back from the bush
I'm eating home cooked meals again, and last night I was able to wash my hair with shampoo in the shower before going to sleep in a bed. The past week was definitely a welcome change of environment, and I don't think that I have quite readjusted to being home (click "Read entire post" for the full entry).
Sunday July 17, 2005
We had planned to meet at Town Hall at 11:30am, and by midday I was still waiting alone with my backpack in the cold wind. I had expected that Jesse was not going to show up on time (this time he was running late because he had neglected to pick up the GPS from his parent's boat), but I had no idea where Tim and Nat were. Just when I was beginning to think that they had chickened out, I started getting some phone calls saying that they were on their way.
Our first navigational task of the trip involved finding Gate D8N in Darling Harbour, where the Spirit of Tasmania was going to be departing from. Even after getting instructions on how to get there from two separate people, we managed to get lost. Fortunately we were still able to get there in time to board the boat, and to witness our first highlight of the trip. We were waiting in a lobby type area prior to boarding the ship, and in the room was a lady who was evidently in a pretty foul mood. When one of the Spirit of Tasmania staff members helpfully tried to explain a few things about the boarding process to her, she threw a hissy fit, demanded a refund and said that she was not going to board the boat. It appeared to be an idle threat, because she sat back down and started reading. Later on, we had to pass through a security check. The lady's bag caused the metal detector to sound, so she thought that emptying the contents of her bag onto the floor and yelling at the security staff would make things better. We didn't see her again after that.
Aside from the wind, it was a really nice day and we got some great views of the harbour as we were leaving Sydney. It was fun to stand on the top deck looking out at the container ships and the ferries that were being dwarfed by the ship that we were on.
After leaving the headlands, we decided to spend a bit of time exploring. The interior of the ship felt a little like an RSL, and most of the ship's patrons would not have looked out of place playing bingo on a Saturday night. However, any shortcomings associated with travelling on the boat were well and truly made up for by the buffet meals and by the wind outside. After gorging on oysters, salmon, cheese cake and a variety of other treats, we entertained ourselves by literally getting blown around by the hurricane-like wind on the top deck. Unfortunately, our fun ended when one of the crew members forced us back inside because he did not want us getting blown overboard. We spent the rest of the evening writing messages to be included in the time capsule that we were going to bury out in the bush. Writing messages intended to be read approximately 15 years from now is harder than it seems, and we needed a few Bourbon & Cokes to get our creative juices flowing.
Monday July 18, 2005
Early Monday morning, when it was still pitch black, I was woken up by the slow but drastic lurching of the ship. I could hear the ocean crashing against the outside of the vessel. I went back to sleep confident that everything was fine, but dreamt about sunken boats.
At around 9am, we were woken up by an announcement saying that the ship's arrival in Devonport would be delayed due to the previous night's rough seas. The boat basically had to be stopped during the night to ride out the waves and we were going to arrive around 5 hours behind schedule. As we had a coach to catch, and were expecting to get to Port Arthur fairly late that night in any case, the delay really threw our travel plans out of whack. The good news was that they were extending the buffet brunch for several hours due to the delay, so we all went back to sleep.
When we did eventually get out of bed, we spent much of the morning re-organising our travel plans. After that had been sorted out, we enjoyed our second straight buffet meal and spent a bit of time testing out the ship's entertainment facilities by playing a few video games. However, we soon grew tired of such inane forms of amusement and returned to entertaining ourselves via more sophisticated means: battling the winds on the upper deck. We tried to stand still in one spot for as long as we could without being blown over, we ran races with each other running into the wind, and we jumped vertically into the air, letting the force of the wind blow us backwards.
The time passed quickly when we were out in the elements, but after the boat eventually arrived in Devonport, time seemed to slow back down again. We had to sit around downstairs with our packs and read the Sunday newspaper as we waited for the coach to get ready. We decided to include the newspaper in our time capsule.
Due to our changed travel plans we were to stay the night in Launceston, and it was this town that gave us our first real taste of Tasmania. After checking into our YHA rooms, located above a very local looking pub, we went looking for a place to do some shopping. Though we didn't see much of the town during this little expedition (a Woolworths and a Coles were located about 2 minutes walk from the youth hostel), this small outing down the road gave me a faint hint of the Blue Mountains, a feeling which stuck with me.
That night, we cooked meat and potatoes for dinner at the hostel. Salt and herbs were used to season the meat, and to the mashed potatoes we added beef stock, herbs and garlic for flavour. We had also bought some nice, gourmet style tomato sauce to go with everything. Unfortunately, we did not buy any oil to cook with as we did not want to be lugging the stuff around when camping. Jesse and I agreed that it wouldn't be too horrible a thing to do to steal a little wad of butter from the communal fridge to cook with. Nat did not concur, and her mood did not improve when Jesse set the fire alarm off after frying up the butter.
Tuesday July 19, 2005
Tuesday morning involved cramming all of the supplies that we bought into our backpacks. This included copious amounts of water, as we were planning on carrying all of our own fresh water for the next few days.
After one last decent breakfast of bacon and eggs, we joined the locals on a public bus and headed down to the coach terminal, where we were going to board the 10am coach for Hobart. On the bus were a range of friendly looking elderly people, signs that declared the bus a "bully-free zone", and a kid that looked like a young version of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel accompanied by a teenage girl attending to a baby in a pram. The bus ride reinforced that Blue Mountains feeling that I had the previous night, though that probably says more about my own preconceptions than anything else.
We arrived in plenty of time to catch our Hobart-bound ride, and after a few hours on the road we were in the capital of Tasmania. Prior to leaving the coach, Tim managed to give the driver his share of excitement for the day. He decided to use the coach's toilet after we had parked in the terminal, and as I left the vehicle I let the driver know that there was still one more person on board in the toilet. The driver's eyes widened, and a worried expression passed over his face.
"No! Not now!" he exclaimed. "The toilet doesn't work when the engine is off!"
As he rushed back into the coach to turn the engine on, Tim contentedly made his towards the front of the bus, oblivious to the emergency that he had created.
We managed to take in a bit of Hobart as we were walking through the city centre in search of the departure point for our next bus, which was to drop us off at Eaglehawk Neck where we were to start our walk. The city had a bit of a metropolitan core without losing that small town feel, and seemed to be a very pleasant place. After finding the bus station and dropping off our packs, we did a bit of extra shopping and bought an extra 30L of water, as well as a 15 year old bottle of scotch for our time capsule. We then sat down on a park bench and made our lunch. Because we no longer had our backpacks with us, we had no excuse for our transient-like behaviour. I'm sure that we all felt like hobos as we dished up canned ham and salsa with pocket knives, and used the water from the park's fountain to wash our hands.
After lunch, we bought a few more trinkets to add to our time capsule (three magazines: Time, Cosmos and TV Hits), then boarded the bus that was to take us to the beginning of our adventure in the wilderness. The sun set as we were driving and by the time we had made it to the Eaglehawk Neck visitor's centre, night had well and truly set in. We spent a fair while fine tuning our packs so that they would be relatively easy to carry before heading off into the dark. Whatever I did with my pack didn't seem to help much. I was weighed down with 20L of water, a tent, our dinners and all of my personal essentials (sleeping bag, ground mat etc.). None of the other fared much better. Even before we made it to the beach (right next to the visitor's centre on the map), we found an excuse to stop and take a break. We stumbled upon a statue of a fierce looking dog chained to a barrel, and decided to take a few photos.
What felt like the trip's first disaster soon followed. Laden down with our backpacks, we painstakingly trudged across the soft sand of the beach in Pirates Bay. As it was high tide, the sand soon turned into impenetrable jagged rocks as we made our way further and further down the beach, and eventually we were forced to turn back and retrace our steps. All that hard work marching along the beach was for naught.
As our packs were getting heavier by the minute, we decided to take the safe route and followed the main road, which we knew would eventually lead us into the walking tracks of the Tasman National Park. We soon passed through a small cluster of houses known as Doo Town, and I wondered how many of the people that lived here had ever contemplated killing a backpacker. Tim agreed that there were probably one or two.
It was difficult to gauge the air temperature because it did not take long before we were covered with perspiration. At that stage, none of us felt happy about having taken so many warm clothes, and most of us had removed several layers of clothing by the time we had made it to Devils Kitchen. Though it was late, the full moon lit up the landscape enough for us to admire the impressive cliff faces at Devils Kitchen. The lookout gave us a view of near vertical drops into a rough ocean. The waves appeared to be crashing into the rocks 40m below us. I mentioned to the others that the sea cliffs that we were going to see at the end of the trail were at least 5 times that height, but none of us could imagine that to be true.
