The Ceremonial Landscape
People go to the mountain for many ceremonial purposes. They go there to propose marriage. They go there to conceive children. They go there to be married. And they go up there, at last, to be buried.
Kinna and Andy’s mountain wedding
mountain MATCHES
DISPATCHES
The mountain has three stone memorial plaques for lost souls, for Radford, Richards and Smith and several commemorative plaques for the road-builders and the mayors, but there are gravestones too, especially in the summit area.
Search Trove for “Mount Wellington Search Party” and you will find records going back two hundred years. Mostly, the lost are found, not too much the worse for their adventure. but a few are gone never to be seen again.
“On June 26, 1828, Frederick Hardwieke, Government servant, went on to the eminence. He was never again seen.”
“Several unfortunate persons who at various times have imprudently attempted the ascent without a guide, have never returned, nor has any vestige of them ever been discovered” wrote Louisa Anne Meredith in 'My Home in Tasmania' in 1852. Meredith’s husband’s niece, Clara Sabina Meredith, fell to her death from the Organ Pipes.
In the 1840s a pair of young sailors were reported to have attempted the Pinnacle and disappeared. Five days later, one was found near Brown’s River in an almost senseless state from exhaustion. The other, never.
Skeletons have been found and no one can say who they were or how they came there. They speculate on “THE MOUNT WELLINGTON SKELETON” Sir—Some of your readers will remember the finding of a human skeleton upon Mount Wellington last year, and the succeeding fruitions attempts to find out who the unfortunate was who perished there.
In January 1855 a Mr Oliver was lost on the mountain and never returned.
In March of 1896 a body was found on Mount Wellington. Page 2 news in the Mercury.
As recently as 2017 a skeleton was discovered at the base of the Organ Pipes. It was suggested that it may have been that of a woman who went missing on the Mountain in 1997. Perhaps she fell.
That more than a few have disappeared without trace has long been known. That the mountain is a place to which some go to lose their own life is certainly, occasionally, the case.
ENSHRINE is gathering historical and contemporary accounts of mountain ceremonies. Such activities may take the form of rites, rituals and ceremonies.
Rite
A customary observance, a social custom or practice or conventional act—when given significance—becomes a rite. Not all rites are solemn: for example, the British family Christmas rite. Hobartians have Christmas rites on the mountain too. There are rite of passage, too. Being benighted is one.
Ritual
A ritual is a series of rites. Any series of actions or type of behaviour regularly and invariably followed by someone is ritualised. It arises from convention or habit or a body of customary observances. Some level of solemnity is typical, but it need not be religious or solemn—the players gathered in their ritual pre-match huddle. The important thing is that the order is proscribed and maintained.
The laws of the Park are often just such conventions solidified into law. They are an insistence on formal observance. By following the rules, you enact ritual. But it is more when we follow a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. Say, when you carefully pack your rucksack, put on your mountain weatherproof gear, check everything is working and in order, travel to a particular place on the mountain and … walk or run or simply sit and observe.
CEREMONY
The mountain has its own festivals and they have sites. The Festival of the Dawn in the late 1930s, the Mountain Festivals of the 1990s, the 2021 MOFO summit trance.
He showed them to their table with great ceremony.
The ritual observances and procedures required or performed at grand and formal occasions are ceremonies. Here we are at marriages and funerals on the mountain, but in another sense, formal polite behaviour is ceremonial. Like not standing on the very, very pinnacle of a mountain out of respect is ceremonial. A ceremony also often arises from convention or habit: for example taking a regular walk on the mountain may mildly ceremonial.
HERITAGE VALUES
The mountain’s ceremonial grounds demonstrate the mountain’s Historical, Social and Spiritual heritage significance.
HERITAGE SIGNIFICANCE
The mountain’s ceremonial grounds have received passing consideration and are therefore likely of some local heritage significance.
The 1997 management plan included in a list of 13 Interpretation Themes ‘monuments and events’ but a 2005 revision by Scripps and McConnell concurred with all the themes but this one, concluding it ‘likely to have little interest as an isolated theme (p 60.)’.
SOURCES
Focus on the Fringe Scripps & McConnell 2005
Women’s Places Around Hobart