Dec 30, Mt Wills Hut

Only an 11 km walk today, but a 1 km ascent. The temperatures are still high so we got up at 4:30 and were on the trail by 6:15. 5 km of bush bashing got us 500 m up to the Omeo highway by 10 AM. We had to walk up that for 1.5 km and then swung off onto a poorly maintained fire trail where we picked up a food drop. Our packs decidedly heavier, we trundled off up the fire trail which degenerated into a bit of a mess for a few kilometers before improving into a reasonable foot pad. Somehow we missed a turn south of Mt Wills and cruised along a fire track the goes west of the Mt. Following the contour. By the time we spotted the error, it was easier to follow this track around until it met the Mt Wills track on the north side and go up to the hut that way. This little navigation error (my first) caused us an extra kilometer.

Mt. Wills hut is quite modern with a rain water tank hooked to plumbing in the cabin. We pinched enough water to have a bath in our kitchen sinks.

Dec 29, Gills Creek

We had a good day today. Only around 4 km of off road walking and the marking was good and mostly there was a good to faint foot pad which we could follow. Most of the bush was alright too, very little of yesterday's snot!

The walk was from the Mitta Mitta river to Gills creek in a different valley so we had a 700 m ascent up to a ridge and the a 500 m decent into Gills. We got here at about 2:30 having left camp at 7:15. The temperature in the valley was tipped to be 30 again today. We left Taylor's Crossing with 3 litres of water each and ran out about 1 km from Gills.

Gills is a nice little creek about 2.5 m wide. The first thing we did on arrival was have a nice refreshing rinse and get off all the salt and perspiration. Heaven! Then we washed our clothes. They were mostly dry by bed time. The rest will dry on us tomorrow!

Dec 28, Taylor's Crossing

OK, I know this is sounding monotonous, but today was another tough one. From Johnnies Top we dropped about a kilometer into Morass Creek them climbed out 3-400 m (guess) and then descending to Taylor's Crossing on the Mitta Mitta river, 22 km in all. Morass Creek has a bad reputation for people losing the track. On the east descent side the route had been marked with pink flagging so that was easy. On the ascent side there was only markers on trees and soon they stopped appearing as well. We spent about an half hour milling around trying to find them but there just was none. To top that off the bush turned to snot, 2-3 m high dense tightly spaced prickly shrubs. Absolute snot. We were not impressed. The scrub and the hill and the track planners were all chastised soundly and at length. We finally picked our way through the snot to a ridge top, got the lay of the land and finished the 400 m ascent along a property boundary to finally see a track marker upon reaching a fire trail at the top. Our map showed the route following the property boundary but no markers. Did I mention that the temperature in the low lands was pushing 30 degrees? We each carried 5 litres of water today and mine ran out about 1 km from the river.

The route from there was gravel road to Taylor's Crossing, where we soaked our feet and washed our face and heads (without soap of course) and that was heaven. Taylor's Crossing is a car camping area but is surprisingly quiet, only about four groups here.

The river here is shallow enough to drive 4 wheel drive cars across and people did, but I wouldn't because the current is very fast. There is a beaut suspension bridge for walkers.

Dec 27, Johnnies Top

Our camp at Buenba Creek was about 3 km from the spur leading up to Johnnies Top. Due to some swampy walking this took us 70 minutes. The climb up the spur started out quite steep but eased off somewhat after we'd climbed 100m. After another 1.2 km the terrain leveled off for about 1 km. By here we'd climbed 430 m of the 760 m total but only 1/3 of the distance. As the gradient lessened the scrub got thicker (regrowth, burned 2003) and we often had to spend time looking for the route. We made Johnnies Top at 12:30 six hours after breaking camp, not flash for 9.5 km but the climb and the bush slowed us considerably.

Johnnies Top is quite a happening place, except that there are no shops, no pub, well no buildings really, just the top of a hill cleared for helicopter landing and that's it!

