Lia teruttena/9 LESSER FALLS
“The numerous rivers, waterfalls and rivulets add significantly to the aesthetic qualities of the Park and to the community’s aesthetic appreciation of the Park”
“The rivers and the valleys, the landscapes and the river systems: they are all part of our stories.” Sharnie Read. TAC Aboriginal Heritage Officer
The palawa have many words for different states of water and the mountain’s lower waterfalls would have been well-known and visited on hot days. They also, potentially, became refuges in calamitous bushfires. “The rivers and the valleys, the landscapes and the river systems: they are all part of our stories,” says Sharnie Read, the TAC Aboriginal Heritage Officer.
Adventurous early Hobartians could wade up Hobart Rivulet almost to the foot of the Organ Pipes, passing several waterfalls, but the first period of mountain waterfall appreciation commenced in the 1840s with the public adoration of Wellington Falls—“The Falls” on the mountain. A second gush of appreciation came in the 1880s, Another burst in the 1930s with waterfall postcards proliferating, some hand-tinted, out of the developing tanks of John Beattie’s photographic studio. This appreciation encouraged the building of tracks to the best known / closest falls.
Yet after a century, the Hodgman map of 1936 marks only four: O’Grady’s, Featherstone Cascades, New Town and Gentle Annie. Today, the mountain’s water lovers extoll more than a dozen easily approached tumbling vistas, several with scenic admiration bridges.
These are the nine lesser falls on the mountain
Fairy Falls
A delicate waterfall on a tributary to the Hobart Rivulet east of the Betts Vale track. The falls were not well-known in historical times and there is no track to them.
Flora’s Falls
A high seasonal waterfall over the cliff below Collins Cap. Known from at least 1894, when it was photographed by Beattie, Flora’s Falls is a set of three falls, described by Chas Ramsay in 1894 as ‘Situated in the heel of a horseshoe amphitheatre of uniform perpendicular rocks, confining as it were a wealth of wondrous beauty within its curvature, the water comes down, I should say, a height of about 200ft., judging by the mere atoms my companions appeared in comparison to it. The water glides down this dizzy height, not with a clatter-dash and splatter, but with a soft undulating motion, having a wondrously soothing effect over perturbed spirits ... As with the upper, so with the lower portion of the fall; the ledge projecting outward allowed ample and perfectly dry space to walk beneath it, behind the descending water. Standing there, looking through the crystal fluid, I beheld the most charming and beautiful colours appearing and disappearing as if by magic, as the sunbeams glinted, shimmered, and flushed upon the falling waters.’
It was still well known in the 1930s as a local beauty spot.
turikina truwala/Oakes Falls
Formerly Myrtle Gully Falls in Myrtle Gully named in honour of a Cascade ranger. Its Aboriginal name is turikina truwala. WPHH0223.
Secret Falls
The track alongside these falls was opened in 1931 and for some, Secret Falls in Myrtle Gully is the most beautiful of the Hobart Rivulet falls. Their grotto-like surrounds easily making up for their diminutive stature. Previously known as Roaring Falls.
Victoria Falls
At the top of North West Bay River, but there’s no track.
Glenorchy Falls
Glenorchy Falls is situated on Humphrey’s Rivulet and was quite popular in early postcards. It is still accessible from the top of Chapel St.
Myrtle Forest Falls
A little-known cascade near Collinsvale, 1 kilometre in from the Myrtle Forest Car Park. A viewing platform looks down on the lower falls and a little further up is the main waterfall tier flowing gently down a 5-metre face.
HERITAGE SIGNIFICANCE
Waterfalls cultural value is aesthetic and social. Waterfalls were one of the key attractors for track-making, hut-building and mountain visiting. Wellington Park Management Trust has given several of these waterfalls heritage code recognition (i.e. a HH number.) Several Wellington Park falls appear on top-10 lists of Tasmanian waterfalls.