We were here for five minutes, trying to understand and appreciate the landscape. They were here for millennia. How much we could have learned from them before they were broomed away from here, with much of their wisdom lost forever.

photographer DON DEFENDERFER

Want to go back in time? It’s easy to do. Climb into a Cessna and fly from Hobart into south-west Tasmania. You will land in the past where the elements dominate. Step into the time machine and it will take you on a remarkable journey, back to where time began.

The flight to the south-west is an HG Wells-like journey that over centuries, back to a place where an untrampled natural landscape dominates and humans are at the mercy of nature.

Before you get there, appreciate the flight that quickly shifts you from urban familiarity to wilderness. Look down from the plane as you fly a few thousand feet above Hobart and see the cul-de-sacs of the suburbs and the River Derwent spreading itself wide into an estuary and out to sea. Quickly you pass over the docks and CBD and suburbs, gallant kunanyi and then a patchwork of rural farmlands. From above it looks like an illustration in a children’s storybook, and one could hear a mother softly reading to a child, there’s the apple farm, and village, and their church and the village’s horses and houses …

Soon the green and gold agricultural lands below turned to rows of plantations and then clearfelled hills, which look like a horse’s hide is being peeled back so someone could hock it.

Then the present becomes the past as untamed lands appear and surround the plane’s vista. Look: muscular mountains wrapped in clusters of fog and grey cloud, heavily forested valleys leading up to glacier-formed lakes and secret waterfalls plunging down into wild rivers which braid their way down through the forests.

The mountains are magnificent.

The view filled me with inspiration and hope, and reminded me that there is something out there, something here on earth, that is a higher power than us humans; we forget this so easily, but wilderness reminds us that we are not the centre of the universe. Wilderness takes one into the land of the sacred and our journey suddenly seemed religious; a hijra – an exodus from one reality to another, from one time to another, into a fourth dimension.

The flight descended quickly from the mountain heights, and soon we could look down over another poetic and overly prosaic view, of the dark and wide waters of Bathurst Harbour, of inky inlets and empty bays, of rivers twining through the buttongrass, tea tree and peat country, all framed by moody hills and mountains.

As the plane turned to land, there was a glimpse of the coastline in the distance and collections of offshore islands and jagged, castle-like towers of rocks which act like sentinels, warning sailors to approach in caution for the coastline here is rough and ragged and the mountains beyond offer little compassion for interlopers.

. . .

The plane landed roughly on the narrow, gravel airstrip at Melaleuca, an area surrounded by salt marsh, buttongrass and lagoons. Once the propellers stop and you’ve hoisted your backpack and start walking, you instantly realise how silent it is here – a big world of silence filling one’s ears. Soon we would be hearing more of the silent music of the south-west, but for now it was time to pitch our tent as the sky had darkened in the late afternoon and mist was descending over the surrounding hills and mountains.

We set our tents up in a dark grove of tea trees, just a few metres from Melaleuca lagoon where ducks and swans could be seen, paddling around, doing duck and swan things. A parrot squawked in a tree near our tent, checking us out, announcing our arrival.

After making camp, we took a short walk on the edge of the lagoon to absorb the silence. The silence of bird song, the bays and inlets and the surrounding mountains. A vast silence, music to my ears; it felt like a pause between symphonic movements – the silence that is the base for all music to emanate from.

As we walked, I absorbed the feeling of the landscape and it seemed sullen with the cloudy sky and tufts of fog in the mountain valleys; an introspective land – not shouting its magnificence, but more subtle and introspective. Here was a land that takes time to understand and to see its beauty. A whisper of wind blew over the bronze button grass country and as the sun emerged from the clouds, tiny golden ripples radiated across the dark flat lagoon.

The lagoon walk allowed us the opportunity to learn that we were in the ancient homelands of the needwonnee people, one of four bands that made up the south-west nation of aboriginals that lived here for thousands of years. Thousands of years. We were here for five minutes, trying to understand and appreciate the landscape. They were here for millennia. How much we could have learned from them before they were broomed away from here, with much of their wisdom lost forever.

. . .

The following day, we set off to walk towards the coast. We walked up a gently undulating path, through the buttongrass and peat lands, with views across tufted moorlands and ancient peat mounds to the treeless celadon green and granite-grey hills.

After a few hours, the easy walking soon became much more difficult as the track takes one through a long, slow stretch of tea tree-infested, muddy, rooty, boggy, difficult hiking country where it is easy to slip or trip with a heavy, unbalanced pack pulling one over.

But, just as the pleasures of bushwalking were becoming a romantic dream, we made it through the tripping zone and were descending, suddenly and surprisingly, through rich rainforest country – lichen-covered beech trees, celery top pines and giant tree ferns. We stopped at a little creek where we quenched our thirst with delicious, forest-infused, brandy-coloured water. What a treat to be in a rainforest, with all its mysterious shadows and self-absorption. The mystifying sense of the land returned, and we forgot about heavy packs and sodden boots.