After Devils Kitchen, we took in several other magnificant, moonlit views. Despite all of the stops (officially to take in the views, unofficially to drop our heavy backpacks for a few minutes), we felt as though we were making reasonable progress. It was getting fairly late by the time we had made it to Waterfall Bay, but we'd covered a large proportion of our night's walk already and felt as though we were on the home straight. After a bit of searching, we found a sign that marked the start of the Tasman Coastal Trail and strode off into the bush.
We learnt something that night. What appears to be a short distance on a map can turn out to be a pretty nasty walk if you are heading uphill. When you know that you're close to your destination and have the mindset that the campsite could be just around the next corner, each bend in the track turns into a disappointment and time drags on and on. Tim and I slogged on ahead, anticipating a hot meal and a comfy place to sit down without our backpacks. As we advanced uphill, dark tress that obscured the moonlight greeted us after each turn in the path. My glasses had begun to fog up and the torchlit track that we were trying to follow was becoming more and more ambiguous. Each step started to become a conscious effort, and my breathing was becoming laboured. Tim mentioned that if we were not at the campsite any time soon, he'd need a break. I had to agree with him. Had we unknowingly passed our campsite already? Even worse, were we on the right track? Just as such thoughts were beginning to solidify in my mind, we heard running water, and the trees cleared out slightly. There appeared to be a couple of spots where we could pitch tents. We assumed that this was the Camp Falls that was labelled on the map.
By the time Jesse and Nat had arrived, it would have been around 10pm. However, we had expected a late night. We had found decent places to pitch our tents, the day's work was over, and it wasn't long before we were warming our hands by the fuel stove and cooking a hot meal of rice and soup. Aside from being spooked by animal noises that sounded like the voices of little girls, I don't think that we could have been more relaxed.
Wednesday July 20, 2005
We slept in for too long on Wednesday. I knew that we were going to be taking on a pretty long day's walk, and wanted to be moving by 9am at the latest. After a breakfast of miso soup, hot oats and hot chocolate, after packing away our tents and reorganising our packs, it was 11am. What's more, our packs were hardly any lighter than the night before. The water flowing in the creek by our campsite was fresh and clear, and we had used it to make breakfast. I still started the day with 20L of water in my pack.
When we finally got going, we walked in the wrong direction. The morning's climb was meant to be the worst of the trip, but I had a feeling that things weren't going quite as planned as we followed a flat path towards a lookout. Our backpacks were already making their presence well and truly felt and the backtracking that we had to do was not an ideal start to the day. When we did find the correct path up Tatnells Hill, things hardly became more pleasant. Each step required a significant effort as we hauled our way up the track. The small creeks flowing all around us seemed to make giggling noises as we laboured our way up the slope, packs filled to the brim with water.
Half way up the slope I'd had enough, and suggested that we ditch some of our water. I was fairly certain that the camping ground that we were to spend the night at was going to have fresh water, and I expected that there were going to be streams along the way. In hindsight the decision to ditch the water should have been an easy one, but we decided that we did not want to part with our water just yet, and battled on up the hill.
When we eventually made it to a small clearing and flat ground, we were confident that the worst part of the day's walk was over. It was well after midday, and the sun was out. The view was nice, and there were broad, flat rocks that would have made comfortable seats upon which we could have enjoyed a pleasant lunch. But we'd hardly made a dent in the distance that we were to cover during the day due to our late start, and decided to push on. Thumbs Point was the next major landmark on the map, and we decided to set that as our target for a lunch spot. It appeared to be a long way away on the map, about equivalent to the distance that we'd covered during the previous night's walk, but we felt that we needed to cover some serious distance before sitting down for a long break.
After the climb up the hill, the vegetation had changed and we moved into prime leech territory. I decided that ignorance was bliss, and did not check my legs for leeches. Nat, however, could not ignore the possibility of a little blood sucking worm attaching itself to her leg, and decided to have a look. Lo and behold, there was a leech attaching itself to her leg right at that moment. Nat certainly does not appear to be the type of girl that would take any crap from a little wormy type thing, which made her hysteria even more impressive. I won't describe her reaction in too much detail, or else she might hunt me down and silence me forever.
The walking after Tatnells Hill was far more flat, but our packs certainly weren't any lighter. We'd walk until the packs became too much of a burden, sit down for a few minutes, then walk again. Unfortunately, we kept getting glimpses of Thumbs Point as we made our way along the track, and after each glimpse, our target did not appear to be getting any closer. After around 3 hours of being teased, Tim and I finally found ourselves on the headland. We took a seat on log, dropped our backpacks, and enjoyed the feeling of not having to walk. After a few minutes, we worked up the energy to start preparing lunch. When Jesse and Nat arrived it was around 4pm, and the lunch that we ate was very welcome.
After we had finished eating, the light was visibly beginning to fade. As we rounded the headland and peered out at The Lanterns and the Hippolyte Rocks, dusk was clearly settling in. We still had a long way to go.
By the time the sun had set, we had managed to get a few distant views of the white beach at Fortescue Bay, where our campsite was located. It did not look all that close, but it certainly did not appear to be out of reach either. After a bit of a downhill climb we expected the walking to be relatively flat the rest of the way. We were all pretty tired, our packs felt like lead weights on our backs, but the end of our day's walk was within the realms of ours imaginations. As we passed through the campsite at Bivouac Bay (where we saw the only other walker that we encountered on the trip), we still felt confident that we were able to get to Fortescue Bay without turning an arduous walk into an extreme one.
Unfortunately I had overlooked what appeared to be a small hill on the map, and what I expected to be flat land after Bivouac Bay turned into yet another climb. It certainly wasn't to the scale of the climb that we did in the morning, but in the dark after a hard day's walk, it felt even worse. Once again my glasses fogged up as I tried to follow a confusing path lit up with nothing more than my AAA battery powered torch. Tim and I had once again pushed on ahead, yet we still needed to stop every few minutes. I was wondering how Jesse and Natalia were doing, especially since they did not have a map.
The climb down the other side of the hill was not much better than the climb up. At times I was unsure as to whether or not I was following the path or just blindly stumbling forward for the sake of going somewhere, I could hardly see due to my foggy glasses and we still had a long way to walk. Things felt as though they were shifting from being expectedly difficult to somewhat out of control. When we eventually made it down to water level, we decided to take yet another break, this time on the pebbles by the sea. There was meant to be an exposed shipwreck in the bay in front of us but I couldn't see anything. The view was beautiful nonetheless. The water gently lapped at the round pebbles that we were sitting on as the full moon peeked at us from behind rolling clouds. Off in the distance, moonlight was reflected off the stretch of water lying between the dark headlands that enclosed the bay. The scene reminded me of pirates and Peter Pan. Still, I'd rather have not been facing the prospect of stumbling around in the bush late at night, and we were forced to abandon the scene. We hauled up our backpacks and struggled on towards the campsite.
I was fairly certain that I had taken a wrong turn as we made our way towards another stretch of water, bashing our way through waist high vegetation. A fairly large stream was flowing out from the hills into the bay, and there did not appear to be any way across. After looking around, I noticed a bridge further upstream. After retracing our steps a short distance, we found the path that led towards the bridge and I took a photo of Tim as he was crossing. "I look happy?" he said after I showed him the image on my digital camera.
It wasn't long before we began to notice little animals scampering out of our way. At first I could not make out what they were with my dim torch, all I could see were small grey figures scurrying into the bushes as we made our way towards them. However, we soon caught one unawares in the middle of the path. It was a penguin! The excitement of unexpectedly seeing penguins out in the wild almost lightened our mood. We lumbered on into the dark with the novelty of hundreds of small animals invisibly surrounding us, squalking away under the cover of the thick vegetation that we pushed through.
By this stage, I was checking my map after every break, which made our progress seem all the more slow. I was certain that we had to be very close to the beach when yet another headland reared its ugly head. What's more, by the time we'd made it to this latest headland (which looked a lot smaller on the map than it did in reality), we realised that we'd need to start climbing uphill again. I did not know how much more of this I could put up with. I was tired, hungry, and just wanted to be there. But instead, I was climbing up yet another slope with an insanely heavy backpack, sweating profusely and struggling to see through fogged up glasses. Thankfully, the view from the top of the little hill lifted our spirits. There was the beach, and at the end of the beach we could see a campfire burning. We were almost there.