Dec 26, Buenba Creek

A much better day today. We made up the kms we missed yesterday and got here about 3 PM after a long lunch with a North bound AAWT trekker whom we gleaned much good information from. We had about 9 km of off track route today but we managed to follow the markers which make for much faster progress and it was all down hill or level. We have a nice creek flowing past our tent so we each got out our kitchen sink collapsible buckets and had a good wash. That felt pretty good!

Tomorrow was planned as a rest day but instead we are walking up to Johnnies Top because we now know there is a full water tank there. This means we hopefully can make Taylor's Crossing the next day rather than camp at the waterless Corryong-Benanbra road.

Dec 25, Buckwong Creek

Another very hard day, a Christmas we won't forget for a while! We had a 500 m climb today, most of it off track, very steep and thick horrible scrub. We finally arrived at Buckwong Creek at 6:10 PM and called it quits at the first camp site we found that had some water. We were about 4 km short of our target so tomorrow will be long too.

Dec 24, Limestone Creek

Today was tough. We had fairly easy walking until about 2 PM when we had to go off track to follow Stony Creek to the Limestone fire track, a distance of 6-7 km. The were a few brumby tracks here and there but mostly it was just bush bashing. It was easy enough navigation but very hard going. We got to Limestone Creek at 6 PM. We had a food drop here which had our Christmas treat, some Walker's Short Bread. We had half tonight and saved the rest for Christmas tomorrow.

We have twice as much off track tomorrow, so we are praying that it will be easier!

Dec 23, Cowombat Flats

We climbed steeply away from Tin Mine huts towards Mt. Pilot until we hit an intersection with the Snow Gum fire trail which we followed. This travels along Snow Gum ridge, a long undulating north-south trending hill. The ridge offered views in both directions. We arrived at Cowombat Flats about 2 PM. This is an interesting place because the infant Murray River is crossed here, so narrow that you can stand with one foot in NSW and one in Victoria! Also, the flats boast having their own crashed airplane.

Gary and Kaaren left Tin Mines before us but were going to climb Mt. Pilot. They had not arrived by 4:30 much later than their usual time , so I headed up the Cowombat fire trail, that being the most direct route from Pilot. I thought one of them may have sprained an ankle or something and I could carry their pack. I went as far as the Pilot and shouted but got no reply. Heavy hearted I returned to our camp by 7 PM to find them sitting with Lee. They'd taken the Snow Gum route as well, and got in about 20 minutes after I'd gone! That was 15 km I didn't need to walk.

Dec 22, Carters (Tin Mines) Hut

About 6 PM my new Suunto outdoor watch started beeping and said "STORM WARNING". I checked the barometer profile - the pressure had dropped 10 Hpa. Hmmmm, time to put up the tent inside the hut as the roof looked dodgy. By the time we got the tent up Suunto was alarmed again - the pressure had dropped another 8 Hpa! Well, we learned about 1/2 hour later, when the Suunto says "STORM WARNING" you'd better start ducking for cover! We had a humdinger of a storm - lightning, high winds and heavy rain all night.

Next morning it was still raining and much of our walk was obscured by rain or fog. We arrived at Tin Mines hut about 1:15 PM to happily see smoke rising out oh the chimney. Our new friends Gary and Kaaren had stayed over due to the rain and had a cheery fire going!

Dec 20-21, Cascade Hut

We extended our rest stop another day because we spent most of the first day running around getting things we needed and to allow more time for sore feet recovery.

The walk from Thredbo to Cascade hut climbs for 410 m then levels off before dropping 200 m to the plain the hut is on. The forest here seems to have been largely untouched by the 2003 fires so the trees are actually alive! It took us 5 hours to do the 15 km to arrive here by mid day.

No reception already. I'll try from a high spot tomorrow.

Dec 19, Rest day,Thredbo

A wee bit of drizzle today, so it would have been perfect for a stroll but also good for resting. We managed to get our toilet trowel from Jindabyne via the ladies who work here at the Youth Hostel as one commutes from there. We also bought new foot beds or insoles for Lee's boots as her current pair had gone soft with age and her feet were unstable, rolling too easily. Other purchases included a spare lighter, anti-inflammatory gels and tablets, insect repellant (80% DEET), Band-Aids and spray on bandage for blister control (though we seem to be past the blister stage now), Dubbin water proof for our boots (no Nikwax in Thredbo!) and some butterscotch which are the best legal pick-me-up we've found for those times when the damn pack is too heavy and your feet are saying 'hey, this looks like a dandy camp spot just here'.

