Tasmanian bushwalkers huddled around camp stoves still talk in reverential tones about the “Prince of Rasselas”, a legendary bushman renowned in the 1940s and ‘50s for his generosity, stature (he stood over 190cm tall and was “well-proportioned”) and hearty laugh. In one version of the tale, he was an illegitimate member of the royal family who was paid to live in solitude at the end of the world. The truth is less exotic but scarcely less remarkable.
Ernie Bond was born in Hobart in 1891, the son of businessman and politician Frank Bond and his wife Sarah Emma Cowburn. Ernie followed the rush of miners to the remote south-west after osmiridium was discovered in creeks in the Adams Valley in 1924. The naturally occurring alloy was prized as a key ingredient in fountain pen nibs and electric light filaments, and was also used by police to record fingerprints and by the military to create poison gas. In the mid-1920s it was worth £30 per ounce – about seven times the value of gold. Miners called it “osie” or, less imaginatively, “metal”.
The town of Adamsfield was quickly established and at its height had a population of more than 1,000, with three grocery stores, a bakery, butcher, bush hospital, police station, a pub/billiard hall and a “gumboot smith’s emporium” (boot repairer and general trader). Getting to Adamsfield involved a 35km hike from the township of Fitzgerald (near present-day Maydena), with an overnight stop at the Florentine River where, in a sign of progress, a bridge was built to replace a log which had previously been the only way across. Supplies could be transported by pack teams for four pence per pound, or enterprising locals who carried huge loads on their backs for one shilling per pound (about 20 cents per kilogram). Bushman and part-time policeman Arthur Fleming once reportedly carried a 200-pound (90kg) pack from the Florentine Crossing to Adamsfield without a break for an unspecified wager.
Ernie Bond followed the Sawback Track to Adamsfield in 1927, fell in love with the wild scenery and decided to build a home in the nearby glacial valley known as the Vale of Rasselas at the foot of the snow-capped Denison Range. A three-room residence he called Gordon Vale was erected in two months using wood split mostly from one huge swamp gum (two smaller huts, an “office” and “love nest” were added later). He established an extensive fruit and vegetable garden, baked his own bread and washed it down with potent homemade honey mead. His son, young Ernie, later described the bushman’s baking technique. “He wouldn’t so much knead the bread as pummel it. Then he’d stick his arm in the long bush oven to test the temperature.”
Bond ran a successful business, employing up to six staff, bottling hundreds of jars of raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants and carrying them over a ridge to the town.
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\Bond recorded in his diaries his encounters with local wildlife, including kangaroos and wallabies that were eating the tops off his carrots. He trapped animals for food, including wallabies, possums, wombats, quolls, Tasmanian devils and native hens, but let some animals go including at least one thylacine and a platypus. He opposed excessive hunting and was commissioned by Tasmanian Museum director Dr Joseph Pearson to collect “devils, tiger cats, tigers and other animals of interest” to send to Hobart for study, preserving them in a 44-gallon drum.
Pearson, who commissioned the first biological survey of Tasmanian wildlife, made a concerted effort to obtain thylacine specimens through collectors like Bond, and received five pouch young, preserved in jars of ethanol in the basement of the Tasmanian Museum. They were so young that decades later two were found to actually be Tasmanian devils (the specimens are still in the museum basement). It’s possible one or more of the thylacines came from Bond but there is no surviving paperwork that would tell us for sure.
Adamsfield was all but abandoned after the onset of World War II. Bond’s employees left and for the next 18 years his only company was his dog and visiting snarers, trappers and bushwalkers. An article in Wild Life magazine in 1953 reported that, “These parties came at first from the Hobart Walking Club and then later, as his fame spread, from all over the Commonwealth.”
Tasmanian walker Keith Lancaster recorded a visit to “the hermit of Gordon Vale” in 1947 after a two-day trek. “Any doubts as to the outcome of my intrusion were soon dispelled as this hefty, bearded six-footer welcomed me inside and poured forth his unstinted hospitality,” Lancaster wrote.
“Imagine my delight at being pressed to the table for the evening meal in company with his other guests, the Steane family, and how I responded to the tasty mutton and vegetables he packed before me. But this excellent first course paled into insignificance when the strawberries and cream were produced and each allotted a huge dinner-plate full! And then came the custard and jellies – a magnificent repast, the like of which one can only dream about whilst out on mountain excursions.
“Sensing my delight and amazement at the excellence of the fare, Ern Bond’s grey eyes twinkled and his face wreathed under the pointed beard as he remarked, ‘Yes, we do ourselves fairly well here’.”
By the early 1950s, the bridge over the Florentine had burnt down, making life even more remote, and Bond’s health was failing. He returned to Hobart in 1952, leaving Gordon Vale to the Hobart and Launceston Bushwalking clubs. He sold fruit at roadside stalls for several years and died on May 1, 1962, aged 70.
Ironically, soon after there was a resurgent demand for osmiridium for use in electronics and two bulldozers were taken to Adamsfield. There were suggestions a German company could reopen the field, but by 1968 prices had fallen again and interest collapsed. Today all that remains of the town are some rusting relics.
There was another bizarre chapter in the Gordon Vale story. During the Cold War a reclusive Utah billionaire named Martin Polin identified Tasmania as the best spot on the planet to survive the apparently inevitable nuclear holocaust. He bought 23 properties in remote parts of the state, including Gordon Vale and a site on the central plateau, where he built a concrete bunker and stacked it with supplies.
After Polin’s death in 2007, Gordon Vale was put on the market and bought by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy. It is classified by the Tasmanian Government as a historical archaeological site, and in 2013 was included in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
Ernie Bond’s huts have been almost completely reclaimed by nature, with some fence posts and oddly out-of-place European plants the only evidence this was once home to a prince.
This article was adapted from Alistair Paton’s book Of Marsupials and Men. The book is available at https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/marsupials-and-men and bookstores.
Alistair Paton is a bushwalker, journalist and author. On his first trip to Tasmania as a young boy he was bitten on the finger while trying to pat a possum at Cradle Mountain. It didn't deter him from returning many times since, to experience the island's wild beauty and explore its fascinating history. He lives in Melbourne with his wife Hanna and partially domesticated mutt Lenny.