Day 5: 18 February 2019
The short but interesting Round Mountain section of our trail took us south from the Coffee Shop at the intersection of Staverton Road along the original road to Lorinna. I (Tim) remember this road as a child and was always fascinated by passing the abandoned Round Mountain mine. This road was wiped out when floods on Machinery Creek took out the bridge and a joining road was pushed through from the Mount Claude hydro road. This all happened 40 or so years ago so there is not much left of the track.
This section marks a significant change in our walking. Unlike other pilgrimages that are largely through inhabited country and link towns and villages, our traverse will mostly be through forests, mountains, and wilderness. This morning we left the last shop before Lake St Clair or maybe even Tarraleah. It will not impact us quite as much now that we are breaking the walk into sections, but it is very different to other long-distance walks we have done overseas.
While it is not quite the same as bushwalking in the wilderness we are enjoying exploring old tracks, abandoned infrastructure, and imagining what life must have been like 100 years ago when there was a lot more activity in some of these now rarely visited locations.
