Epilogue

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When you go out there, you don’t get away from it all. You get back to it all. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself.

Peter Dombrovskis

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

This post is pretty late. Refund requests will be considered and then rejected.

I wash up into Hobart in a somewhat dazed state. Reintegration is always a bitch. When I put my jeans on after my first shower in about twenty days I discover that I’m down to my last belt notch. I’ve had the belt for twenty years, and I don’t think I’ve spent much time at all on that notch.

Over breakfast I surprise myself by making the snap decision to spend the morning walking up Mount Wellington. I grab a taxi to Fern Tree and fall into the comfortable rhythm of walking. Maybe I’m seizing the opportunity to climb it while I’m here, maybe I’m easing the transition. Maybe everything but walking is confusing and unsettling, and this is easier. Maybe it’s just force of habit.

Partway up I run into another solo walker; a girl from Denmark who asks if we can walk together. She’s going to university in Brisbane and trying to travel as much as she can. I tell her some of the things I’ve learned about the island along the way. As we near the top she thanks me for the distraction; she’s just had a concerning medical result. The wind on top of the mountain is biting cold and strong enough to blow you over. Windswept scrub and dolerite boulders. She walks back down a different track than the one we came up. I accost the driver of a tour bus and get a ride back down the mountain. He tells tired jokes on the intercom and points out things of interest.

I wander the streets of Hobart, shambling into the myriad outdoor stores to look at things I don’t need. I go to my massage booking, which I cleverly set up before I started walking. It does wonders for my muscles, but the relaxed, floaty feeling afterwards stacks awkwardly with the discombobulated, dazed feeling of the walk being over.

Tilley and I make our way to the docks. We’ve received a few recommendations for Fish Frenzy, and they do not disappoint. 10/10: would walk 700km for one of their meals.

Out on the docks the breeze has a bone deep chill to it. Summer is turning to autumn. I wrap my arms around myself for warmth while I stand and watch a helicopter taking off from the roof of the Royal Hobart Hospital. The sun is setting over Mount Wellington.

What, do you think you’re Forest Gump or something?

John, a fellow South Coast Track Walker.

One thing I was impressed by was the lack of litter, not just on the heavily trafficked Overland Track, but everywhere I walked, with the exception of what has washed up on the beaches, and even there people have often collected the fishnets and flotsam and piled it neatly on the shore.

I have mixed feelings about how the walk went compared to how I’d hoped it would go. After the evacuation I was much more cautious about the optional extra walks I did. Part of that was an awareness of the fragile state of my knees; though the injured one had recovered, I put a lot of stress on the other one by insisting on continuing to walk, and it was letting me know. I was also quite aware that if I needed a second rescue, the helicopter operators might start to suspect I was looking for excuses to spend time with them. I kinda wish I’d pushed a bit harder and done either the full Anne traverse or the South West Cape, either of which, in retrospect, I had the days to do. But these things are hard to gauge when you don’t have first hand knowledge of the territory, and the decisions I made were the right ones when I made them, albeit a little over-cautious. I think now, that to do all the side trips I wanted would have required at least an extra ten days.

That said, I achieved my objective; an unbroken line from Penguin to Cockle Creek. And I managed to do that despite the little setback that cost me four days (two days of walking down the King William range, and two of rest, or 10% of my total allotted time). If I’d wanted to plan 40 days of walking that would take in the best of what Tassie has to offer, I’d do something more like what Ed and Hannah or Roux and Mia were doing; pick and choose with no concern for the arbitrary goal of walking between point A and point Z. While they may have been impressed with my walk, I have to admit some jealousy of theirs.

Since the Tassie Traverse is an informal trail, no logo exists for it. After this mammoth endeavour, I need a patch to sew on my hiking pack (otherwise what’s the point?) so I took the liberty of knocking one together. Feel free to use it in any way you like. Let me know if you do something cool with it. There are plenty of sellers on Etsy who will create one-off patches. I myself am partial to leather patches with the design laser etched into the surface.

Footwear:

I’m very pleased with how my footwear performed. Twice, after long days of slogging through mud, I experienced a little dampness. They dried overnight. That was the worst of it. No blisters. No black toenails. Compared with the AAWT, I had no foot pain. I wore Crispi Nevada boots, Superfeet Hike Support innersoles, Darn Tough (Vermont, not BigW) 1466 Hiker socks (three pairs) and Sea to Summit Quagmire eVent gaiters. It’s important to note that footwear is highly personal, and what works for one person’s feet may not work for somebody else. Also, for the premium price tag of the Crispis, the soles wear down very quickly (due to the extremely soft and grippy compound). This pair have done right around 1,000km and have maybe another hundred km left on them. It’s a shame, since the uppers would probably be good for 3,000km or more. I may try to get them resoled, but I’m between cobblers at the moment, and anyway the price of a resole gets you a long way towards a new pair. I’d love to see Crispi put out a version with a more durable sole compound.

If I were to do it again, I’d probably drive instead of fly. Rohan at Tasmanian Wilderness Experiences was fantastic with my food drops and I highly recommend his services.

Tassie was hard. But it’s a walk I’m really proud to have planned and executed. It’s given me even more confidence for future walks. Of course, now I need to figure out what’s next.

I’m open to suggestions.