Basil Steers is a name synonymous with mountain huts, and trapping and snaring in Tasmania’s high country.  Basil was born on 27^th September 1927, the eldest of three children in the family of William (Bill) and Linda Steers who lived in the tiny farming community of Gowrie in the shadow of Mt Roland.  (Many years later when his father re-married, Basil also gained a stepbrother.) 

Like most country boys, when not attending school, his days were filled with farm chores, rabbiting, possum hunting, and horse riding, at which he became proficient at a very early age. Basil left school when barely a teenager and gained his first job in a local sawmill. In 1942, at the age of 15, Basil followed his father into the mountains for his first experience of winter snaring. It was the commencement of a life-long love affair that Basil would have with the bush and, in particular, the high country plains of the Mersey area.  

Basil and his father, whom Basil respectfully referred to as “the old Dad” enjoyed several successive years together and made a formidable and successful hunting duo.  The February Plains area was central to their winter hunting runs.  Each year, prior to the hunting season, Basil and Bill, would leave their farm at Gowrie and walk pack horses into the Plains with stores and provisions for their approaching isolation which usually lasted several weeks. This was before roads had been forged into the area, when all access was on foot with heavily laden pack horses. This arduous trip would mean leaving home in the very early pre-dawn hours and not arriving until well after dark that evening, having often encountered adverse weather conditions, including snow or heavy rain, and always the possibility of flooded creeks to wade through.  

Once unpacked, either Basil or Bill, sometimes both of them, would lead the horses back home and then, once more, make the long return walk back to the Hut. The process would be repeated in reverse at the end of the season, when either Basil or his father would walk out, fetch the horses back in, load them with skins from their weeks of trapping, and walk the horses back out again. It was not a life-style for the faint hearted.  The days were long and hard, living conditions were spartan, and the weather was often atrocious and dangerous. There was a definite art to setting the traps with different types of snares used for different animals.  Wallabies and pademelons were caught using a springer neck snare, while the larger kangaroos were caught with a wire drag.  Possums were caught by a wire noose on a pole. Heavy snow falls would not only often bury snares but also make mobility for the men difficult.  Basil and his father used crude snow shoes to assist them to move across the deep snow. 

A typical day usually started before dawn, with long distances covered on foot across the plain, clearing and re-setting snares. Return to the hut was often well after dark at night, and even then, there was still more work to be done. The previous day’s collection of dried skins was taken down from the walls of the hut and the new skins pegged out to dry by the fire. Skin quality was always good and the skins well sought after, often having been pre-sold before the hunting season even commenced.  

A typical season would result in hundreds and hundreds of wallaby and possum skins collected. For almost a decade Basil enjoyed a close and compatible working relationship with his father, but in the early 1950’s, Basil’s life story entered another phase.  His father was suffering from ill health and chose to withdraw from his snaring activities, and at about the same time, in 1951, Basil married Margaret Wilson and commenced a family a couple of years later. By the mid-1950’s Basil and Margaret Steers had moved to the Deloraine district where Basil continued to work in the bush for many years until gaining employment on Ken Jacobs’ dairy farm at Dairy Plains, in the mid-1960’s.  

By now, Basil’s family was complete with 2 daughters and 2 sons, namely Christine, Wayne, Anne and Philip. Apart from some recreational hunting in his spare time, it would not be until the 1970’s that Basil would resume the occupation he loved so much. He found himself in a position where he was able to combine his passion for snaring in the high country during the winter, with the running of cattle on the grazing leases of the February Plains during the summer months. And so it was that Basil Steers returned to the high country at a time when most others had given up the snaring runs and, as a result, found himself very much in demand. While it had been “the old Dad” whose company Basil had kept on the mountains during the 1940’s, now, in the 1970’s he was enjoying the experience of sharing his much loved high country with his wife and children who joined him during school holidays or weekends. His daughter Anne fondly remembers celebrating her 16th birthday in Pine Hut, and his sons Philip and Wayne assisted him with the building of huts, including the February Plains No 1 Hut. 

While most of the time it was a lonely, solitary existence, Basil had mates who helped him get supplies into his huts at the beginning of a season, and helped him carry out the skins at the end of the season. Men such as Ron Morgan, Ken Bakes, and Bobby Dixon, and his son-in-law Johnny Donohue, all played a role and shared in Basil’s later life in the high country. Basil also enjoyed the company of his loyal dogs Ben and Flick, black and tan kelpies, who were as devoted to their master, as their master was to them.  Beside every hut that Basil ever built, was a dog kennel for his canine mates. All cooking was done over the open fire in the huts. Hearty meals usually consisted of wallaby steak or patties, or wallaby stew prepared in the camp oven, complimented with potatoes and damper bread, with a billy on the boil for a brew of hot tea. Sometimes visitors would take some fresh food in, and occasionally Basil would catch a rabbit for variety, however possum was never on his menu. 

Basil would be away for weeks at a time, during the winter months of May, June & July, returning home in August, and it was always an anxious and worrying time for his wife Margaret, particularly when the weather was bad and snowfalls heavy.  Sometimes it would be weeks before word would be heard of Basil, but he always maintained that he knew he was ok, and cautioned his family or friends about going into the mountain to look for him, fearing that they would be more at risk in the adverse weather conditions than he was.  

Homecomings were always much anticipated and looked forward to by his children, and they recall that their father was a gentle and quiet family man with a soft spot for his kids.  Basil was also a modest and humble man but loved nothing more than a good yarn, a joke or a story-telling session. He was generous with his time and knowledge and was known for his patience in teaching the art of making and setting snares to those who sought his wisdom. Within his own lifetime, Basil’s reputation as one of the last snarers of the high country was fast becoming legendary and he found himself in demand by media outlets.  

In 1980, Basil featured in an episode of the then popular ABC’s “A Big Country” series.  Several years later, the ABC produced a follow-up story narrated by Colleen McCullough.  By now snaring had been totally banned by the Tasmanian Government and the film concentrated on a bush skill which had been lost forever and of a man whose life-time talents had been abruptly taken from him. Basil Steers passed away in November, 1997 – aged 70 – after health problems associated with emphysema.  Basil was a smoker and enjoyed his ‘rollies’, but both he and his family also believed that the very life-style he loved so much may have also contributed to his health issues.  Years and years of inhaling the thick, ever-present smoke from the fires which were necessary to dry and cure the skins in the confined quarters of huts with no chimneys, possibly, and most probably, was a contributing factor to his failing health in later years. Basil Steers name will be forever etched in the cultural history of our State as an extremely accomplished bushman and the last of the high country snarers – a unique band of men who lived off the land against significantly difficult and harsh conditions. 

Basil has left a rich legacy of a way of life now gone and one which, in all probability, will never return. (With thanks to the Steers Family for their assistance and co-operation in compiling this information and also, along with Ned Terry, for the supplied photos)