When we finally made it onto the beach, it felt as though the long struggle was over. Tim and I dropped our backpacks and sat on the rocks. All we had to do was get to the end of the beach and we were there, so we relaxed. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see that it was only just past 7:30pm. Maybe things weren't going so bad after all? After a short break, we worked up the willpower to throw our packs back on and make the final push towards the campsite. The elation of finally making it to the campsite was about to set in when the walk decided to pull one last, cruel trick on us. When we were about half way along the beach, we came across another stream flowing right through the sand into the bay. No problem, surely there had to be some way around it? I walked upstream, then walked upstream some more. Nothing. After a few moments of disbelief, we came to the realisation that the only way to get to the other side of the stream was to walk through it. We couldn't quite accept that this was happening, so decided that the least we could do would be to wait for Jesse and Natalia to show up so that we could all share in the excitement of walking through the freezing cold water. After a long wait, we eventually caught a glimpse of a flashlight off in the bush, at least half an hour's walk behind us. I certainly didn't mind quietly sitting on the sand without my backpack on, so was happy to wait a little longer. After another long while, we caught another glimpse of the flashlight, in exactly the same spot as before. They certainly were moving slowly. We had noticed a motor boat on the water as we were waiting. This was not much of a surprise, as the campsite that we were heading towards was meant to be quite a popular weekend getaway for locals. I was, however, a little surprised when the motor boat headed directly towards the bush where the torch light was coming from, stopped in the water and shone a light into the bush. Was everything ok? After several minutes, the boat returned to the camping ground. I kept my eyes on the bush, looking for a flicker of a flashlight. As the time dragged on, I did not see any sign of Jesse and Nat. What was taking them so long? I decided that if the people on the boat knew something that we didn't, it was probably best for us to get to the campsite. Tim and I took our boots and socks off, rolled up our pants, and prepared to get wet.
The sand felt icy cold between my toes, and I was dreading the water. However, I did not want to linger on the beach in such a state, and decided to get things over and done with. After it appeared that the waves coming in from the beach had receded somewhat and the water level in the stream was at a minimum, I darted into the water with my backpack on and my boots in my hands. After a few quick steps in ankle deep water, the level of the stream soon gave way and I took a big step into pants soaking territory. As I came out of the other end, I expected the worst, but thankfully my rolled up pants were only mildly dampened. Tim then took his plunge into the cold, and he came out relatively dry as well. His toenail did not fare as well. Apparently it had been in the process of falling off for several weeks after it had been stamped on in a soccer game. The shock of the cold water must have done something to it, because it was now pointing vertically upwards. It looked absolutely filthy, but Tim insisted that I take a photo of it. I didn't look at it as I took this photo, I just pointed the camera at it and pressed the button. I then gave Tim some heavy-duty sports tape to tape it down, and more importantly, cover it up so that we wouldn't have to look at it any more.
The rest of my walk was relatively uneventful. We just had to clamber over a few rocks. I moved on ahead towards the campground and saw someone's car, a boat and a campfire. I felt like an emancipated ghost walking back into reality. I dumped my bag at the nearest decent looking campsite, and finally allowed myself to accept that the day's walk was over once and for all. I looked at my watch; it was now past 8:30pm. The campers with the motorboat were playing loud music and drinking beer, so I assumed that they didn't have any important news with regards to their previous little expedition out onto the water. I just sat on my pack and waited for Tim, exhausted. I then waited a little more. Tim was taking his time. After a while, I decided to stumble back towards the rocks and see what Tim was up to. For some reason he was still quite a long way back, but eventually he found his way to the campsite as well. Apparently he got stuck on the rocks.
This campsite was the only one on the trail in which we would be allowed to set up a campfire, so we had planned to bake some vegetables for the night's dinner. Judging by the size of the fire that the other campers had going, it looked as though there should be plenty of firewood around. After setting up the tent, Tim and I decided to hunt around in the dark for some decent firewood, and found a couple of twigs. That should have at least been enough to get things started, we could find some more wood later, so I set things up to get the fire going and tried to light a few matches. My matches were damp. I couldn't get a light. I asked for Tim's lighter but he had lent it to Jesse. Jesse also had my second box of matches. We sat in the cold waiting for Jesse and Natalia, as a campfire roared about 30 metres away from us.
Eventually, Jesse and Nat showed up. They seemed just as relieved as we were to have made it to the campsite, and Jesse appeared forcefully intent on maintaining a good mood. I let him try to get the fire going as I cut up our vegetables and wrapped them in aluminium foil, ready to be baked in hot coals. We had potatoes, turnip, carrots, garlic, sweet potatoes, onion... the lot. I seasoned everything in cubes of stock powder. Nat pointed out that some of the vegetables were covered in blood. I hadn't even realised that I had cut myself as I was chopping up the vegetables, I must have been too tired to care. The vegetables took ages to cut up, but even after I had finished preparing them the fire still wasn't going. The wood was too damp to burn properly and after over an hour's worth of effort, all we had was a pissweak little flame that could hardly burn paper. As Tim heated up some watery noodle soup to keep us from dying of starvation, Jesse went over to the other campsite to ask if they could spare us some firewood, and I waited dejectedly by the uncooked vegetables. Nat had wisely gone to bed, and told Jesse to wake her up after the vegies had been cooked. I had a feeling that she was going to get a good night's sleep.
By 2am, we were boiling as many of the vegies as we could using the fuel cooker. The guys from the other campsite were nice enough to give us a couple of logs, but it isn't easy to burn a log if you don't have any sort of fire to start with. We did manage to get enough hot coals to cook one lot of vegies. We're not sure if they contained my blood or not (we got the packages mixed up), but by that time everyone was so hungry that nobody cared in the least. By 2:30am we had eaten a few half-cooked vegetables and were more than ready for bed. I ate several protein bars, had a big protein shake, a few chocolate bars and some vitamins in an attempt to fool myself into believing that I'd eaten dinner. The day had been a bit of a disaster, and if we didn't change our plans the next day was going to be just as bad, only this time we'd be doing it without having had any sleep. I thought that I'd make up my mind about what we should do after I'd had some semblance of a night's rest.
Thursday July 21, 2005
Despite knowing that it would make the day a lot easier if we got up early, the need for some decent rest took precedence over everything else and I decided that waking up at 9am would not be unreasonable. The birds didn't agree. Just after the sun had risen a pack of crows started going through the bags of garbage that we had left outside, even though those bags did not contain a single scrap of food. I tried to ignore them and curled up in my warm sleeping bag, but they made more noise than my alarm clock. Unwillingly, I got out of my sleeping bag, unzipped the tent cover and hurled a rock at them. They scattered momentarily and I tried to go back to sleep. It took them about a minute to regroup and mount another attack on the garbage.
After we'd had breakfast and had packed up our tents, the temptation was still there to take the wimpy way out and just stay in Fortescue Bay. The place had water on tap, the beach was real nice, and the guys with the big campfire had left all of their firewood behind. In addition to that, it would give us a bit of time to recover and be able to do the massive walk that we'd need to do to actually get out of the national park. I had been hoping that there would be a park ranger at the Fortescue Bay site that could give us a lift out on the Saturday, but the site office was empty and did not appear to have been occupied for some time. To get to Port Arthur on the Saturday as we had originally planned, we were now facing a walk as a long as the last two days combined. It was 11am and Tim was cooking the remaining vegetables on the coals of the fire abandoned by the other campers, who had left earlier on in the morning. We could have stayed put, eaten properly cooked vegetables for lunch, and lived in relative luxury for the next few days.
Thankfully, those thoughts did not persist. It was clear that we did not need to haul around as much water as we had been carrying, and much of the hard walking that we had done already could be attributed to our delayed arrival to the national park. Most importantly, we still had our time capsule that we were planning to bury somewhere along the south-eastern edge of the Tasman Peninsula. We decided that we should trek on, but an easy day's walk was in order. We could re-evaluate things after seeing how the day panned out.
With lightened packs, we made our way towards the relatively flat inland trail that would take us to the Bare Knoll campsite. Walking without 20L of water on my back was absolute bliss, however it took us a while to find the start of the track that we were looking for. As soon as we had found the start of the trail we realised that we had lost Tim, and spent about 20 minutes yelling his name. For some reason, he had decided to walk in the opposite direction and had started walking the coastal trail. Luckily he realised that we were not following him along the arduous track that led towards Mt Fortescue and he had turned back in time for us to find him. By the time all four of us were ready to begin our day's walk, it was 12:40pm. Even with our lightened packs and the relatively small distance that we had to cover, I was not optimistic that we'd be able to make it to our campsite before dark.
We expected the first part of the day's walk to be the toughest, we had to make our way up a hill before the land levelled out again. Tim and I moved on ahead, and we all agreed that wherever the two of us ended up by 2:30pm, we should stop and prepare lunch. It wasn't a walk in the park, but with the lightened packs we were making excellent ground and by lunchtime, Tim and I were preparing lunch at the top of the hill. Despite being absolutely famished by that point, the corned beef that we were going to put on our fajitas did not look fit for human consumption. Fat had solidified into the top of the can, and small pieces of artery were interspersed within the rest of the meat. Tim and I ate our share of the vegetables that were (over)cooked in the morning, then decided that the only way that we could possibly eat the corned beef was if we heated it up on the fuel cooker. We mixed just about all of the fajita seasoning into the corned beef to get rid of any of its residual flavour. When Jesse and Nat showed up, we had a little pot of meat boiling away on the fuel cooker. "Mmm, this looks like a special treat for lunch!", Jesse said seriously...
