Old Port Davey Track
Trip Start
Jan 11, 2008
1
9
16
Trip End
Feb 22, 2008
Melaleuca,
Australia
Sunday, January 27, 2008
In the morning of Nadine's birthday we had finished the South Coast Track (85km) and gotten our shed-delivered bag of food at the Melaleuca airstrip, and now we were going to continue hiking the Old Port Davey Track (70km) out to the road. Most people fly into the Melalueca (not a town, just a ranger station and conservation site for observing the behaviour of a rather strange type of ground-burrowing parrot called the orange bellied parrot) airstrip using light aircraft and then hike the South Coast Track in an eastern direction because of two reasons. Firstly, flights are weather dependent, and it would suck to be waiting out a multi-day storm (without food?) for an airplane to arrive. Secondly, most people prefer to have the winds on their backs. Our choice to hike the South Coast Track westward had put us in a position to feel like we were the nearly the only people on the track, or the only people camping on the track at least. We had only camped near other people 1 night in 4, because one always crosses a river when one gets to it, in case it is flooded in the morning :)
Anyways, so now we were going to continue hiking a much less travelled trail
01) Buddha gummies for strength
. The maplet says that 2000 people hike the South Coast Trail a year, but perhaps only 200 people hike the Old Port Davey track. In the next 4 days we crossed paths with one fellow called Eric, and only Eric.We headed out of Melaleuca with fresh gummy bears in our hands. The wind had picked up a fair bit, and it was more damp too. The clouds were blanketing some of the summits surrounding the area. We headed north west out of Melaleuca, straight into the wind. We were not yet out of sight of the airstrip before we felt the first drops. We put on our goretex jackets; we found a creek to get water from, and we ate more gummy bears and a Cliff bar (brought all the way from Canada!) to give us strength. This section of the trail is littered with Yabbie holes (nocturnal moorland crayfish), and after storms is probably a hellhole of mud pits, but we found ourselves making pretty good time.... until we got to around Charlies Hill.
At this point the valley -- with the hill on one side and Mt. Beattie on the other -- acts as a wind funnel. We found ourselves walking straight into 100km/hr winds, and then the rain really started. The track became wet, and the buttongrass swayed in the force; one button grass head even managed to pummel Nadine in the eye! Shameless, considering it was her birthday. Bad buttongrass!
We were in a rough spot. The next real campsite was at Joan Point (where there is a boat crossing), but that site has no fresh water.
02) rain on the face
We were crossing creeks like crazy, but with the wind and the rain we could not stop; the exposure would cause us big problems. So we had to get to a place where we could setup the tent, and then later venture out for water when the weather was better or we were more prepared to deal with the soaking. Chapman's book mentioned a potential campsite near a creek just on the north side of the Balmoral Hill/Mount Beattie crest, but we never found anything which appeared suitable, and we walked straight on to Joan Point where we setup the tent underneath eucalyptus trees 20 meters from the boat, a remarkably sheltered spot considering the location. We dried ourselves in the tent and debated how we would use our last water, and whether one of us would hike back about 1-2km to the previous water source.Luckily the rain slowed (though the wind did not). Theo ventured out towards the point where the boat crossing is and discovered something wonderful! There are specific instructions to leave the boats turned upside down after use, but someone had not done so, and the boat now had about 30L of rain water in it! Sure, perhaps it was mixed with some sea water, but it was better than nothing! We tasted it, and proceeded to filter it (in the tent vestibule). Suddenly we had 8L of water collected, and all was good!!! We made delicious "fresh" food (it had just come in on the plane!) and drank our bottle of wine. It was Nadine's birthday, and we were in the wilderness on an adventure! We went to sleep hoping for better weather tomorrow, though it did rain substantially during the night.