For those of you who've never had the pleasure of overnight bush walking, these are the contents of our packs:
Food and snacks - see earlier entry.
Tent - Lee, 2 kg
Ground sheet - Brian ? 500 g
Fly tarp for rainy cooking, Brian, 600 g
Self inflating mats - both, ? 700 g
Sleeping bags, down -5 degrees, both ?1.7 kg
Stove, metholated spirit, + pot, Brian, 1.5 kg max. capacity
Bowls, cups, spoons, Brian, 500 g
Fuel, meths, Brian, 175 g per day
Toilet trowel, Brian, 500 g
Toilet paper and wet wipes, both, 200 g
Maps, both, various up tp 500 g
Crocks, light weight holey foam rubber shoes, camp wear and sream fording, both, 500 g
Pack rain covers, both, 250-500 g
First aid kit - bandages etc, Lee 250 g
Medical kit, headache pills, anti-inflammatorys, diarrhea pills, Brian, 400 g
GPS, Brian, 700 g
Compass, Lee, 100 g
Camera, Brian, 750 g
Repair kit - numerous goodies, Brian, 500 g
Insect repellant, Brian, 75 g
Sun screen, Lee, 75 g
Pocket knife, Lee, 100 g
Kitchen sink colapsable bucket for bathing, each, ?125 g
Towel - microfibre, both, 75 g
Water filter, Brian, 750 g
2 4 litre pack taps, usually empty, (wine cask bladder with canvas cover), Lee, 100 g
3 litre hydration bladders, both, 1 to 3 kg depending on how often we think we can filter, based on stream on map.
Mobile phone, each, ?200 g
Solio solar charger for phone, Brian, 500 g
Clothes, both have approximately:
3 pairs socks
3 pairs underware
1 pair light weight tough pants
1 pair shorts
3 microfibre wool tops
1 pair thermal bottoms, sleeping
1 pair fleece pants
1 100 weight fleece jacket
1 down jacket
1 rain jacket and now supplimentary poncho
1 sun hat
1 beenie (touque)
1 pair gloves
1 pair reading glasses
1 pair sun glasses

Other gear we each have:
toiletries
2 walking poles
Canvas gaiters
Boots

I have about 20 Gutenburg ebooks on my phone, Lee has a giant crossword mag and sometimes a book.

Dec 18, Thredbo!

Our last day up on the Main Range was another beauty weather wise. We woke to 2 degrees in our tent and a solid frost outside, but then we were at about 2150 m so that was expected. Our route took us along the range past Mt. Townsend and then close to the summit of Mt. Kosciusko, which at 2228 m is Australia's highest mountain. We did not summit Kosi this time as we have many times before. The scenery was spectacular with wave after wave of mountains stretching west as far as the eye could see.

We planned to take the chair lift down the mountain to Thredbo but couldn't work out how we were to hop on a moving chair with a 20 kg pack! In the end we took the walking trail, a drop of around 500 m from the chair lift and about 700 m from where we were on Mt. Kosciusko. While walking down we saw people riding up with big packs, so there must be some way to do it!

First thing we did in Thredbo was buy an ice cream the we got a room. We've had a look around for a new toilet trowel to replace our broken one but it's looking grim on that front. There's one more place to try tomorrow and the lady at the front desk's husband is a gardener so he may have one.

We are going to a Tapas bar for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow is a rest day here in Thredbo, and then we are off south into pretty wild country. There will probably not be reception, so these reports may be tardy.

Dec 17, Mt Twynam

Fantastic weather today alowed us to tackle the Main Range. It's a tough walk, some difficult navigation at first, and a lot of up and down. We left camp at 7 AM and made camp about 4 PM. Our starting elevation was 1700 m and we hit peaks oj about 2175 m. We are tired! Tommorow we walk to Thredbo and then a rest day. Yahooo!