After lunch, Tim and I charged on. The land was beautifully flat and the boards of wood that had been erected to allow walkers to make their way over swampland were very comfortable to walk on. No horrible, unexpected hills got in our way and by 4:10pm, Tim and I found ourselves at the campsite. It was still light and we felt as though we could keep going. It was an odd but very welcome feeling.
Half an hour later, Nat and Jesse showed up and we had set up camp before nightfall. I spent the time before sunset completing my message for the time capsule. Soon we were happily cooking a dinner, and strangely enough, the servings almost seemed adequate. Jesse also figured out a way to keep our torches shining onto our food without having to hold them whilst we were eating, something which had been bothering us for a while. We just had to stick the torches in our beanies. Cool, eh?
After dinner, I changed into a fresh pair of clothes, brushed my teeth and had an early night. The others decided to stay up a little longer writing their time capsule messages. The next day, we would attempt to do as much of the walk to and from Cape Piller as was possible. It was a fair distance, but as we would be retracing our steps back to the campsite no matter what happened, we would be doing the walk without our backpacks. If carrying a lightened backpacks is considered bliss, then I don't know how you'd describe walking with nothing but a daypack. Things were looking up.
Friday July 22, 2005
Amazingly enough we were almost able to meet our 7am goal, and by 7:40am we were headed for the unfenced, 300m cliff faces that Cape Piller is famous for. Jesse, Nat and I were carrying our daypacks and Tim was carrying the time capsule that was finally to find its resting place for the next 15-20 years. The end of the walk was in sight, and we were anticipating that Cape Piller would provide for a spectacular finale. We did not come away disappointed.
It was a mere 20 minutes before we'd made it to our first stop, a shoe wash station. Being the good citizens that we are, we thoroughly scrubbed our boots free of any Phytophthora cinnamomi containing mud, and by the time we were heading up our token big hill for the day, we had spent more time cleaning our boots than we had been walking.
Even the mud that soon marked the tracks did not bog us down. Most guidebooks urge walkers to stick to the designated walking paths when there is mud around, so that the tracks are not continuously widened, spreading the mud further and further outwards. I'll admit that we did not always follow this suggestion.
Soon the muddy environment made way for a tanned, stony landscape dotted with several pools of water; we had made it to the Perdition Ponds. However, it wasn't the change of vegetation that had caught our eye. Up ahead, a massive, shear cliff-face of crumbling stone was beginning to reveal itself to us. Our pace slackened after this first taste of Cape Pillar's sea cliffs, we could not continue walking without trying to take in the extraordinary environment. Before long we were walking along the brink of an immense, vertical drop. When we were game enough to peer over the edge, we saw walls of jagged stones spearing down into an ocean that seemed dizzyingly far away. I tried to imagine how long it would take before the white cylinder of our time capsule would hit the water if we accidentally dropped it over the edge.
By now the scenery had well and truly captivated us, and the frequent stops that we made soon meant that we were running well behind schedule. We still had to find a spot to bury our time capsule. We still had to retrace our steps from the previous day's walk, and return to Fortescue Bay. What's more, storm clouds were brewing off in the distance, and from the cliff edges we could see a front of rain menacing towards us. But we no longer cared. We were under the spell of the landscape that we had walked for days to get to, and nothing could stop us from appreciating the here and now of the place.
As we made our way around the trail, I noticed several little fishing boats sputtering around in the water that was so far below us. I tried to imagine how we must have looked to the people in the boats. I pictured four insignificantly small figures, inching along the edges of unnerving cliff-faces. As we stood atop The Blade, an exposed, crumbling pillar of stone that jutted out of the landscape, we waved to the fishing boats below us, our clothing flapping in the wind.
According to our map, the trail would end at the Chasm Lookout, located on the tip of Cape Piller. The path up to the lookout was the steepest we had faced yet. We literally had to climb up boulders, using tree branches to help haul ourselves upwards. It was a feeling of satisfaction and quiet relief as I finally walked upon the boulders on the cliff's edge at the end of the trail. Perhaps there was a touch of emptiness in there as well. After all the time we had spent together, I would not be seeing any more of the Tasman Coastal Trail. Jesse, Nat, Tim and I were sitting on the end of Tasmania looking out towards the sea's horizon, when the dark clouds that had threatened us all day decided to empty. The wind picked up, the sky dimmed, and large drops of rainwater fell from the sky.
Saturday July 23, 2005
At 10am on the 23rd of July, we were in Fortescue Bay with our backpacks on, walking towards our unexpected lift out of the park. The previous evening could not have gone any better. The heavy rain that seemed almost certain to settle in for our walk back from Cape Piller cleared almost as quickly as it had begun. After finding a suitable location, we spent several hours sealing and burying our time capsule before returning to our campsite at Bare Knoll. As soon as we had eaten and packed our belongings away, we set off again and managed to make it back to Fortescue Bay at a reasonable hour. All of the firewood that had been left behind by the other campers was still there. The icing on the cake, however, was finding a park ranger with a ute that could seat 5 people. It was his first day working at the Fortescue Bay campsite, and he was going to be heading out to Eaglehawk Neck during the Saturday morning. We did not have to face the long walk out of the park.
When the friendly ranger dropped us off on the Arthur Highway, it was still morning. We were well rested, and the walk to Port Arthur was only 4km on a paved road. As we neared the small town and the end of the walk was becoming a distinct reality, all of our aches and pains started to become apparent. I soon realised that my feet were absolutely killing me. When I took my shoes off later on, I could see that my steel capped boots had rubbed most of my toes raw.
After we had staggered into the local youth hostel, which was unlocked but completely empty, we dropped our packs and stumbled back up the road to Phudies, a pie store along the Arthur Highway that we had passed earlier on. My first decent meal in days consisted of 3 meat pies, a quiche, a citrus tart, a chocolate tart and a cappuccino. Following our meal, we returned to the YHA and the hot shower that I had there was heaven. I felt wonderfully light and clean as I changed into a pair of fresh clothes, free from five days worth of dirt and sweat.
Relaxed and clean, we ate another large meal (this time at the bistro opposite our youth hostel) before making our way to the Port Arthur Historic Site, where we were to begin our ghost tour. As most of you would know, Port Arthur has quite a morbid history. The place was once a penal colony in which rapists and murderers were subjected to inhumane mental and physical torture. The ghost tour involved following a tour guide around the unlit, historic buildings located in the area, listening to stories of the ghost sightings that have been reported in each building. The tour started off at the old church, then made its way towards the pastor's house where it is alleged that the ghost of the minister has been sighted numerous times. We saw a few other buildings where things go bump in the night, including the surgeon's dissection room in which the surgeon at the old penal colony cut up deceased convicts, before we entered the secondary prison. The secondary prison was built next to the mental asylum. This was quite a convenient location to put it, because according to our tour guide, convicts were often put in solitary confinement for up to 30 days in this place. During this time they were locked in the dark, completely isolated from the outside world, and survived on water alone. Most of them went insane. The tour guide seemed genuinely uncomfortable as she talked about the man with the red beard that has often been sighted in the prison, and she led us through the dark building very quickly without looking up.
When the tour had finished, we had to return to the youth hostel. It was faster to get back via the historic site, and the tour guide did not mind if we went straight back to the YHA through the site. Jesse, Tim and I decided to sneak back into the secondary prison. Nat and Joanna (a Dutch girl that we met at the YHA) didn't exactly want to go back, the man in the red beard was apparently a serial rapist and appears to women more often than he does to men... but they also didn't want to wait alone outside the prison. I think the odds of seeing a ghost are probably higher if there's a bit of fear going around in a small group of people. I did not have much hope of seeing anything when the large tour group made its way through the building, but I was hoping that at least one of us would see a moving shadow or an unexpected waver of light as our small party slowly made our way through the dark corridors of the empty prison. Unfortunately, no ghosts were out that night.
Sunday July 24, 2005
It had been a fantastic trip, but by the time Sunday had come around I think that we were all well and truly ready to return to the warm beds of home. After a breakfast at Phudies, we hopped into the taxi that we'd booked earlier on that morning and had a relaxing ride back to Hobart, where we were to catch our flight home. It was strange seeing the pleasant countryside zoom past us in the car. It was not long before we drove past Eaglehawk Neck, and the place where we had started our walk soon disappeared into the rear vision mirror.
Sunday July 17, 2005
We had planned to meet at Town Hall at 11:30am, and by midday I was still waiting alone with my backpack in the cold wind. I had expected that Jesse was not going to show up on time (this time he was running late because he had neglected to pick up the GPS from his parent's boat), but I had no idea where Tim and Nat were. Just when I was beginning to think that they had chickened out, I started getting some phone calls saying that they were on their way.
