As unlikely as it seemed less than a week ago, the fires have abated, the Overland Track is open again, and a second Sacred Geography walk for 2025 is going ahead. So here we are back at the Red Feather Inn, Hadspen, about to meet our little crew for the obligatory briefing and gear sorting session.
We arrived in Tassie a couple of days ago and have enjoyed forty eight hours mooching the streets of Launceston. Just what we both needed after three very full and busy work weeks since last we were here. Yesterday, we called for a quiet ale at Du Cane brewery, well-known from previous walks, and guess who we met there. Bert Spinks, our revered guide from three previous trips, and whose helpful post on the fires (@storytellerspinks) I shared a few days ago in this blog.
It's been balmy in Launceston since we arrived.
It's forecast to be much cooler in the high country of the Overland this week.
A shot of our esteemed guru outside the barn at Red Feather Inn where we shared a beautiful first meal and some of what drew us to this walk.
Gathering again at 6.00am we board the bus and head for the hills. Two hours or so later at Waldheim hut we make final packing arrangements, share a reading (John O'Donohue's, For The Traveller) and step onto the Overland Track .
Crater Lake under a beautiful whispy sky.
Cradle Mountain
Another dynamic sky-scape.
Looking ahead - Pelion East on the left, Ossa in the middle, Pelion West on the right.
The day 2 boot up and they're still smiling.
Barney (Barn Bluff) being slightly coy.
Our route today differed from past walks because of the destruction by fire of the Pine Forest Moor hut. Instead of continuing south to Lake Windermere, we turned back to Cradle Mountain and then vered off to pass on the opposite side via the steeper and more technical Lake Rodway and Twisted Lakes route.
Landscape is still often understood as a noun connoting fixity, scenery, and immobile painterly decorum. I prefer to think of the word as a noun containing a hidden verb; landscape scapes, it is dynamic and commotion causing, its sculpts and shapes us not only over the courses of our lives but also instant by instant, incident by incident. I prefer to take “landscape” as a collective term for the temperature and pressure of the air, the fall of light and its rebounds, the textures and surfaces of rock, soil and building, the sounds (cricket screech, bird cry, wind through trees), the sense (pine resin, hot stone, crushed thyme) and the uncountable other transitory phenomena and atmospheres that together comprise the bristling presence of a particular place at a particular moment.
Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways
Some of the Twisted Lakes.
Eventually Dove Lake came into view - all downhill from here. Our walking destination is that greyish triangular smudge at the far end of the lake.
On day 3 we walked back into Pelion Plains via the Arm River track. It began with a steep climb and then flattened out as we approach Pelion Plains - a wonderful stage (and new for us).
Lake Ayre with Mt Oakley in the background.
The first three days were definitely more demanding than normal and someone was feeling a little weary in the legs.
Pandani sentinals.
As we ascended to Pelion Gap the weather closed in. We walked on unto the Japanese Garden on Mount Doris but alas Mt Ossa was shrouded in mist and rain. I'd have gladly climbed again but the group decision was to leave her for another day.
Yellow gums glowing with a coating of moisture.
A view from Kia Ora hut, with Cathedral mountain shrouded in mist to the right.
A damp day 5 and they're still smiling - at least for the photo!!
Tangled sprawling roots
burnished-bare by falling boots -
souls seeking good-ground. (NM)
A Celery Topped pine in flower. They look like little muppets!
A bark-brown wombat
rear greets me as I'm drawing
near; beautiful but... (NM)
Hurtling headlong he,
(straight into a tree) extrudes
for eternity. (SB)
Leatherwood petals
pattern moss, mud, root and stone.
Sweetness cast on earth. (SB)
A quiet moment waiting for the ferry at the wharf in Cynthia Bay,
Lake St Clair
or Leeawuleena as it was named by the Big River People, meaning sleeping water.
Looking back at the Du Cane range.
Happy, grateful walkers, all present and accounted for.
From here it was a bouncing bus trip back to Lonnie, where we overnighted in our favourite guest house - Waratah on York. Next morning we caught a bus to Hobart where we met up with our friends Daniel and Annabelle Macmahon for dinner, and next day, with merry members of the 'Hobart chapter' of Benedictus.
We spent our final two days in the delightful company of Jenny and John Coleman at Susan Bay at the top end of the Forestier Peninsula. What a spot!
As usual, we received a shellacking from Jenny in the Tasman Table Tennis Championships. Don't be fooled by Jenny's gentle demeanour, that ball is completely bamboozling!!!
And then it was home again, feeling full and thankful for the privilege of experiencing wonderful places with wonderful people.
As for the wombat in the tree???