Dec 15, Valentines Hut

I wish I could get sending pictures to the blog from my phone working. This one is a beauty, painted red with little red hearts in the brown trim! Today was a hard walk with some long steep climbs and about 5 biggish creek/river crossings. We managed to boulder hop across all but one. The big climbs were worth the effort because they got us up to some beautiful alpine meadows, strewn with large granite boulders. We saw a fox in one and it yipped when it saw us, sounding exactly like what I thought was a wild dog at Pond Creek Flats.

We made it to the hut around 2 PM. Plenty of time for a cup of soup and a relax before the 2 km round trip to Valentines Falls, a cascade at first, culminating in a 20-30 m fall. Very exciting but we couldn't get a vantage point good enough for a photo.

A sad point to the day was my breaking our toilet trowel. We shall try to replace it in Thredbo, perhaps via courier from Jindabyne.

I've been asked to explain the whole business of food drops. The reason for them is to reduce the amount of food we are carrying, and thus the weight in our packs. A days food for two:
Breakfast
500 ml rolled oats and oat bran
3 tbl spoon full cream milk powder
2 teaspoons sugar
Fist full of various vitamins and fish oil.
Lunch
3 Salina crackers
6 slices of parmesan cheese (it takes lack of refrigeration best)
Dinner
Back Country freeze dried meal (175 gms)
Total weight, approximately 0.6 kg
To this we add snacks:
2 energy nut bars (70 gm)
Sweets (50 gm)
Nuts and dried fruit (100 gms)
And fuel for cooking 175 gms
So each day we need about 1 kg of weight for the purpose of eating. We will be on the track 30 days so will consume 30 kg of supplies, far too much to carry.

Most of our food drops were hidden off the track, secured in plastic storage bins sealed with packing tape then wrapped in 2 rubbish bags each sealed with tape. These were then taped as high in trees as we could get them. All the sealing and placing in trees was to avoid sharing our food with animals and ants. We are very selfish that way!

One exception was the Thredbo drop which we left on the Youth Hostel food storage shelf with our name and dates on it. We sincerely hope no one shares that one either!

Dec 16, Whites R. Hut

Moderate to hard rain fell most of the way. Our new MacPac rain coats let us get soaked all down our fronts, not happy at all about that.

Main Range tomorrow weather permitting.

Dec 14, Tumut River

Today we had a mostly sunny day with only a slight bit of morning fog. The terrain was a bit hillier and we got the 700 m up, 700 m down average day promised by Chapman, but we got it in about six installments. About half way here is an area called Farm Ridge, where we saw 14 tents pitched. This was probably another Outward Bound group. A couple of km further along the track we caught up to a man and young woman. She had twisted her ankle so was hobbling along slowly. We cruised by Mt. Jagungal 2061 m soon after. We are getting into the high country now. Our actual camp site is about 2.5 km past the Tumut River. We didn't like the Tumut site. It was small and had no shade.

While sitting in our little tent out of the flies a helicopter landed in the valley in front of us, hooked something underneath and took off again. Wonder what our tax dollars were paying for there?

Dec 13 Mackeys hut

Started the day in rain coats, day fine after lunch. Another rolling beautiful walk.

Dec 12, Happy's Hut

The day started out cold and I had my down jacket on quickly. It was to stay cool most of the day as we are now mainly over 1500 m altitude. I could walk with bare arms but had to pull on my fleecy whenever we took a break.

We left Four Mile hut in foggy conditions with a heavy dew on the ground. The walk was a gradual undulating easy climb to a peak of 1715 m past Table Top Mt. This was followed by a gradual descent along fire trail until we we due north of Happy's hut. From there we followed Siseman's advice and descended about 200m over a 1.4 km cross country stroll through the open forest to the hut. This cut about 5 km off the days walk so we arrived at 1 PM and had time to wash socks and read the entire hut log. Some of the comments are very entertaining, particularly the ones regarding rebuilding the huts destroyed by the fires. As you would expect there are some very diverse views presented. I am with the crowd that wants the huts rebuilt, even if they are only replicas. They nevertheless represent a period of history that will be slowly lost in ensuing fires unless they are faithfully replaced.