Our first navigational task of the trip involved finding Gate D8N in Darling Harbour, where the Spirit of Tasmania was going to be departing from. Even after getting instructions on how to get there from two separate people, we managed to get lost. Fortunately we were still able to get there in time to board the boat, and to witness our first highlight of the trip. We were waiting in a lobby type area prior to boarding the ship, and in the room was a lady who was evidently in a pretty foul mood. When one of the Spirit of Tasmania staff members helpfully tried to explain a few things about the boarding process to her, she threw a hissy fit, demanded a refund and said that she was not going to board the boat. It appeared to be an idle threat, because she sat back down and started reading. Later on, we had to pass through a security check. The lady's bag caused the metal detector to sound, so she thought that emptying the contents of her bag onto the floor and yelling at the security staff would make things better. We didn't see her again after that.
Aside from the wind, it was a really nice day and we got some great views of the harbour as we were leaving Sydney. It was fun to stand on the top deck looking out at the container ships and the ferries that were being dwarfed by the ship that we were on.After leaving the headlands, we decided to spend a bit of time exploring. The interior of the ship felt a little like an RSL, and most of the ship's patrons would not have looked out of place playing bingo on a Saturday night. However, any shortcomings associated with travelling on the boat were well and truly made up for by the buffet meals and by the wind outside. After gorging on oysters, salmon, cheese cake and a variety of other treats, we entertained ourselves by literally getting blown around by the hurricane-like wind on the top deck. Unfortunately, our fun ended when one of the crew members forced us back inside because he did not want us getting blown overboard. We spent the rest of the evening writing messages to be included in the time capsule that we were going to bury out in the bush. Writing messages intended to be read approximately 15 years from now is harder than it seems, and we needed a few Bourbon & Cokes to get our creative juices flowing.
Monday July 18, 2005
Early Monday morning, when it was still pitch black, I was woken up by the slow but drastic lurching of the ship. I could hear the ocean crashing against the outside of the vessel. I went back to sleep confident that everything was fine, but dreamt about sunken boats.
At around 9am, we were woken up by an announcement saying that the ship's arrival in Devonport would be delayed due to the previous night's rough seas. The boat basically had to be stopped during the night to ride out the waves and we were going to arrive around 5 hours behind schedule. As we had a coach to catch, and were expecting to get to Port Arthur fairly late that night in any case, the delay really threw our travel plans out of whack. The good news was that they were extending the buffet brunch for several hours due to the delay, so we all went back to sleep.
When we did eventually get out of bed, we spent much of the morning re-organising our travel plans. After that had been sorted out, we enjoyed our second straight buffet meal and spent a bit of time testing out the ship's entertainment facilities by playing a few video games. However, we soon grew tired of such inane forms of amusement and returned to entertaining ourselves via more sophisticated means: battling the winds on the upper deck. We tried to stand still in one spot for as long as we could without being blown over, we ran races with each other running into the wind, and we jumped vertically into the air, letting the force of the wind blow us backwards.The time passed quickly when we were out in the elements, but after the boat eventually arrived in Devonport, time seemed to slow back down again. We had to sit around downstairs with our packs and read the Sunday newspaper as we waited for the coach to get ready. We decided to include the newspaper in our time capsule.
Due to our changed travel plans we were to stay the night in Launceston, and it was this town that gave us our first real taste of Tasmania. After checking into our YHA rooms, located above a very local looking pub, we went looking for a place to do some shopping. Though we didn't see much of the town during this little expedition (a Woolworths and a Coles were located about 2 minutes walk from the youth hostel), this small outing down the road gave me a faint hint of the Blue Mountains, a feeling which stuck with me.
That night, we cooked meat and potatoes for dinner at the hostel. Salt and herbs were used to season the meat, and to the mashed potatoes we added beef stock, herbs and garlic for flavour. We had also bought some nice, gourmet style tomato sauce to go with everything. Unfortunately, we did not buy any oil to cook with as we did not want to be lugging the stuff around when camping. Jesse and I agreed that it wouldn't be too horrible a thing to do to steal a little wad of butter from the communal fridge to cook with. Nat did not concur, and her mood did not improve when Jesse set the fire alarm off after frying up the butter.Tuesday July 19, 2005
Tuesday morning involved cramming all of the supplies that we bought into our backpacks. This included copious amounts of water, as we were planning on carrying all of our own fresh water for the next few days.
After one last decent breakfast of bacon and eggs, we joined the locals on a public bus and headed down to the coach terminal, where we were going to board the 10am coach for Hobart. On the bus were a range of friendly looking elderly people, signs that declared the bus a "bully-free zone", and a kid that looked like a young version of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel accompanied by a teenage girl attending to a baby in a pram. The bus ride reinforced that Blue Mountains feeling that I had the previous night, though that probably says more about my own preconceptions than anything else.
We arrived in plenty of time to catch our Hobart-bound ride, and after a few hours on the road we were in the capital of Tasmania. Prior to leaving the coach, Tim managed to give the driver his share of excitement for the day. He decided to use the coach's toilet after we had parked in the terminal, and as I left the vehicle I let the driver know that there was still one more person on board in the toilet. The driver's eyes widened, and a worried expression passed over his face.
"No! Not now!" he exclaimed. "The toilet doesn't work when the engine is off!"
As he rushed back into the coach to turn the engine on, Tim contentedly made his towards the front of the bus, oblivious to the emergency that he had created.
We managed to take in a bit of Hobart as we were walking through the city centre in search of the departure point for our next bus, which was to drop us off at Eaglehawk Neck where we were to start our walk. The city had a bit of a metropolitan core without losing that small town feel, and seemed to be a very pleasant place. After finding the bus station and dropping off our packs, we did a bit of extra shopping and bought an extra 30L of water, as well as a 15 year old bottle of scotch for our time capsule. We then sat down on a park bench and made our lunch. Because we no longer had our backpacks with us, we had no excuse for our transient-like behaviour. I'm sure that we all felt like hobos as we dished up canned ham and salsa with pocket knives, and used the water from the park's fountain to wash our hands.
After lunch, we bought a few more trinkets to add to our time capsule (three magazines: Time, Cosmos and TV Hits), then boarded the bus that was to take us to the beginning of our adventure in the wilderness. The sun set as we were driving and by the time we had made it to the Eaglehawk Neck visitor's centre, night had well and truly set in. We spent a fair while fine tuning our packs so that they would be relatively easy to carry before heading off into the dark. Whatever I did with my pack didn't seem to help much. I was weighed down with 20L of water, a tent, our dinners and all of my personal essentials (sleeping bag, ground mat etc.). None of the other fared much better. Even before we made it to the beach (right next to the visitor's centre on the map), we found an excuse to stop and take a break. We stumbled upon a statue of a fierce looking dog chained to a barrel, and decided to take a few photos.What felt like the trip's first disaster soon followed. Laden down with our backpacks, we painstakingly trudged across the soft sand of the beach in Pirates Bay. As it was high tide, the sand soon turned into impenetrable jagged rocks as we made our way further and further down the beach, and eventually we were forced to turn back and retrace our steps. All that hard work marching along the beach was for naught.
As our packs were getting heavier by the minute, we decided to take the safe route and followed the main road, which we knew would eventually lead us into the walking tracks of the Tasman National Park. We soon passed through a small cluster of houses known as Doo Town, and I wondered how many of the people that lived here had ever contemplated killing a backpacker. Tim agreed that there were probably one or two.
It was difficult to gauge the air temperature because it did not take long before we were covered with perspiration. At that stage, none of us felt happy about having taken so many warm clothes, and most of us had removed several layers of clothing by the time we had made it to Devils Kitchen. Though it was late, the full moon lit up the landscape enough for us to admire the impressive cliff faces at Devils Kitchen. The lookout gave us a view of near vertical drops into a rough ocean. The waves appeared to be crashing into the rocks 40m below us. I mentioned to the others that the sea cliffs that we were going to see at the end of the trail were at least 5 times that height, but none of us could imagine that to be true.
After Devils Kitchen, we took in several other magnificant, moonlit views. Despite all of the stops (officially to take in the views, unofficially to drop our heavy backpacks for a few minutes), we felt as though we were making reasonable progress. It was getting fairly late by the time we had made it to Waterfall Bay, but we'd covered a large proportion of our night's walk already and felt as though we were on the home straight. After a bit of searching, we found a sign that marked the start of the Tasman Coastal Trail and strode off into the bush.
