On the eastern slope of a range of hills in southern Tasmania, a small stream meanders down across pastures to the valley floor.
If we trace this stream up into the treeline we pass into a belt of stately mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans). With a height of around 30 metres they can’t quite match their giant siblings further back in the ranges, which tower to 90 metres, the tallest flowering plants on earth. As we proceed upwards, progress becomes more difficult, the open forest merges into dense rainforest. Soon, casual exploration must stop as the stream disappears beneath the impenetrable undergrowth.
It was not until 1979 that someone cut a path through the rainforest, joining the stream higher up, and was able to track it upwards to its source. The source is a spring, bubbling from beneath a rock, set in a glade of giant tree ferns - (Dicksonia antarctica). It is a landscape that may have altered little since Jurassic times.
Where did the spring come from?
The ‘Roaring Forties’ winds carry water from the Southern Ocean across Tasmania, where it condenses and falls as rain on the windward slopes. It percolates through the rock, to accumulate in the natural white quartz sandstone aquifer. From here it flows out on the other side of the range.
It is from this spring that a pipeline was laid one kilometre to our bottling plant below the treeline