Author John Muir Explored Southern Australia — This is How I Retraced His Steps

In 1903, the American conservationist John Muir — legendary nature author, founding father of the Sierra Membership, lover of sequoias, tenting buddy of Teddy Roosevelt — set off on a botanical world tour or, as he referred to as it, a “tree hunt.” Then, as as we speak, Australia was a dream vacation spot for nature lovers. Muir’s steamer paused at Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia, for under at some point. However along with his typical prodigious power, the 65-year-old Muir — who sported a protracted white beard and exuded an impish humorousness — dashed to town’s Botanic Gardens, which was bursting with otherworldly Aussie flora. Muir was in raptures. From there, he wrote of gazing up on the thickly wooded Adelaide Hills to town’s east. “Want I may have spent per week in them,” he wrote wistfully. 

Had he finished so, Muir would have been astonished to find three Californian sequoias rising on a regal non-public property. The saplings had been planted a half-century earlier by an obsessive tree lover, Arthur Hardy, as a part of an off-the-cuff botanical trade between america and Australia. In 2021, some 120 years after Muir’s go to, an expensive guesthouse opened subsequent to the Hardys’ mansion within the hills and was named Sequoia Lodge in honor of the Californian trio on its grounds.

As an Australian expat dwelling in New York, I turned fascinated by this eccentric story. I wished to make the journey that Muir couldn’t and spend as a lot time as doable within the hills and wild countryside he’d glimpsed again in 1903. However reasonably than abide by Muir’s infamous austerity (he was well-known for his spartan eating regimen), I’d revel within the area’s famed eating scene, mapping out a highway journey that will mix gastronomy and even a bit artwork with an out of doors routine of bushwalking and roo-watching. 

Following Muir’s tree-hunting instincts, I arrived in Adelaide and made a beeline for the Botanic Gardens. Its verdant groves and sculpted lawns patrolled by long-legged native ibises have barely modified since Muir’s go to, though a century-plus of sturdy tree development has obscured any views of the hills. Within the leafy coronary heart of the gardens, I used to be delighted to identify considered one of Australia’s quirkiest relics: the Santos Museum of Financial Botany, housed in an edifice that resembles a Grecian temple. When the museum opened in 1881, it confirmed newly arrived immigrants which crops would develop within the Aussie soil and, thus, the best way to flip a revenue. Displayed in vintage glass instances are dozens of eerily lovely papier-mâché fashions of fruit and fungi made by a German artist group, Heinrich Arnoldi & Co.

“It’s so calming right here,” whispered my information on the museum. Few know in regards to the quirky establishment, she added, however those that stumble throughout it are bewitched. 

A dreamlike aura lingered as I strolled towards town heart alongside North Terrace, feeling as if I’d been caught in a scene from the cult Peter Weir film “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” “That is our equal of Museum Mile in Manhattan,” stated my information on the South Australian Museum, which I visited subsequent. Its regal galleries showcase uncooked opals and the world’s largest assortment of Aboriginal artifacts, together with shields, totems, spears, and boomerangs — considered one of which is extra othan 7,000 years previous. Looming subsequent door was the equally majestic State Library of South Australia, the place students had been hunched over desks like medieval scribes. A creaking staircase led to a silent, light-filled chamber the place pale survey maps had been unfold on mahogany tables. Delicate engravings of Aussie flora hung alongside a marble sculpture of John McDouall Stuart, a Boy’s Personal–model explorer who set off from Adelaide into the outback.

Had John Muir visited this beautiful time capsule? A wizened librarian appeared puzzled. “By no means heard of him,” he stated earlier than wanting Muir up within the catalogue. “Oh, sure, we’ve received considered one of his books!” He produced an 1894 quantity, Muir’s “The Mountains of California.” I photographed the e book’s opening pages on my iPhone and browse them that night. Over a dinner of crayfish (as they name lobster regionally) at Arkhé, an open-flame restaurant in Adelaide, I took in Muir’s delirious descriptions of the Sierra Nevada and sequoias, which he referred to as “the king of conifers.”

The subsequent morning, I set off on my tree-hunt highway journey. A couple of miles into my drive, the cityscape gave method to a winding mountain highway crowded on either side by the attractive bush (or wild forests, in Aussie parlance) of the Adelaide Hills. Roughly the dimensions of New York Metropolis, the hills are a mix of uncooked nationwide parkland, manicured farms, and vineyards, many cultivated within the 1800s by German winemakers who had escaped spiritual persecution in Europe. The thriving wineries of modern-day Australia would little question astonish these Lutheran pioneers, to not point out the self-denying John Muir — though they certainly could be fascinated by how botany has been modernized and commercialized. 

That development was evident at my first cease: Jurlique, the plant-based-skin-care model that grows its personal components on a 154-acre natural farm. The supervisor, Cherie Hutchinson, led me by way of fields of violet, licorice, chamomile, and different Mediterranean transplants. “Sizzling summers and moist winters are good for crops,” she stated of the native local weather. Nonetheless, rural Australia poses its challenges. She tut-tutted at a mangled rose mattress, muttering, “Some roos have been nibbling these!”