We learnt something that night. What appears to be a short distance on a map can turn out to be a pretty nasty walk if you are heading uphill. When you know that you're close to your destination and have the mindset that the campsite could be just around the next corner, each bend in the track turns into a disappointment and time drags on and on. Tim and I slogged on ahead, anticipating a hot meal and a comfy place to sit down without our backpacks. As we advanced uphill, dark tress that obscured the moonlight greeted us after each turn in the path. My glasses had begun to fog up and the torchlit track that we were trying to follow was becoming more and more ambiguous. Each step started to become a conscious effort, and my breathing was becoming laboured. Tim mentioned that if we were not at the campsite any time soon, he'd need a break. I had to agree with him. Had we unknowingly passed our campsite already? Even worse, were we on the right track? Just as such thoughts were beginning to solidify in my mind, we heard running water, and the trees cleared out slightly. There appeared to be a couple of spots where we could pitch tents. We assumed that this was the Camp Falls that was labelled on the map.
By the time Jesse and Nat had arrived, it would have been around 10pm. However, we had expected a late night. We had found decent places to pitch our tents, the day's work was over, and it wasn't long before we were warming our hands by the fuel stove and cooking a hot meal of rice and soup. Aside from being spooked by animal noises that sounded like the voices of little girls, I don't think that we could have been more relaxed.Wednesday July 20, 2005
We slept in for too long on Wednesday. I knew that we were going to be taking on a pretty long day's walk, and wanted to be moving by 9am at the latest. After a breakfast of miso soup, hot oats and hot chocolate, after packing away our tents and reorganising our packs, it was 11am. What's more, our packs were hardly any lighter than the night before. The water flowing in the creek by our campsite was fresh and clear, and we had used it to make breakfast. I still started the day with 20L of water in my pack.When we finally got going, we walked in the wrong direction. The morning's climb was meant to be the worst of the trip, but I had a feeling that things weren't going quite as planned as we followed a flat path towards a lookout. Our backpacks were already making their presence well and truly felt and the backtracking that we had to do was not an ideal start to the day. When we did find the correct path up Tatnells Hill, things hardly became more pleasant. Each step required a significant effort as we hauled our way up the track. The small creeks flowing all around us seemed to make giggling noises as we laboured our way up the slope, packs filled to the brim with water.
Half way up the slope I'd had enough, and suggested that we ditch some of our water. I was fairly certain that the camping ground that we were to spend the night at was going to have fresh water, and I expected that there were going to be streams along the way. In hindsight the decision to ditch the water should have been an easy one, but we decided that we did not want to part with our water just yet, and battled on up the hill.
When we eventually made it to a small clearing and flat ground, we were confident that the worst part of the day's walk was over. It was well after midday, and the sun was out. The view was nice, and there were broad, flat rocks that would have made comfortable seats upon which we could have enjoyed a pleasant lunch. But we'd hardly made a dent in the distance that we were to cover during the day due to our late start, and decided to push on. Thumbs Point was the next major landmark on the map, and we decided to set that as our target for a lunch spot. It appeared to be a long way away on the map, about equivalent to the distance that we'd covered during the previous night's walk, but we felt that we needed to cover some serious distance before sitting down for a long break.
After the climb up the hill, the vegetation had changed and we moved into prime leech territory. I decided that ignorance was bliss, and did not check my legs for leeches. Nat, however, could not ignore the possibility of a little blood sucking worm attaching itself to her leg, and decided to have a look. Lo and behold, there was a leech attaching itself to her leg right at that moment. Nat certainly does not appear to be the type of girl that would take any crap from a little wormy type thing, which made her hysteria even more impressive. I won't describe her reaction in too much detail, or else she might hunt me down and silence me forever.
The walking after Tatnells Hill was far more flat, but our packs certainly weren't any lighter. We'd walk until the packs became too much of a burden, sit down for a few minutes, then walk again. Unfortunately, we kept getting glimpses of Thumbs Point as we made our way along the track, and after each glimpse, our target did not appear to be getting any closer. After around 3 hours of being teased, Tim and I finally found ourselves on the headland. We took a seat on log, dropped our backpacks, and enjoyed the feeling of not having to walk. After a few minutes, we worked up the energy to start preparing lunch. When Jesse and Nat arrived it was around 4pm, and the lunch that we ate was very welcome.
After we had finished eating, the light was visibly beginning to fade. As we rounded the headland and peered out at The Lanterns and the Hippolyte Rocks, dusk was clearly settling in. We still had a long way to go.By the time the sun had set, we had managed to get a few distant views of the white beach at Fortescue Bay, where our campsite was located. It did not look all that close, but it certainly did not appear to be out of reach either. After a bit of a downhill climb we expected the walking to be relatively flat the rest of the way. We were all pretty tired, our packs felt like lead weights on our backs, but the end of our day's walk was within the realms of ours imaginations. As we passed through the campsite at Bivouac Bay (where we saw the only other walker that we encountered on the trip), we still felt confident that we were able to get to Fortescue Bay without turning an arduous walk into an extreme one.
Unfortunately I had overlooked what appeared to be a small hill on the map, and what I expected to be flat land after Bivouac Bay turned into yet another climb. It certainly wasn't to the scale of the climb that we did in the morning, but in the dark after a hard day's walk, it felt even worse. Once again my glasses fogged up as I tried to follow a confusing path lit up with nothing more than my AAA battery powered torch. Tim and I had once again pushed on ahead, yet we still needed to stop every few minutes. I was wondering how Jesse and Natalia were doing, especially since they did not have a map.
The climb down the other side of the hill was not much better than the climb up. At times I was unsure as to whether or not I was following the path or just blindly stumbling forward for the sake of going somewhere, I could hardly see due to my foggy glasses and we still had a long way to walk. Things felt as though they were shifting from being expectedly difficult to somewhat out of control. When we eventually made it down to water level, we decided to take yet another break, this time on the pebbles by the sea. There was meant to be an exposed shipwreck in the bay in front of us but I couldn't see anything. The view was beautiful nonetheless. The water gently lapped at the round pebbles that we were sitting on as the full moon peeked at us from behind rolling clouds. Off in the distance, moonlight was reflected off the stretch of water lying between the dark headlands that enclosed the bay. The scene reminded me of pirates and Peter Pan. Still, I'd rather have not been facing the prospect of stumbling around in the bush late at night, and we were forced to abandon the scene. We hauled up our backpacks and struggled on towards the campsite.
I was fairly certain that I had taken a wrong turn as we made our way towards another stretch of water, bashing our way through waist high vegetation. A fairly large stream was flowing out from the hills into the bay, and there did not appear to be any way across. After looking around, I noticed a bridge further upstream. After retracing our steps a short distance, we found the path that led towards the bridge and I took a photo of Tim as he was crossing. "I look happy?" he said after I showed him the image on my digital camera.
It wasn't long before we began to notice little animals scampering out of our way. At first I could not make out what they were with my dim torch, all I could see were small grey figures scurrying into the bushes as we made our way towards them. However, we soon caught one unawares in the middle of the path. It was a penguin! The excitement of unexpectedly seeing penguins out in the wild almost lightened our mood. We lumbered on into the dark with the novelty of hundreds of small animals invisibly surrounding us, squalking away under the cover of the thick vegetation that we pushed through.By this stage, I was checking my map after every break, which made our progress seem all the more slow. I was certain that we had to be very close to the beach when yet another headland reared its ugly head. What's more, by the time we'd made it to this latest headland (which looked a lot smaller on the map than it did in reality), we realised that we'd need to start climbing uphill again. I did not know how much more of this I could put up with. I was tired, hungry, and just wanted to be there. But instead, I was climbing up yet another slope with an insanely heavy backpack, sweating profusely and struggling to see through fogged up glasses. Thankfully, the view from the top of the little hill lifted our spirits. There was the beach, and at the end of the beach we could see a campfire burning. We were almost there.
When we finally made it onto the beach, it felt as though the long struggle was over. Tim and I dropped our backpacks and sat on the rocks. All we had to do was get to the end of the beach and we were there, so we relaxed. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see that it was only just past 7:30pm. Maybe things weren't going so bad after all? After a short break, we worked up the willpower to throw our packs back on and make the final push towards the campsite. The elation of finally making it to the campsite was about to set in when the walk decided to pull one last, cruel trick on us. When we were about half way along the beach, we came across another stream flowing right through the sand into the bay. No problem, surely there had to be some way around it? I walked upstream, then walked upstream some more. Nothing. After a few moments of disbelief, we came to the realisation that the only way to get to the other side of the stream was to walk through it. We couldn't quite accept that this was happening, so decided that the least we could do would be to wait for Jesse and Natalia to show up so that we could all share in the excitement of walking through the freezing cold water. After a long wait, we eventually caught a glimpse of a flashlight off in the bush, at least half an hour's walk behind us. I certainly didn't mind quietly sitting on the sand without my backpack on, so was happy to wait a little longer. After another long while, we caught another glimpse of the flashlight, in exactly the same spot as before. They certainly were moving slowly. We had noticed a motor boat on the water as we were waiting. This was not much of a surprise, as the campsite that we were heading towards was meant to be quite a popular weekend getaway for locals. I was, however, a little surprised when the motor boat headed directly towards the bush where the torch light was coming from, stopped in the water and shone a light into the bush. Was everything ok? After several minutes, the boat returned to the camping ground. I kept my eyes on the bush, looking for a flicker of a flashlight. As the time dragged on, I did not see any sign of Jesse and Nat. What was taking them so long? I decided that if the people on the boat knew something that we didn't, it was probably best for us to get to the campsite. Tim and I took our boots and socks off, rolled up our pants, and prepared to get wet.
