The Ghost of Bushwalks Past

It's been a while since I updated as I haven't been out walking for some weeks. Hopefully this will be remedied soon, but in the meantime I thought it might be fun to revisit some of the walks we've done as a family. In trying to decide which walk to start with I kept coming back to one place...


The Overland Track, Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park,
Tasmania


My wife and I, along with our twin boys aged 10 at the time, and my dad, completed this walk in January 2009. I'll write this up as a day by day account to give you a good idea of what is required to undertake this walk.


I'll fill you in on some of our background with this walk.  My dad first undertook this walk in 1978-79. This would now be his 4th trip through the park. I first completed the Overland when I was 12 and this would be my 3rd trip.  My wife had never completed the Overland before but the bug bit her when we summited Cradle Mountain a few years earlier. Obviously our boys were also novices to the Overland, and this would in fact be their first walk of this length and duration.


January 1, 2009 - Day 1


The day dawned with clear skies and quite mild weather...in Devonport. Unfortunately over the past few days the weather bureau had been issuing bushwalkers weather alerts for the Tasmanian Highlands.  Thankfully we took heed of these warnings, helped by previous experience in this part of Tassie, and we were fully prepared for any weather.


We loaded the cars and headed of to Cradle Mountain National Park where we would commence our walk at Ronnies Creek. We arrived at Cradle Valley at 9:00 am to give us as much walking time as possible.

Dad gearing up

Getting ready

Of course, the first order of the day was ensuring everyone had the appropriate wet weather gear on.

We caught the park bus from the visitor's centre to the start of the track at Ronnie's Creek. As we wrote our intentions in the log book it started to hit home just what we were starting  out on.

Signing in

Starting out (my wife's taking the photo)

Our first encounter with Parks staff occurred here when we met a ranger who commended us on our obvious preparedness for the walk.  We found out later, from another ranger, that only days earlier the had dragged a foreign visitor off the track after finding him attempting the walk in denim jeans, no tent, and carrying a shopping bag full of Snickers bars and several bottles of Coke.


The track ahead saw us climb steadily up onto Cradle Plateau while the weather slowly deteriorated. Thankfully it didn;t affect our spirits and we continued to view this as the great adventure it was becoming.

Crater Lake (actually a glacial lake)

From Crater Lake we continued to climb up onto Marion's Lookout, atop the cliffs surrounding Crater Lake. It was during this time the first snowfalls started. We were initially a bit excited by this as January is the middle of Australia's summer, however little did we know that this snow would continue for some time...just how long, and how much you'll find out.

Ascending Marion's Lookout

We hit the top

But it was a struggle

We lunched at Kitchen Hut which is a rather grand name for this construction as it has no kitchen and could barely be clued a hut. But, thankfully for us, it was a dry and relatively wind free spot to have some lunch before heading off around Cradle Cirque. The disappointing part was the lack of views of Cradle Mountain due to the weather. As we continued on the snow continued to fall.

Pandanus Palm under snow

Snow on the track

As we started to descend into Waterfall Valley for our first night the wind was blowing to the point that we had to hold onto our boys' packs as they were getting blown of the track. One funny moment occurred when Jack got blown of into several feet of snow. As I leapt after him to haul him to his feet he started yelling "Dad, dad!". "What" I said. "You're standing on my hand." That explained why I couldn't get him to his feet. Thankfully the snow was soft enough to prevent any damage and we struggled on to Waterfall Valley hut where we settled for the night, got a hot meal into us and had a very welcome first night's sleep.




Tomorrow is a whole new day.