Day 31 – Melaleuca to Hidden Bay

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I take my time having breakfast and packing up. I manage to offload the few bits of spare food I was unable to eat yesterday to Liz and Monica, and the caretakers accept the hat I carried out of the Port Davey track, and take my rubbish in exchange for the heavy duty orange dry bag my food drop was in. All this means that I don’t have to send anything back to Cambridge on the plane or pick it up later on.

Even so, according to the scales in the shack, my pack weighs 18.5kg with nine days of food and two litres of water. So freaking heavy. Still, it’s shaping up to be a beautiful day, and it’s the day I finally reach the south coast. Hey Cynthia, I made it!

Take the foot path at the boot wash station. Don’t keep following the wide track or you’ll arrive at a boat ramp on moth creek with some confusion.

The New Harbour range commands my attention, splitting the SCT to the left and the Wilson Bight track heading south west to the right. When the breeze turns, the roar of the ocean begins to reach my ears.

There’s a decent stretch of duckboard across the muddy buttongrass. It’s very welcome, and I fairly fly down it.

I’m starting to think about the things I want to change in my life when I get home. Walk more (not just in irregular extreme bursts). Spend less time on Reddit and more time reading books. I badly need to tidy my place. The lead up to this hike was hectic, and many things have lain where they fell. Write more.

Ed warned me about this duckboard. None of it has chicken wire, so wherever it’s wet, it’s deadly slippery. He said they met one guy who’d cracked a rib paying accidental ice hockey on it. You have been warned.

Then the SW track diverges from the SE.

I drop down through a sudden scrap of damp, shady forest, and I’m spit out onto a grassy, sandy estuary. Waves are crashing gently around the corner. There’s a gorgeous little campsite hidden just inside the forest.

I walk down to the water and let the waves lap at my boots, then walk down the sand to cross the estuary easily where it meets the ocean sand is only a couple of inches deep. Then I sit on the dunes and eat lunch while staring out at the ocean. It’s taken me 31 days to get here, and for the first time since leaving Derwent Bridge again, I don’t feel like I’m in a hurry. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just wandering down this piece of coastline to have a look what’s there. And I think I’ve got a whole extra day somewhere; try as I might, when I mapped everything out yesterday I could not make the distances and Chapman’s times add up to seven days of walking on the South Coast Track. Maybe I’ll get there and find that I need it. Maybe I’ll spend a day in a hammock on the beach. Maybe I’ll get to the boat crossing to find the boats gone and have to spend the day whittling a canoe. However I cut it, I have time to enjoy this last section with some leisure.

I eat the last Aldi waffle in Tasmania.

Another fantastic campsite further down the beach. And a surprise. Ed and Hannah told me about this box. The note says that the two bottles of whiskey have been left here as a gift; a glass here and there to whoever happens upon them. This would have been some crazy trail magic for some people. They’re empty now. There’s also a note from the Chapman party in there.

I bet John Chapman drank the last of the whisky. Why do you mock me at every turn, old man?

After New Harbour, the track winds up through forest, then onto buttongrass hillsides as it weaves an inland curve to Hidden Bay.

I pass the owner of the boat that was anchored in New Harbour. He’s coming back from a day walk. He’s had the boat for three years and done a slow lap of Australia.

Hidden Bay is gorgeous. I set up my hammock overlooking the ocean and just sit for a while. I’d love to sleep in this spot but it catches the wind straight off the ocean. The campsite is sheltered amongst the trees.

I walk to one end of the beach and then the other. It’s just me and the sea birds and the crash of the waves. At the eastern end of the beach, a creek gushes out in a small waterfall. It’s too tempting, and I break my “always filter” rule and have a nice drink from the falling stream.

Tomorrow I’ll leave most of my stuff here and do a day walk, maybe as far as Mt Karamu. I had some twinges in my good knee today, and I don’t want to push it if it tells me not to.

Around 10:30 I wander down to the beach to try and photograph tonight’s blood moon. There are faint glimmers of blue bioluminescence in the breaking waves; phytoplankton. The moon ducks and weaves behind cloud, and I don’t manage to get a decent photo of either of these faint lights in the night.