Day 20 – Wayatinah to Tiger Road

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5° overnight. It’s supposed to hit 27°. I don’t really feel the need to rush getting out of bed. There’s a nicely appointed camp kitchen, but I prefer breakfast and coffee in bed.

Walking to reduce the impact on my knees has changed my gait, and my calves are tight and sore. I’ll need to do some decent stretching this morning, as I did last night before bed.

Coral who runs the caravan park with her husband is gregarious and friendly. I ask her about the Florentine road I’m about to walk down. She says the bridge was fixed about five years ago, and there shouldn’t be much traffic at all. She says the logging trucks should be done for the week, but where they frequently turn into side roads can make them look more traveled than the main road and to keep an eye on staying on track. I mention having to choose between Rhona and Anne, with Anne likely being an in-and-out, and she says that’s a tough choice, but suggests Rhona. I tell her about my misadventure and she mentions I’ve got quite the shiner.

There’s a bit in Wild where Cheryl stops at a motel for a night and stands looking at herself naked in the mirror. She says she looks like the victim of a bizarre domestic violence case. I’ve got scabs all up my forearms and shins, a case of road rash on my thigh, a black eye, and a slight limp.

I have a second coffee and grab a packet of chips to throw in my pack.

This is day 20. Halfway through my budgeted time of 40 days.

I’m entering the Florentine Valley, an area with a history of logging stretching as far back as the twenties. The road is shaded by tall stands of what I think are Eucalyptus regnans. A laminated sign back at the campground said there are some giants in the area, and Buckman’s book says they’re the tallest flowering plants in the world, reaching 100m. Some are big enough to have names. One, that was the largest tree in Australia (by volume, not height) was accidentally burned in 2003 in an old-growth clearfelling burn. I’m going on memory here, so forgive inaccuracies, but I believe this played a part in ending such activities. Greg Buckman’s book Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles contains a wealth of information on the history of logging in the state. The fight against a paper mill company that wanted to expand activities from here into the nearby Mount Field National park in the 40s was the state’s first big conservation battle.

I keep my pace slow and steady. My watch tells me I’m bang on 4km/hr.

3.5km in, I’m wondering whether the wiser course of action would have been to sit out the day at the campground, give my knee another full day of rest. But I’m not going back. I’ll just focus on making today slow and easy, while still progressing southwards.

Compared to yesterday’s Hydro Highway and Lyell Speedway, the Florentine logging road is fucking beautiful. A lone car might pass every twenty minutes or so, and with yesterday’s wind died down to nothing you can hear them coming from a distance. The forest filters dappled light onto the road.

A couple of blokes in a Volkswagen stop to ask where I’m headed and offer a lift. When I tell them Cockle Creek they each do a perfect double-take. I’m getting used to this reaction from muggles. You can tell who’s a hiker because they go blank for a moment while they quickly route it out in their head.

I stop at the first crossing of the Florentine, at what looks like a fairly new bridge. The two guys from the Volkswagen are in waders and fly fishing below. I stop for lunch. They wave. I wave. It’s 12km to the next near crossing of the Florentine, and the earliest point I’m willing to stop for the day. Things are warming up a bit. I begin a long, slow 500m climb.

All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge. There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you trod you are always in the same place – in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow.

Bill Bryson – A Walk in the Woods

A copperhead slides lazily off the road as I approach.

I’m 12km from Wayatina when I realise I could have bought a can of beer back at the campground and cooled it in the river tonight. That would have been nice.

After late morning, the cars stop passing. I walk up a clear-felled hilltop near Jungle Road, hoping for a view and a scrap of mobile signal. There isn’t much of a view, just weeds and the scars of logging, and the signal is too weak to be useful. The eucalyptus regnans logged here once rivalled the redwoods of California. Statewide, about ten percent of regnans forests remain since colonisation.

By evening the forest opened into a wide swath of what can only be called wilderness rubble, a landscape ripped up by its seams and logged clear […] I’d never seen anything like it in the woods. It was as if someone had come along with a giant wrecking ball and let it swing. […] I felt sad and angry about it, but in a way that included the complicated truth of my own complicity.

Cheryl Strayed – Wild

My goal for the day is a spot where a little side road named Tiger crosses the Florentine. I nearly walk right past it. I can stop for the day or have a decent rest and consider whether to continue.

There’s a very old timber bridge across the river, most of its decking rotted away. Back in the day it must have been sturdy enough to bear the huge weight of logging trucks, built as it is on the bones of four huge trees. Today it bears only the weight of memories and time and foolhardy hikers. After a bird bath and a drink I sit on it and dangle my feet off the edge while I eat a protein bar; a sure sign that I’m done walking for the day. I could walk another fifty km and not find another spot as nice as this. There’s room for half a dozen tents on the old scrap of road to the bridge, and a well used fire ring.

After, I go down to the water and soak my feet in the mountain-cool river. A plan has been percolating while I walk today.

I’m skipping Rhona, and I’m skipping the Thumbs, much as it pains me. I’ll keep heading south on the logging roads (taking Tiger Rd rather than Florentine Rd will shave a kilometre without adding elevation, and if there was ever a chance of spotting a thylacine…) then take the Adamsfield track and Saw Back track to the top of Scotts Peak Road. That’s 55km. If I do that in two days, I’ll only be a day behind schedule, and doing Mount Anne may be back on the table, either as an in-and-out or a circuit, both weather permitting.

My power bank charged to 100% yesterday in the afternoon sun. It did again during today’s walk. Problem sorted.

I go through the well-rehearsed chores; set up the hammock, filter water for tonight and tomorrow. The mosquitos are legion, and I retreat into the cocoon behind the protection of netting. Instead of risking my tender flesh to the tiny vampire by cooking dinner I raid my food bag for snacks. I’m carrying three more days of food than I need.

I have a plan.