Dec 10 & 11 Four Mile Hut

The walk from Witses to Kiandra was again through mixed forests and open plains, real brumby country. Again, stunningly beautiful! Just before Kiandra we had to ford two rivers with a big car bridge in sight but no way to get to it! We got rid of all our rubbish in a big bin at Kiandra and headed off up the track to pick up our food drop, situated about 1 km along the fire trail that rises steeply out of Kiandra. 6 days food this time, so it took a bit of time to sort out and the weight was certainly noticeable when we put the packs back on. Once we reached the top we were on a rolling table top plateau apparently formed by a flood basalt. This terrain continues for about 6 km (guesstimate) where wheel track led us east off the track down to Four Mile Hut, a cozy little one man hut. The rest day was spent reading Siseman (AATW Bible), washing clothes and relaxing over maps.

Dec 5, Pond Creek Flats

Today was an undulating walk out of Honeysuckle Creek Camp ground for about 4 km followed by a steepish descent on a fire trail into Orroral Valley. After yesterday's debacle we filtered water at the Orroral creek. We then strolled up the Orroral valley until our turn towards the Cotters hut track where we had an early lunch at 11 and taped a few potential blisters.
After lunch it was a bit hot as we climbed out of the valley. We finally hit a saddle and soon turned off the track onto a foot path which meandered pleasantly through open forest until climbing steeply to Cotters Gap. Just after Cotters Gap the was a nice camp site but you need a permit so we continued down a fairly steep track to Pond Creek Flats. There we found a good tent site and a small clear running stream.
After 21 kms we were tired so we filtered water cooked our meal and went to bed.

Dec 9, Witses Hut

The weather today was pretty much the same as yesterday, perfect, sunny with a cooling breeze. Today was a 22.5 km day with about 6-7 kms off track where we had to navigate by topo map to find the next bit of track. The countryside was fairly open so it was easy navigating and smarty pants Hoyle stayed in the pack. Most of the day was low rolling hills and relatively easy walking. We crossed two rivers in rapid succession where we had to swap our boots for Crocks and ford, the Murumbidgie and Tantangara rivers. At the hut we met Gary and Kaaren whom we've been following a day behind for most of the walk. They had a rest day at Witses hut today. Them seem to be nice people.

Dec 7 Pocket Hut

The day started bright and sunny but quickly clouded over. We were happy for the cloud cover as it keeps things cooler. Our walk took us past Oldfields hut were we stopped for our morning snack. This hut is a fine example of pole and vertical slab construction. Leaving Oldfields we had a small climb of perhaps 200m height over several km. On the descent we met people we originally encountered at Whites River Hut while doing our food drops. We had a nice chat with them and exchanged track notes from there it was just a romp down the hill to pick up our fort food drop. We managed to walk straight to it without using smarty pants Hoyle at all! After bungie strapping the box to my pack we set off to nail the remaining 3 km to Pocket Hut. Hard rain began about half way there so w had to drag out rain coats and pack covers. Once at the hut we had a cup of soup and set out wet stuff to dry. The hut is in beautiful shape and has been restored and maintained be the Narang Group. After about an hours rain the sun came out and we had a relaxing afternoon on the porch looking at a beautiful view. Towards evening a group of brumbys came to drink. They were fine looking horses - a stallion, two mares with foals and a yearling.

Hainsworth Hut

We left Pocket hut in fog but not so thick that we had any trouble following the track. Soon we climbed out of the fog and over a open forest ridge to 17 creek flat. The walking here was on wheel tracks in grass. We saw more brumbys here. The day turned sunny with a nice cool breeze, perfect for walking. Most of the walk from here was undulating with no ridges more than 150 m above the plains. We arrived at Hainsworth hut about 1:30. The hut is not nearly as nice as Pocket hut but this is made up for by an excellent stream deep enough to soak sore feet, achillies and knees. We let some water warm in the sun and had a good wash.