From the rainforest we emerged onto the edge of a lagoon where we took off our boots to cross the outflowing creek, and soon were on the white sands of a wild beach at New Harbour. From button grass plains, through rainforest and now to a sea scape where we could look out to the Southern Ocean and see Maatsuyker Island. This was a hike of extreme and diverse beauty.

We set up camp in the woods on a ledge just off the beach. There were no other hikers or campers. We were six souls, and we had the place to ourselves. What more could we want? After cups of tea and delicious dehydrated dinners (any food becomes delicious when bushwalking), we went to bed early and fell asleep to the sounds of the waves slopping on the shore and marsupial stirrings in the bush. We slept the good sleep of those who have carried heavy belongings on their back all day and now reclined in feathery sleeping bags and the womb of tent-induced happiness.

The more natural history one learns, the greater one’s awareness of the depth and mystery of nature. I thought of this the next day when we had a day hike that went across the sands of New Harbour, up through another rainforest area (seeing tall, white-flowering leatherwoods, shining sassafras leaves and heavily lichened beech trees), across bronze-coloured buttongrass hillsides, then down through dark rainforests before emerging to the brightness of Hidden Bay and a wild, white, curling beach.

Here, again, there were no people, and the only footprints were from wallabies and sooty oyster catchers. I thought of all the plants and animals, the insects and worms and birds and microorganisms and spiders and moorlands, the underlying geology and climate and a million other components, and I realised how little I knew, my awe and appreciation were only skimming the surface of what was really here.

We came back to camp and swam in the sea to wash off the day. The water was cold but refreshing and renewing. That night we sipped a few wee drams of whiskey after dinner and saw a spotted quoll dart curiously around our campsite, looking for dessert. Before bed we lay on the beach and looked at a dome of stars – thousands of twinkling worlds far, far away. We watched the beacon of lighthouse light spin around from Maatsuyker Island and fell asleep to the waves washing the shore. No complaints from us time travellers.

. . .

I didn’t think it was possible, but over the following few days we were inundated with more inspiring views, landscapes and natural history. We hiked across the New Harbour range onto the South Coast track to another bay – Cox Bight, on the edge of Freney Lagoon and Point Eric. Here too, there were no other campers and the only bushwalker we saw all day was a young German super hiker who was planning on doing the difficult eight-day hike to Cockle Creek in just three days.

When we arrived on the beach at the harbour, we stripped off and had another swim. I never thought that in autumn that we’d be swimming each day in the most southern waters of Tasmania, but we did, we oldies, and it felt good to be foolish, to be like a young German, to feel innocent and youthful again.

The views of the ocean waves rolling into Cox Bight were stunning. We took a short walk, east down the beach, to Eric Point, and then inland through rainforest – another diverse vegetation community – coastal banksias mixing with celery top pines, tea tree and tree ferns. Tasmania is ever surprising, and its beauty is emotional.

That evening we watched the sunset, and the horizon was lit for hours with light: silvery, salmon-pink and lavender. We thought it was twilight lingering, but then realised we weren’t looking west, but were looking straight south across the ocean – and it was the aurora australis that lit the horizon. Not extravagant with florescent greens and florid purples, but more a subtle florescence that kept us watching on and off for hours. It seemed to me that it was a peek at another dimension of the solar system.

I dreamed of stars and solar flares and dolphins and distant boat lights travelling across a dark horizon.

I woke up to a wet tent. It had to happen – a bit of rain in the night (the real Tasmania) – we had been lucky so far. But we didn’t mind, it was time to hike out and so what were a few showers? The rain soon turned to mist and then fog – not a bad day to hike back to Melaleuca at all.

Across the damp buttongrass moorlands we hiked, and I pondered a quote from a Henry Reynolds book that I was reading, “The past has always haunted the present in Tasmania.” And this felt true here – the beautiful land has an edge of tragedy that one can feel.

The next day we climbed back into the time machine and flew out along the coast. Looking down we could see the bays where we had camped and the ceaseless waves rolling into shore. I looked down upon ancient dolerite cliffs, of snaking rivers cascading over the edge of the rock towers and into the sea. I watched as the wilderness landscape soon morphed back into civilisation – forestry, agriculture, aquaculture, rural towns, and then the serpent sprawl of suburbia surrounding the city.

We landed back in the present and the wild past suddenly seemed distant as I reacquainted myself with pixels and politics and population. The trip gave perspective on our island home, Tasmania. We can time travel here and visit some of the most inspirational places on earth. We can feel empowered by this, But we should also feel humility and respect for the holy ground and the dimensions of haunted time that remain.

Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 40 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian. Two volumes of collected essays and poems, "Tasmania: An island dream" Parts 1 and 2, can be bought through the Forty South Bookshop.