That afternoon, I reached Sequoia Lodge, a resort that exposed itself as a row of 14 trendy glass-and-wood suites on the sting of a sandstone bluff. Rising close to my door was one of many three sequoias planted by Arthur Hardy in 1852. A mere 170 years previous, the 75-foot-tall tree is an toddler in contrast with the oldest of its American brethren, a few of which began rising lengthy earlier than the Parthenon was inbuilt Athens. The opposite two had been rising a couple of yards away within the non-public backyard of Mount Lofty Home, the Hardys’ majestic mansion (and now a separate boutique lodge). 

A ardour for timber would have been all that Hardy would have shared with the frugal Muir. Hardy was kind of an antipodean Jay Gatsby, a lawyer, politician, and get together animal. He and his spouse, Martha, lived in what she described as “a form of feudal splendor,” internet hosting decadent dinners and soirées for well-to-do farmers and Adelaide worthies. As we speak that custom of festive gastronomy is stored alive at Hardy’s Verandah Restaurant, which has terrific valley views. 

There are a number of mountaineering trails that begin close to the lodge, so the subsequent morning I set off with a lodge information, Elisa Rigato. A couple of steps alongside the Heysen Path, we noticed a plump koala sleeping in a tree, together with two species of rosella, a parrot-like chicken. About an hour later, we arrived at Cleland Wildlife Park, which has a rescue heart for injured marsupials, the place we noticed a dozen extra koalas drowsing in gum timber behind a fence. “They’ve all of the eucalyptus leaves they will eat, and so they get sprayed by misting machines if it will get too sizzling,” Rigato stated. “It’s luxurious.” 

On our stroll again, she defined that the path, which runs 750 miles from the coast to the outback, was named after Hans Heysen, a mid-Twentieth-century panorama painter who lived within the hills. Digging a bit deeper, I discovered that Heysen had migrated from Germany as a toddler and have become well-known for his romantic watercolors of blue gum timber and sheep set towards majestic empty skies. When Muir visited Australia in 1903, Heysen would have simply returned from artwork faculty in Paris, however had the pair ever met, I believed to myself, they’d certainly have regarded one another as soulmates. 

Intrigued, the next day I toured Heysen’s property, the Cedars, exterior Hahndorf, a city that wears its German heritage proudly. “Hans was a conservationist earlier than it was standard in Australia,” stated a volunteer information, Jo Kerestes, as we wandered the serene dwelling and gardens. Heysen lived there along with his spouse and their eight youngsters, just like the von Trapp household. They had been nice entertainers, luring Hollywood stars and European aristocrats. “Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh carried out Shakespeare right here. Anna Pavlova danced,” Kerestes stated proudly as she confirmed me a modest stage in the lounge. 

The farther south I drove, the wilder South Australia turned. For my final night time, I headed about an hour to the spectacular Fleurieu Peninsula, which protrudes from the continent’s underbelly towards the Nice Australian Bight, the big oceanic bay off the southern coast. Taking my dream of wilderness to the intense, I had signed as much as keep in one of many distant trendy cabins on the low-impact, eco-friendly Esca, within the Inman Valley.

Because the final rays of golden daylight pale, I turned onto an unpaved monitor flanked by shadowy bush. There wasn’t one other automotive on the highway. Mobile phone reception pale, and the radio crackled. A couple of kangaroos stared at me from the facet of the highway and bounded away. 

After rounding a bend, nonetheless, I used to be astonished to see an infinite bonfire on a hilltop. Once I paused to take a photograph of the blaze, two silhouetted figures waved at me to affix. They had been Esca’s homeowners, Mark Kirk and Claire Mills, who had been burning branches cleared from their land. Close by that they had arrange a sundown picnic with native Roquefort and Camembert and glowing wine from Mosquito Hill. Solitude, I made a decision, was overrated. Way more satisfying was this open-air aperitif with new pals, watching the sky flip lurid shades of pink and orange.

The subsequent morning, Mills provided to take me mountaineering alongside the coastal part of the Heysen Path. The trail snaked alongside Waitpinga Cliffs, by way of a tangle of salt-toughened scrub, gnarled branches, and spiky crops that may have been plucked from an episode of the sci-fi collection Misplaced in Area. Hovering within the distance had been the tiny islands Iles Bourdet and the Pages, which hard-bitten Yankee whalers sailed by within the nineteenth century. There wasn’t a cloud within the sky, however a cold gale blasted up from the Southern Ocean. This was the final cease earlier than Antarctica, and it felt prefer it. 

Ultimately, the path descended to Kings Seaside, the place bulbous heads of seaweed bobbed between huge boulders within the water — like Neptune’s bathtub. I used to be eager for a swim, however the air was icy and the water close to freezing. I needed to ask myself: What would John Muir have finished? There was no different selection however to strip off my shirt and footwear and throw myself into the waves. I lasted about 5 seconds, however I’ve seldom felt so alive. 

A model of this story first appeared within the July 2024 difficulty of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Nature Hop.”