Dec 6, Dunn's Flat

A wild dog ran past our camp three times during the night making a high pitched sharp bark. You worry a bit about them and it disturbs your sleep. It rained a bit during the night so the shrubs bordering the walk track were wet. Once we reached Cotters Flat we were back on fire trail, nice and dry. We followed the Murray Gap fire trail up to the gap, a long steep climb of about 500 m. We had planned to camp at the gap on the NSW side of the border but found no sites that took our fancy so we continued on to Dunn's Flat where we found a nice site about 150 m from a good clear flowing creek.
As it was only about 2:30 Lee washed clothes while I set up camp. We had a nice relaxing afternoon resting.

Dec 4, Tharwa to Honeysuckle Creek

After a quick breakfast we dropped the car at the airport and took a cab out to the Namagi visitor center and the start of the walk. The walk started gently meandering through the trees but quickly began a steep climb up about 700 m and then down into a semi cleared valley where we had lunch. The track had been re-aligned, so our map did not match and we were temporarily misplaced. Hoyle to the rescue! The day was a bit hot, more so because there were a lot of flies so we had the fly veils on Gary at K2 sold us. We started with 3 litres of water each and that was all gone 3/4 the way there. Luckily the temp dropped and we were in more shady trees.

We were joined by 17 persons with Outward Bound about 7 that evening (noisy).

Honeysuckle Creek is the site of another tracking station that was used in the Apollo moon landing, but everthing is now completely removed. They, like Parkes, claim to have relayed the moon landing and 'That's one small step for a man...' to Earth's waiting televisions. Maybe they both did!

Southern food drops

We did the last four food drops today. Everything worked out well for a change and we christened our new GPS 'Hoyle' because we often thought we knew where we were on the map only to find out that 'according to Hoyle' we were some place else! The Limestone road was a very good gravel road and Limestone track off it was driveable too, saving us a 10 km walk. The other drops were more or less on roads.

Tonight we are camped at the Jokers camp site between the Omeo-Mitta Mitta road and the Big River.

Nov 3rd

Drove to Canberra, got a room in Queanbeyan.

AAWT Food drops

Our next great adventure is an attempt to walk from Tharwa near Canberra to Mt. Hotham, a distance of about 450 km. This is the northern 2/3 of the Australian Alps Walking Trail (AAWT). We wanted to do it all but there are large parts of the south bit closed due to the huge fire last summer.

26th Nov
Drove Brisbane to Singleton on New England highway. Bought plastic storage boxes to hold the food drops.

27th Nov
Drove Singleton to Jindabyne. Did the remaining food shopping.

28th Nov
Packed the food drops and took one to Thredbo Youth Hostel. Washed clothes in evening, interrupted by a power outage caused by a massive thunder storm that dumped about 5 inches of rain in an hour.

29th Nov.
Drove to Guthega power station and walked in 9.5 km to Whites River hut to do a food drop. Met people walking north on the track who had come all the way from Walhalla. They simply walked through the large closed sections south of Mt. Hotham ignoring the closed signs. We finished the 19km round trip be 2:15 PM so drove about 150 km to the Tantangara dam area. We camped at Horse Camp a beautiful frost hollow used by horse riders on the Bicentennial National Trail. It poured with rain on the way in but the road stayed fine.

30th Nov.
Walked about 1.5km to the AAWT and did our food drop. Drove to Adiminaby to get fuel and was told that the Happy Jacks road was closed, meaning we could not do our Dr Phillips hut drop. We dropped it at Kiandra instead meaning we'll have 6 days food to carry from Kiandra. Drove to Canberra the back way from Adiminaby, a slow hard work road but beautiful scenery.

Dec 1
Picked up a hire car at the Canberra airport to drive back to Canberra when we've done the drops. Drove both cars to Mt Hotham. Booked accommodation for Jan 5 when we expect to finish the walk. We can leave Bruce there while we walk. Drove to Omeo.