Day 2 – Clinton Rocks to Mueller Inlet

Distance: 16km
Elevation: +100m

The rain came in sheets and waves and gusts through the night, wrenching the trees and blatting on the tarp, petering out to a grey dawn.

We head north up the long beach, the incessant wind mercifully at our backs, occasionally sprinkling us with a wind blown shower.

After several kilometres of beach we reach Point Hicks. Greg muses that it might be Australia’s easternmost point. I tell him no, I’m pretty sure that’s Cape Byron. He then suggests maybe it’s the southernmost point. A strange proposition for somebody who lived in Tasmania for 25 years. Eventually we settle on it being the first piece of land Captain Cook spotted from the Endeavour. There’s no internet out here, so we’re free to codify our own set of facts in the absence of contradiction.

We follow a heavily overgrown track around the seaward side up to the old lighthouse. There are several significant buildings to service the stately structure, all now vacant and bearing “private” signs.

From the lighthouse an overgrown and eroded service track once would have been wide enough for vehicles, but now can only support hikers in single file.

We have lunch at Thurra River campground, which seems recently upgraded with toilets and rain water tanks, from which we fill up. Despite the rain, finding potable water along the coast is a constant concern, and we’ll likely need to carry water for camp and all of tomorrow. At least the weather isn’t hot.

I haven’t done much walking since Tasmania and it shows. I’m not finding the walk quite as easy as I might.

Another couple of km and we settle on a campsite for the night. As soon as the hammock is up, I’m lounging in it and dozing in and out of a late afternoon nap.

Monika takes the pack raft across the bay to the camp site over there. We had considered that as our site for the night, but considering that all the sites are under half a metre of water, it’s good that we didn’t.