pair, but with a weak signal, he could get no GPS function on his phone.
By chance, he had brought with him an Olympus TG5 pocket camera, which can give GPS co-ordinates. The man agreed to descend until he was closer to the pair, then ring through his co-ordinates. From that, search and rescue officers gave him a compass bearing.
As darkness fell, he climbed over ridges and through gullies and, after a considerable time, found the two lost people. From there, he walked them back to the road and the waiting police.
The man drove home to Ulverstone that night with the thought that he wasn’t meant to spend a night on the mountain. The two rescued people returned home, opened the photographer’s Facebook page, and have been following him for years since then.
The reason the man from Ulverstone was so keen to spend time atop that mountain was to get the photograph that accompanies this story. He got it in early 2024 when he finally returned, after an eight-hour hike, to the mountain top, dropped his pack for a much-needed break, and took in the staggering view. His phone didn’t ring. He camped the night and took some wonderful photographs, including the one opposite.
The man’s name is Tony Robertson. The name of the mountain is a secret.
Chris Champion is the editor of Forty South Tasmania and a director of Forty South Publishing. He has worked as an editor and writer in Australia and Asia for more than 50 years.
