Pine Valley to Lake St. Clair
Trip Start
Jan 19, 2006
1
9
20
Trip End
Feb 23, 2006
Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania,
Australia
Friday, January 27, 2006
"happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Deanie..." were the words that were being sung to Nadine at 5am! It was her birthday today! What a way to be spending a birthday, on the Overland Track in great (albeit hot) weather and seeing so many marvelous sights!
After momentarily being awake at 5am we both fell asleep til about 6:30am, and then were out and about getting ready to walk out of Pine Valley past Narcissus which would be about 10km, and then make our way to Echo point (a campsite that not many people stay at because they pay for a ferry at Narcissus to take them to Lake St. Clair endpoint) for another 6.5km. We were not going to take the boat! That is cheating. We were going to walk all the way back to the end of the trail
01) Walking out of Pine Valley...
.So we retraced our steps back to the junction. And then onwards towards Narcissus. At this point the trail was quite a bit more flat, all the way to the lake. Not too exciting either, just lots of buttongrass and king billy pines.
We filtered more water at the Narcissus hut, with people waiting there for the ferry to come to take then directly to Lake St. Clair ($25, you have to book) then continued along our merry (tired) way. The trail crossed some more grasslands before entering the forest and rolling up and down in the trees. It actually deviates quite far away from the lakeside, because it links up to other trails that head westward. Eventually we regained access to the lake, which was beautiful and great to dip our head in, and had a nice Cliff bar (energy bar) out on a log. The log was sticking far enough into the water that it took a while for the marsh flies to find us. But we had distance to cover, so son we were back on the trail to Echo point.
Soon we encountered an echidna along the side of the trail. It has a body kind of like a porcupine, but it is rounder and has a very funny mouth long snout of a mouth. It is an ant eater. But unlike the ant eaters found in the other parts of the world, this one is a marsupial, meaning a mammal-like creature that lays eggs (the only other marsupial species is the platypus). We took a few pictures and laughed how the echidna obviously felt he was hiding from us because he could not see us!
Time just dragged on. The bush was very interesting, and we were a little bit shielded from the sun
02) Nadine looking for Mr. Wombat again...
. And eventually we made it to Echo point.Our plan was to stay here. A few people were here, waiting for a boat, the same ferry that picks people up at Narcissus can also pick people up at Echo Point. No one was camped. We were unsure why. Sure, there were a lot of flies. In fact, in the very small little hut Theo found it very difficult to read any of the descriptions of the region because the letters kept moving around (that is how many flies had made it into the hut). Well there is one way to deal with the flies, so we found a spot, right beside the hut, and plopped our tent down. Getting into the tent was a problem of its own, as about 15 flies decided they wanted in as well. And outside, flies kept running into the tent, WHACK WHACK. Normally this ends after a few minutes. But not here, not at all! More flies just kept buzzing and whacking into the tent. After about 15 minutes of this nonsense, we decided that maybe staying at Echo Point was not that great of an idea! And it was Nadine's birthday, and Theo really wanted to take her out to dinner after a nice shower!
So we carefully re-dressed our blistered feet (in particular Theo's) because they were a bit nasty, and then prepared to evacuate the area. Which can present a bit of a problem.
03) Out of the forest and back into the moorlands.
See, the flies can be so annoying that while doing something, their buzzing can make you forget what you are doing, as you start to fight them. Which of course, is pointless.We managed to break camp in about 5 minutes, including taking the tent down and throwing everything into our packs. The flies were utterly outrageous, over 50 attacking each of us at any point in time.
And we started to walk, and within about 50 steps were down to maybe a fly each, and within 100 steps they were all gone. As long as we kept walking, of course. And the 11km dragged on and on, all we could think about was showers and icecream! Our day had been extended by another 11km, and we were hurting. As we rounded the lake we could see buildings in the distance, but it was slow going. Finally the park buildings were in view, and we passed a platypus viewing area, but were too tired to even go look. We finally got to the Visitor's Centre (and immediately ate an icecream!), booked a bunkbed for the night (we had enough of our tent and besides, there were about 10 dead march flies in it!), had a shower and washed a few clothes, then wandered over to the cafeteria to eat. Sadly they had stopped serving food, but Theo bought Nadine some treats and a meat pie. Nadine still had her birthday meal, it just ended up being a dehydrated curry meal with a bonus meat pie and Tim Tams for desert!
The Overland Track was a success for us, with about 115km covered in 6 days (with side trips), with great weather and great hikers on the trail. We passed out in our bunkbeds knowing that we would be clean on the 4.5hr busride back to Cradle Mt.!
