Wet grass soaks through boots like nothing else. But with Mt Edith’s bulk looming dark upon the plateau, sodden filaments brooked no argument with the desire to be underway. An urgent need to settle the anxiety and uncertainty that comes with ventures into less-travelled country. This journey inspired by a brief conversation with Bob about his and Paul’s journey across the eastern peaks of the Norfolk range to the wild tarkine coast. A journey some 25 years old and not often repeated: the absence of tracks, high peaks and name recognition together with the presence of notorious west coast scrub means that for much of the trip there is no markers of past human presence: a sense of losing-one’s-self-in-landscape.
An hour passes by torchlight before the decision to call it a night. The Toner River lies snaking its way through the valley below, a dry summer rendering its watery path speechless in the wind.
Morning brings a pathetic-and-soon-aborted attempt to dry clothing in the pale light.
A steep climb up Mt Edith’s north-east ridge has the lungs and legs crying for oxygen.
I’d camped on Edith before and so rather than continue up the ridge to the top I make the later-regretted-decision to contour south-east below the summit to the edge of a steep heavily vegetated valley. On the map, a few narrow contour lines, no more than a couple of hundred metres separate me from the open broad moor that heads towards Mt Hadmar.
A few narrow lines soon translates to thick and entwined baura, cutting grass and malealeuca and my feet hanging six foot vertically above my head that is now occupying the place more usual for feet. Sunlight scrub calisthenics soon giving way to climbing vertically down through shadowy horizontal to the narrow creek that lies at the base of those narrow lines: before repeating it ad infinitum on my way out of the gunge.
As I take a breather in the open air I make a mental note that shortcuts that take in narrow, heavily vegetated valleys are unlikely to be shortcuts.
It’s about 10:30am on Friday and I’m looking up at Mt Hadmar. An hour later I’m on the summit after knee high buttongrass gives way to chest high scrub that gives way to yet higher scrub on the slopes. Then the summit plateau makes itself known and all is glorious. I’ve a ferry ride to Corinna from Hardwicke Point at lunchtime Monday and looking across the vast savannah at the big blue it seems possible that the late start on Thursday will not result in missed connections and an enforced sojourn on the northern banks of the Pieman.
The descent off Mt Hadmar has some small patches of scrub, but it’s the descent off the high point a third of the way down the southern ridgeline that brings the thickest gunge I’ve yet encountered. Finding myself entangled, slashed at, and spun around and heading due west rather than to the south I remind myself that open walking ahead is not a mirage. One minute I’m throwing myself into the fray, the next I’m worming underneath tangled roots.
The saving grace is that the thickest stuff doesn’t hold me up for much more than an hour or two, and with the sun dropping it’s time to climb an open lead and set up camp for the second night. A beautiful spot with Mt Sunday to the south, the main Norfolk range to the north-west, Hadmar to the north and Vero to the north-east. The bright lights of the Savage River mine the only stain on the inky darkness, the roar of the surf drifting across the plains.
