Posts filed under 'Hiking/Trekking'
Lake Cygnus campsite. 17 km today in 9.5 hours. Supposed to be here with Evan and Gaye, but I think (and hope) they decided to camp less than 1 km back up the trail. It was a long day. We left the trailhead at 9am after having camped there last night. The first 4.5 hours of walking were muddy and slippery and muddy – similar at times to Frenchman’s Cap. It was slow going most of the way and rather frustrating. We didn’t even get to start to climb until 2:30pm and from there we had a 800 m climb to the top of Mt. Thespius. Gaye seemed to be doing really well and Evan was doing good considering it was his first day of hiking in Tasmania, until that is, he slipped in the mud and hit his eye on a tree branch. It was a pretty painful hit and it slowed him down quite a bit.
Gaye and I got to the top just after 5pm and waited for Evan who showed up about 10 minutes later. It was windy and cold and cloud covered at the top – no views to be had. We continued on from there, but I think at that point the energy levels changed dramatically for the group. Evan and Gaye started dragging behind and they both seemed really tired. I tried to pick up the pace because I got my second wind and knew that we were going to be racing against dark. Gaye wanted to turn around and camp somewhere and I said no way because we were only less than 2 km from the campsite and it was surley safer to get off the ridge and out of the wind. I went ahead and just kept going in order to get myself to a safe spot. I got to the campsite about 40 minutes later and at that point it was 6:30pm and just starting to get dark. I quickly set up my tent and walked back to the junction with my headlamp on and waited. I stood there for 15 minutes, called out a few times, and just waited with my headlamp shining up the trail. No Evan or Gaye. I hope they are ok and just decided to camp up there. Hopefully for them there will be no storms tonight. I’ll set out early tomorrow to go back and find them.
Evan in the mud
Awesome views on the way up
Clouds rolling in at the top
April 8th, 2004
Hanging out in the park for another day, waiting for my friend Evan to arrive from Sydney tomorrow. Met a cool girl from Adelaide yesterday named Gaye (also travelling on her own), and we drove up the road to a cute little coffee shop along the creek for an afternoon ‘cuppa’. She seems keen to go into the Western Arthur Range which is where Evan and I were planning to go, so it seems as if the three of us may go together. There is certainly safety in numbers when going into the most rugged mountain range in Tasmania!
In the meantime I have kept myself busy hanging out with other travellers in the campground – mainly one guy from Germany, two guys from Ireland, and a girl from Canada. We had a good fire going last night and spent quite a few hours sitting around it in an effort to stay warm. They’ve all left today, so I walked some of the trails in the park and continued to look for platypuses with no luck. Also hitched in New Norfolk today to get more food for the next walk. I got one ride in with a guy on his way to work in Hobart, and 3 rides back, first with a guy on his way to pick up his kids from school, then with a mom on the same mission, and then with a guy from Sydney staying at the campground. Easy peasy.
April 5th, 2004
Today was a traveling day full of many hitches. It was raining this morning when I woke up in my tent at Fortescue Bay, so I was not particularly motivated for an early start. Eventually I got packed up and started the walk out just after 9am. It was a 12km dirt road out to the main road from the park. In the first hour of walking I had 2 cars go by and neither stopped. Things weren’t looking so good for me, but thankfully a car did stop and give me a lift after one and a half hours. They were 2 men from Port Arthur who were down to check out the road because they were planning to bring their boat down on a trailer later. From the main road I got a lift with a woman who was taking her 2 grandkids to the country fair some 10km up the road. There I got a lift with a woman who took me to Murdunna where she gave me a little tour of the town and showed me her house before taking me back out to the road. She has traveled to over 90 countries in her lifetime and she chose Tassie as the place to settle down and retire!
I waited in front of the little shop in Murdunna for the next ride, and eventually got a lift with a girl who works at one of the restaurants in Port Arthur. We had a good girl talk about guys and relationships which is always an interesting topic. She dropped me off in Copping, and there I waited on the road for about 10 minutes and then got picked up by a man named Tim who was on his way back to Hobart after tending to his oyster farm in Port Arthur. He works for the education ministry and has 2 boys my age. We stopped in Sorell on the way, and he got some fish and chips and I had a coffee.
Tim dropped me off on the north side of Hobart so I’d have a better chance of getting a ride. It was a busy road there and it took awhile to get a lift, but finally a guy stopped who took me to Granton. He was a tradesman and yet another Tasmanian, born and bred. He has been to the mainland once but has never been overseas. At Granton I got a lift straightaway from a guy who is a truck driver and was on his way home from work. He took me to New Norfolk where I stopped at Woolworth’s and did my food shopping.
At 4:30pm I was back on the road with all of my groceries trying to get the last 40km ride to Mt. Field National Park. I was lucky and got one ride the whole way with an older man named Bill who is from Perth but moved to Tasmania 4 years ago. He only lived half-way to the park, but we dropped off his groceries and then he kindly gave me a ride the rest of the way! He has a beautiful old house that him and his wife are planning to make into a B&B. It was very nice to get a tour of the area in addition to the ride.
I finally made it to the campground here after 5pm when Bill dropped me off, and I was quite proud of myself that I actually got to my intended destination all in one day and just before dark. Here I am paying $6 to camp, but at least they have hot showers that work (unlike Fortescue Bay) and a laundry machine which I shall use first thing in the morning. After 5 days of walking, the shower was absolutely wonderful!
Ok then I think I shall skip that one!
Km after km of burnt-out trees from an old forest fire
April 3rd, 2004
Fortescue Bay campsite. 4:30pm. Only me and the seagulls are enjoying this pristine white sand beach this afternoon. I had a good walk today. Survived a night of possum calls and a creaking tree right over my tent that thankfully did not decide to break, woke up at 6:30am and was hiking by 7:30am. It was supposed to have been an 8-hour walk from the waterfall to here, but I did it in 6. I didn’t see another soul today, and the last person who signed in for this walk was over a week ago. I can’t figure out why really because it is an absolutely beautiful trail, along the tops of the coastal cliffs looking 1000 feet down to the Tasman Sea. Got some good photos.
Arrived here at the end of the walk at 1:30pm, and was not too happy to discover that I have to pay $5.50 to camp here in a place with pit toilets and showers that don’t work. Oh well. My tiny one-person tent is the only sign of life in a huge 40-odd-campsite parking lot. This is the lull before the big Easter holiday. I remember it well from last year.
I spent the afternoon laying in the sun on the beach and thoroughly enjoyed that after the last few days of wind and rain and cloud. Tonight the mission will be to find penguins along the rocky cove. Tomorrow I will either have to walk the 16-km out to the main road or (hopefully) catch a lift out. Then it will be off to the next destination – Mt. Field National Park, unless of course I change my mind like I did the other day which is how I ended up here. Spontaneous traveling is definitely the way to go.
PS. No penguins found.
Morning walk along the cliffs
Its a long way down to the Tasman Sea
The beach at Fortescue Bay
April 2nd, 2004
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