Day 20: 29 November 2019
We have looked forward to this stage since scouting it out last year. Some serious off-track navigation was required through the rugged southwest of the state. And it did not disappoint. A 26.7 km day covering a multitude of environments – spectacular deep rainforest, tea tree and wildflower-covered mountain slopes, button grass, the occasional swamp, some challenging river crossings, and patches of the ever-familiar dry sclerophyll forest. Even the weather shared the variety; a cold start at 3 degrees (gloves and beanies), sunny and warm at times (off with the jackets), and two or three rain showers with the requisite sou’westerly cold wind (back on with our waterproofs). All in all, a great day and one to remember.
We had to do a long car shuffle at the start of the day so we were up and gone by 6.30 am. By 7.45 am we had headed off into the unknown. We came to the remnants of Churchills Hut within 20 minutes. Tragically, it had been destroyed in the bushfires of 2018/19.
Thankfully Ewes Hut was intact, tucked deep in the forest of magnificent giant gum trees.
It was not long before we needed to employ all our navigation skills working our way through the forest where apparently tracks had once been. Beer bottles and ceramic insulators used for telegraph wires became welcome markers for us, as well as logs over rivers. The clearest sections were the mossy remnants of the trolley way that Tim’s father Alan had traveled along in the 1940s when he and a group of friends rode their bikes to Adamsfield.
While the forest was wonderful, there were many trees down and this made going slow, painfully slow at times (and I, Tim, wondered a few times if we would make it before sundown). But by lunchtime we were in fairly good shape distance-wise and stopped on the edge of a steep hill for a bite to eat, looking North and East over the ranges.
The section through to Adamsfield was challenging due to the difficulty navigating. The Sawback Track, the final half of our day was a series of ever steeper and longer roller-coaster sections of silvery mud. It was supposed to be a 4WD track, but we have no idea how any vehicle could traverse it.
By 6.00 pm we were at the car ready for the reverse shuffle before heading home for a shower and dinner (which Merran had wisely prepared the night before anticipating a long day).
Lots of great moments today, but a highlight for me as we were way off the beaten track, clambering over logs in the mossy rainforest, was hearing Merran say at least three times, “If only my mother could see me now, she would never believe what we are doing!”