The sand felt icy cold between my toes, and I was dreading the water. However, I did not want to linger on the beach in such a state, and decided to get things over and done with. After it appeared that the waves coming in from the beach had receded somewhat and the water level in the stream was at a minimum, I darted into the water with my backpack on and my boots in my hands. After a few quick steps in ankle deep water, the level of the stream soon gave way and I took a big step into pants soaking territory. As I came out of the other end, I expected the worst, but thankfully my rolled up pants were only mildly dampened. Tim then took his plunge into the cold, and he came out relatively dry as well. His toenail did not fare as well. Apparently it had been in the process of falling off for several weeks after it had been stamped on in a soccer game. The shock of the cold water must have done something to it, because it was now pointing vertically upwards. It looked absolutely filthy, but Tim insisted that I take a photo of it. I didn't look at it as I took this photo, I just pointed the camera at it and pressed the button. I then gave Tim some heavy-duty sports tape to tape it down, and more importantly, cover it up so that we wouldn't have to look at it any more.
The rest of my walk was relatively uneventful. We just had to clamber over a few rocks. I moved on ahead towards the campground and saw someone's car, a boat and a campfire. I felt like an emancipated ghost walking back into reality. I dumped my bag at the nearest decent looking campsite, and finally allowed myself to accept that the day's walk was over once and for all. I looked at my watch; it was now past 8:30pm. The campers with the motorboat were playing loud music and drinking beer, so I assumed that they didn't have any important news with regards to their previous little expedition out onto the water. I just sat on my pack and waited for Tim, exhausted. I then waited a little more. Tim was taking his time. After a while, I decided to stumble back towards the rocks and see what Tim was up to. For some reason he was still quite a long way back, but eventually he found his way to the campsite as well. Apparently he got stuck on the rocks.
This campsite was the only one on the trail in which we would be allowed to set up a campfire, so we had planned to bake some vegetables for the night's dinner. Judging by the size of the fire that the other campers had going, it looked as though there should be plenty of firewood around. After setting up the tent, Tim and I decided to hunt around in the dark for some decent firewood, and found a couple of twigs. That should have at least been enough to get things started, we could find some more wood later, so I set things up to get the fire going and tried to light a few matches. My matches were damp. I couldn't get a light. I asked for Tim's lighter but he had lent it to Jesse. Jesse also had my second box of matches. We sat in the cold waiting for Jesse and Natalia, as a campfire roared about 30 metres away from us.
Eventually, Jesse and Nat showed up. They seemed just as relieved as we were to have made it to the campsite, and Jesse appeared forcefully intent on maintaining a good mood. I let him try to get the fire going as I cut up our vegetables and wrapped them in aluminium foil, ready to be baked in hot coals. We had potatoes, turnip, carrots, garlic, sweet potatoes, onion... the lot. I seasoned everything in cubes of stock powder. Nat pointed out that some of the vegetables were covered in blood. I hadn't even realised that I had cut myself as I was chopping up the vegetables, I must have been too tired to care. The vegetables took ages to cut up, but even after I had finished preparing them the fire still wasn't going. The wood was too damp to burn properly and after over an hour's worth of effort, all we had was a pissweak little flame that could hardly burn paper. As Tim heated up some watery noodle soup to keep us from dying of starvation, Jesse went over to the other campsite to ask if they could spare us some firewood, and I waited dejectedly by the uncooked vegetables. Nat had wisely gone to bed, and told Jesse to wake her up after the vegies had been cooked. I had a feeling that she was going to get a good night's sleep.
By 2am, we were boiling as many of the vegies as we could using the fuel cooker. The guys from the other campsite were nice enough to give us a couple of logs, but it isn't easy to burn a log if you don't have any sort of fire to start with. We did manage to get enough hot coals to cook one lot of vegies. We're not sure if they contained my blood or not (we got the packages mixed up), but by that time everyone was so hungry that nobody cared in the least. By 2:30am we had eaten a few half-cooked vegetables and were more than ready for bed. I ate several protein bars, had a big protein shake, a few chocolate bars and some vitamins in an attempt to fool myself into believing that I'd eaten dinner. The day had been a bit of a disaster, and if we didn't change our plans the next day was going to be just as bad, only this time we'd be doing it without having had any sleep. I thought that I'd make up my mind about what we should do after I'd had some semblance of a night's rest.
Thursday July 21, 2005
Despite knowing that it would make the day a lot easier if we got up early, the need for some decent rest took precedence over everything else and I decided that waking up at 9am would not be unreasonable. The birds didn't agree. Just after the sun had risen a pack of crows started going through the bags of garbage that we had left outside, even though those bags did not contain a single scrap of food. I tried to ignore them and curled up in my warm sleeping bag, but they made more noise than my alarm clock. Unwillingly, I got out of my sleeping bag, unzipped the tent cover and hurled a rock at them. They scattered momentarily and I tried to go back to sleep. It took them about a minute to regroup and mount another attack on the garbage.
After we'd had breakfast and had packed up our tents, the temptation was still there to take the wimpy way out and just stay in Fortescue Bay. The place had water on tap, the beach was real nice, and the guys with the big campfire had left all of their firewood behind. In addition to that, it would give us a bit of time to recover and be able to do the massive walk that we'd need to do to actually get out of the national park. I had been hoping that there would be a park ranger at the Fortescue Bay site that could give us a lift out on the Saturday, but the site office was empty and did not appear to have been occupied for some time. To get to Port Arthur on the Saturday as we had originally planned, we were now facing a walk as a long as the last two days combined. It was 11am and Tim was cooking the remaining vegetables on the coals of the fire abandoned by the other campers, who had left earlier on in the morning. We could have stayed put, eaten properly cooked vegetables for lunch, and lived in relative luxury for the next few days.Thankfully, those thoughts did not persist. It was clear that we did not need to haul around as much water as we had been carrying, and much of the hard walking that we had done already could be attributed to our delayed arrival to the national park. Most importantly, we still had our time capsule that we were planning to bury somewhere along the south-eastern edge of the Tasman Peninsula. We decided that we should trek on, but an easy day's walk was in order. We could re-evaluate things after seeing how the day panned out.
With lightened packs, we made our way towards the relatively flat inland trail that would take us to the Bare Knoll campsite. Walking without 20L of water on my back was absolute bliss, however it took us a while to find the start of the track that we were looking for. As soon as we had found the start of the trail we realised that we had lost Tim, and spent about 20 minutes yelling his name. For some reason, he had decided to walk in the opposite direction and had started walking the coastal trail. Luckily he realised that we were not following him along the arduous track that led towards Mt Fortescue and he had turned back in time for us to find him. By the time all four of us were ready to begin our day's walk, it was 12:40pm. Even with our lightened packs and the relatively small distance that we had to cover, I was not optimistic that we'd be able to make it to our campsite before dark.
We expected the first part of the day's walk to be the toughest, we had to make our way up a hill before the land levelled out again. Tim and I moved on ahead, and we all agreed that wherever the two of us ended up by 2:30pm, we should stop and prepare lunch. It wasn't a walk in the park, but with the lightened packs we were making excellent ground and by lunchtime, Tim and I were preparing lunch at the top of the hill. Despite being absolutely famished by that point, the corned beef that we were going to put on our fajitas did not look fit for human consumption. Fat had solidified into the top of the can, and small pieces of artery were interspersed within the rest of the meat. Tim and I ate our share of the vegetables that were (over)cooked in the morning, then decided that the only way that we could possibly eat the corned beef was if we heated it up on the fuel cooker. We mixed just about all of the fajita seasoning into the corned beef to get rid of any of its residual flavour. When Jesse and Nat showed up, we had a little pot of meat boiling away on the fuel cooker. "Mmm, this looks like a special treat for lunch!", Jesse said seriously...
After lunch, Tim and I charged on. The land was beautifully flat and the boards of wood that had been erected to allow walkers to make their way over swampland were very comfortable to walk on. No horrible, unexpected hills got in our way and by 4:10pm, Tim and I found ourselves at the campsite. It was still light and we felt as though we could keep going. It was an odd but very welcome feeling.