The next morning the rain had gone away, and the wind had quieted down enough so that the Bathurst Narrows were not too badly whitecapped
03) More rain rain rain
. Let's explain. To the north of Joan Point there is another Point coming to meet it, called Farrell Point. The two points are perhaps 300 meters apart, and though we are logistically quite far inland, it is most definately sea out there! To the east of the narrows lies Barthurst Harbour, and it is a very large body of water, subject to tides of course, especially due to the skinny narrows seperating it from the ocean. As well, there is also wind to concern ourselves with. We had to do three crossings, to ensure a boat is left at each side with two sets of oars as well. Since the winds appeared okay right at the moment, and we could not risk delay,we skipped breakfast. We geared up completely in goretex since we were afraid of the effects of the wind out on the water. We used the extra set of oars in the boat as well, with Nadine using her rowing skills to control the stability of the boat. Theo rowed most of the way.Using the GPS tracking, it is possible in hindsight to see just how far off course we got on the first crossing, since we had no idea how strong the tide (going out) was. The wind also hit us at places we did not expect, and then past the halfway point we went way off the other way! All told, the first crossing probably had us rowing 800 meters! It was extremely frustrating, and scary as well, to be in a dorry rolling around in whitecaps! The next two crossings we had a better plan of attack, and we managed to cross fairly uneventfully.
04) Joan Point, our home for the night
Once on the other side, both of us were truly ready for a breakfast! We sat down in the middle of the trail on some rocks, pulled out the stove and our coffee and oatmeal, and a spot of sun actually came out permitting us to dry our feet at least for a little while (to slow the "gangwhite" effect our feet were showing)!We continued hiking northwards rather uneventfully for the rest of the day (except for Theo getting bitten by a fire ant once), climbing up and down ridge lines, deep down into creek gorges (which had brutal vertical up-climbs on the north side!) all the way Spring River. We did meet a guy called Eric going the other way at one point, and we stopped and talked to him a bit about various things, mainly hiking involved. At Spring River we crossed to the other side and found some random spot near the river and the trail. We had a couscous, then we spread our gear all over the moss and trees. The sun came out, we washed up, and all was good. Later on, it started to rain, and the rain came down really really hard. The tent roof actually leaked a little bit (Toddtex single-wall tents do that if the rain comes down hard a bit, but the weight savings is worth it!)
The next morning, the rain had stopped by about 4am, and we set off at 8am wearing goretex jackets because of all the wet grasses we had to hike through. The clouds were thinning and the sun was promising a much warmer day later on. However, the bush was positively wet, and it was not long before everything on was SOPPING WET!
We stopped at a non-muddy section on the rocks, and that is when we discovered something
05) Rain water collected in dorry, we could drink!
. There were leeches crawling over our gaitors! We must have picked them up somewhere in the mud along the way. We found out how hard it is to kill leeches (jam it between two rocks, it keeps moving. grind the rocks. it keeps moving. GRIND HARDER. it keeps moving! Why are leeches so strong?), and did a careful check. Theo found 5, Nadine 3. Theo had been leading through most of the muddy wet sections so they probably fall on the leader.We continued hiking up onto the Lost World Plateau, which was much drier mud with button grass and views in all directions, and as the sun became hotter the land around us dried out. We saw one echidnea showing us his ass (ie. hiding his head in the bushes, and pointing all his spikes out at us!) We stopped for new water (and hummus) at Watershed campground, but our plan had been to make this a 28km day all the way to Crossing River. We slowed down a bit in the heat on the next section; the map had failed to show how much climbing was actually involved. We did see one 5cm snake, and then later a much bigger snake! We went way around him, making lots of noise to scare away his friends! At Crossing River we finally met a river that could not be crossed without getting water in our boots, so we took them off and camped 10 meters on the other side in a mossy area under eucalyptus trees. We found one very large leech! But again, luckily neither of us had found a leech on our skin yet. That night, though, we did sleep very strangly, afraid leeches would crawl in through the mesh front of the tent and attach themselves to our faces...
The next morning of course was Wednesday, and our bus out was not until Saturday. We were only 20km where the bus would meet us. We were in a position to finish both the South Coast track and the Port Davey Track in 7 days, and we almost had 4 days of food still left and time on our hands. We had been thinking about hiking into the Western Arthurs (in part), and now with what looked like good weather and extra time we could. We hiked for about 10km along the track to the next intersection (Port Davey Track with Alpha Morraine) and arrived there at 11am. We had (poorly) planned for the Western Arthurs by checking John Chapman's book in Melaleuca... so instead of walking out the track to the left, we took a right turn... and started our next hike....... heading up Alpha Morraine onto the Western Arthurs.