Half an hour later, Nat and Jesse showed up and we had set up camp before nightfall. I spent the time before sunset completing my message for the time capsule. Soon we were happily cooking a dinner, and strangely enough, the servings almost seemed adequate. Jesse also figured out a way to keep our torches shining onto our food without having to hold them whilst we were eating, something which had been bothering us for a while. We just had to stick the torches in our beanies. Cool, eh?After dinner, I changed into a fresh pair of clothes, brushed my teeth and had an early night. The others decided to stay up a little longer writing their time capsule messages. The next day, we would attempt to do as much of the walk to and from Cape Piller as was possible. It was a fair distance, but as we would be retracing our steps back to the campsite no matter what happened, we would be doing the walk without our backpacks. If carrying a lightened backpacks is considered bliss, then I don't know how you'd describe walking with nothing but a daypack. Things were looking up.
Friday July 22, 2005
Amazingly enough we were almost able to meet our 7am goal, and by 7:40am we were headed for the unfenced, 300m cliff faces that Cape Piller is famous for. Jesse, Nat and I were carrying our daypacks and Tim was carrying the time capsule that was finally to find its resting place for the next 15-20 years. The end of the walk was in sight, and we were anticipating that Cape Piller would provide for a spectacular finale. We did not come away disappointed.It was a mere 20 minutes before we'd made it to our first stop, a shoe wash station. Being the good citizens that we are, we thoroughly scrubbed our boots free of any Phytophthora cinnamomi containing mud, and by the time we were heading up our token big hill for the day, we had spent more time cleaning our boots than we had been walking.
Even the mud that soon marked the tracks did not bog us down. Most guidebooks urge walkers to stick to the designated walking paths when there is mud around, so that the tracks are not continuously widened, spreading the mud further and further outwards. I'll admit that we did not always follow this suggestion.
Soon the muddy environment made way for a tanned, stony landscape dotted with several pools of water; we had made it to the Perdition Ponds. However, it wasn't the change of vegetation that had caught our eye. Up ahead, a massive, shear cliff-face of crumbling stone was beginning to reveal itself to us. Our pace slackened after this first taste of Cape Pillar's sea cliffs, we could not continue walking without trying to take in the extraordinary environment. Before long we were walking along the brink of an immense, vertical drop. When we were game enough to peer over the edge, we saw walls of jagged stones spearing down into an ocean that seemed dizzyingly far away. I tried to imagine how long it would take before the white cylinder of our time capsule would hit the water if we accidentally dropped it over the edge.
By now the scenery had well and truly captivated us, and the frequent stops that we made soon meant that we were running well behind schedule. We still had to find a spot to bury our time capsule. We still had to retrace our steps from the previous day's walk, and return to Fortescue Bay. What's more, storm clouds were brewing off in the distance, and from the cliff edges we could see a front of rain menacing towards us. But we no longer cared. We were under the spell of the landscape that we had walked for days to get to, and nothing could stop us from appreciating the here and now of the place.
As we made our way around the trail, I noticed several little fishing boats sputtering around in the water that was so far below us. I tried to imagine how we must have looked to the people in the boats. I pictured four insignificantly small figures, inching along the edges of unnerving cliff-faces. As we stood atop The Blade, an exposed, crumbling pillar of stone that jutted out of the landscape, we waved to the fishing boats below us, our clothing flapping in the wind.
According to our map, the trail would end at the Chasm Lookout, located on the tip of Cape Piller. The path up to the lookout was the steepest we had faced yet. We literally had to climb up boulders, using tree branches to help haul ourselves upwards. It was a feeling of satisfaction and quiet relief as I finally walked upon the boulders on the cliff's edge at the end of the trail. Perhaps there was a touch of emptiness in there as well. After all the time we had spent together, I would not be seeing any more of the Tasman Coastal Trail. Jesse, Nat, Tim and I were sitting on the end of Tasmania looking out towards the sea's horizon, when the dark clouds that had threatened us all day decided to empty. The wind picked up, the sky dimmed, and large drops of rainwater fell from the sky.
Saturday July 23, 2005
At 10am on the 23rd of July, we were in Fortescue Bay with our backpacks on, walking towards our unexpected lift out of the park. The previous evening could not have gone any better. The heavy rain that seemed almost certain to settle in for our walk back from Cape Piller cleared almost as quickly as it had begun. After finding a suitable location, we spent several hours sealing and burying our time capsule before returning to our campsite at Bare Knoll. As soon as we had eaten and packed our belongings away, we set off again and managed to make it back to Fortescue Bay at a reasonable hour. All of the firewood that had been left behind by the other campers was still there. The icing on the cake, however, was finding a park ranger with a ute that could seat 5 people. It was his first day working at the Fortescue Bay campsite, and he was going to be heading out to Eaglehawk Neck during the Saturday morning. We did not have to face the long walk out of the park.
When the friendly ranger dropped us off on the Arthur Highway, it was still morning. We were well rested, and the walk to Port Arthur was only 4km on a paved road. As we neared the small town and the end of the walk was becoming a distinct reality, all of our aches and pains started to become apparent. I soon realised that my feet were absolutely killing me. When I took my shoes off later on, I could see that my steel capped boots had rubbed most of my toes raw.
After we had staggered into the local youth hostel, which was unlocked but completely empty, we dropped our packs and stumbled back up the road to Phudies, a pie store along the Arthur Highway that we had passed earlier on. My first decent meal in days consisted of 3 meat pies, a quiche, a citrus tart, a chocolate tart and a cappuccino. Following our meal, we returned to the YHA and the hot shower that I had there was heaven. I felt wonderfully light and clean as I changed into a pair of fresh clothes, free from five days worth of dirt and sweat.
Relaxed and clean, we ate another large meal (this time at the bistro opposite our youth hostel) before making our way to the Port Arthur Historic Site, where we were to begin our ghost tour. As most of you would know, Port Arthur has quite a morbid history. The place was once a penal colony in which rapists and murderers were subjected to inhumane mental and physical torture. The ghost tour involved following a tour guide around the unlit, historic buildings located in the area, listening to stories of the ghost sightings that have been reported in each building. The tour started off at the old church, then made its way towards the pastor's house where it is alleged that the ghost of the minister has been sighted numerous times. We saw a few other buildings where things go bump in the night, including the surgeon's dissection room in which the surgeon at the old penal colony cut up deceased convicts, before we entered the secondary prison. The secondary prison was built next to the mental asylum. This was quite a convenient location to put it, because according to our tour guide, convicts were often put in solitary confinement for up to 30 days in this place. During this time they were locked in the dark, completely isolated from the outside world, and survived on water alone. Most of them went insane. The tour guide seemed genuinely uncomfortable as she talked about the man with the red beard that has often been sighted in the prison, and she led us through the dark building very quickly without looking up.When the tour had finished, we had to return to the youth hostel. It was faster to get back via the historic site, and the tour guide did not mind if we went straight back to the YHA through the site. Jesse, Tim and I decided to sneak back into the secondary prison. Nat and Joanna (a Dutch girl that we met at the YHA) didn't exactly want to go back, the man in the red beard was apparently a serial rapist and appears to women more often than he does to men... but they also didn't want to wait alone outside the prison. I think the odds of seeing a ghost are probably higher if there's a bit of fear going around in a small group of people. I did not have much hope of seeing anything when the large tour group made its way through the building, but I was hoping that at least one of us would see a moving shadow or an unexpected waver of light as our small party slowly made our way through the dark corridors of the empty prison. Unfortunately, no ghosts were out that night.
Sunday July 24, 2005
It had been a fantastic trip, but by the time Sunday had come around I think that we were all well and truly ready to return to the warm beds of home. After a breakfast at Phudies, we hopped into the taxi that we'd booked earlier on that morning and had a relaxing ride back to Hobart, where we were to catch our flight home. It was strange seeing the pleasant countryside zoom past us in the car. It was not long before we drove past Eaglehawk Neck, and the place where we had started our walk soon disappeared into the rear vision mirror.
posted by Gene at 8:22 pm
That's one massive blog entry! I'm used to a much smaller word:photo ratio.
I will read it in patches as time allows.
One question: Was the first sentence, about shampooing your hair, constructed deliberately in order to match the witty blog title "higene", or was it an unconscious manifestation of the same untraceable causes that led you to choose that title in the first place?
p.s. I'm a friend of Nat's, not just some random vagrant.
p.p.s. it is significant that I said "not just" and not "not".
Hey Ian,
don't worry, I'm happy to have Nat's vagrant friends visiting this site :)
I didn't think twice about that shampooing sentence so I guess I'll have to choose option (b) as my answer: weird subconscious manifestation.
Well that's good, because you couldn't stop me anyway! Such are the mysterious ways of the interweb.
And, quid pro quo, mutatis mutandis, gluteus maximus, I won't try to prevent you from reading mine.
Post a Comment
<< Home