This blog perpetrated by Terry Cornall, about a trip in January 2022 when I completed a 13 day hike with Gordon Bedford. We hiked the McMillan's Track in Victoria, Australia. It was a bit of mixed bag and now I want to share the good, the bad and the ugly of it all with you.
Disclaimers
I might give some of links to gear in this blog. All of it is unsponsored and all of it is stuff I've either purchased or considered purchasing. You should be able to tell from context. Any recommendations (or damnations) I make should be considered in the lights of your own needs and not taken as gospel.
I make plenty of opiniated assertions in this blog too, born out of experience and consideration. If you disagree, feel free to drop me a line with new evidence for me to consider. Just telling me that I am an opinionated, arrogant, grumpy old man, whilst true, will not further the discussion. I'd love to discover that my cynical disdain for gear manufacturers' claims is wrong, for example and that there really is a perfect waterproof but breathable boot or raincoat out there.
Any advice I give must be weighed by your own circumstances. Things like season or weather may change their validity. Your own abilities may not coincide with mine and what took me 8 hours of hard work may seem like a doddle to you and vice-versa. You may have a bigger (or smaller) budget of money, time, or weight than I did. Your party size will play an important part. It's not hard to keep a party of two together but it's much harder to manage seven people. Water availability wasn't an issue for us except on one stretch when it got really hot and dry. Make sure you always have enough drinking water and that water will be available at your camps.
TLDR
If you want the unabbreviated report with lots more "humor", philosophical maunderings and opinionated rants about gear, see https://terrycornall.wixsite.com/websit ... lans-track
The view from a distance
McMillan's Track is one that I know Gordon has had his eyes upon for some little while. I personally had never heard of it until he started to mention it occasionally when we were out doing some other adventure. It sounded long and bush-bashy, but one attractive feature was that it was all within Victoria and after almost getting locked out of our home state during the Covid border-closure ructions in Jan 2021, we were keen to avoid a repeat.
It's 220 km and travels from near Mt Hotham to Woods Point over many roads, rivers, 4x4 tracks, bush tracks, trackless tangles and even some virtual tunnels carved through the living bush. It goes up and over a lot of ridges, contains a lot of nice rivers and flats, has great views, interesting geology and biology. It was hard on the feet, easy to navigate but in places very hard to find a path. Parts of it I loved, parts I hated and parts were plain boring. I'll never ever do it again. Once was sufficient. Might do sections of it again though, armed with a machete perhaps.
- The hike compared to most of the rest of Victoria. Big, isn't it?
Whoa oh Black Sallee, wham da lam
Day 1 Cobungra to Black Sallee lake
It was a short, pleasant walk from the Cobungra turn off from the Omeo to Hotham road to the first campsite, along Victoria River track. The lake was dark and gently misted when we got there, as the air had turned cold. We saw what we initially took for brumbies on the other side of the water but it turned out they were riding-horses and we saw and heard people once in a while.
Getting water was a bit dicey from the lake as the edges was soft and it looked a little manky anyway. So I found the inlet stream which was flowing weakly and followed it upwards a bit to get to somewhere that looked better. I had to throw away the first water I got because I also found a dead deer leg just upstream from it but then even further upstream I found better flowing water anyway. I tried the Lifestraw filter bottle I'd brought to clean it up a bit but it was way too slow. I got about 2 liters through it before my hands started cramping from squeezing it and deciding that this was silly and just doped the water up on iodine and/or chlorine pills. The filter bottle got put away and abandoned in a drop-barrel at half way. Doubt I'll ever use it again except maybe as a personal drink-bottle (which is probably what it was designed for, to be fair).
Road, him go up, him go down again
Day 2 Black Sallee - Lankey Plains Hut via King Spur Track
I've decided that a lot of the roads in this part of the bush must have been built by a primitive race that hadn't invented contouring. Either that or some guy in a bulldozer had been instructed to minimize distance, tree-felling and rock cutting. (We called him George but learned later that his actual name was Aubrey) Many of the roads we encountered took the shortest path from A to B and if that resulted in a 25% or more grade, well too bad. Greater than 25% means it rises more than 1 m up for every 4m forward which doesn't sound like much, but you try walking up it for a few kilometers in the heat! It's not as steep as a staircase but it feels like one without treads! A bit of rain then turns it into a rockface in some cases. If anyone knows why it was done this way, we'd love to know. Can't have been for logging trucks, too steep. Fire access maybe? Kept open now for tourism?
In this case, on the track we came down on day 2 after a nice hike from Black Sallee, they had closed the road because it was too steep and people kept dying on it when their cars rolled. It had revegetated somewhat but it was a doozy and I was too busy trying to stay upright to take a photo of it. To keep people in cars off it they felled logs and dug berms across it and generally turned it into something that even 4x4 drivers would hesitate at and say, 'Whoa, now, lets have a think about this!', which takes some doing. Wasn't fun to walk down either.
After a rest at the bottom of the closed Mayford Spur Track we eschewed the usual path going on to Mayford Flats and then up Treasure Spur as we were worried that the spur would be choked with regrowth. We chose to go up Kings Spur Track instead which was obviously open because the 4x4s were roaring down from it. A few river crossings and a long hike up the road got us to Long Spur Track and then a flattish path alongside Devil's Hollow. We were greeted by a number of the many car-campers ensconced there, one guy waving beer in the air. Tempting, but no. Wanted to finish the day. This eventually led us to Lankey Plains Hut, which was in the middle of a muddy moat dug by thoughtless drivers and currently occupied, so we pushed past it and up onto a tussocky field for the night. After arguing with the ants we finally got the tent up and I tried some astrophotography on my Pixel 5 after dinner to see if I could get the dead trees starkly outlined against the Milky Way. Useless camera app interface defeated me, not for the last time. More on that later.
Timber!
Day 3, from Lankey Plains Hut to 25 Mile creek via White Timber track
Down Dargo High Plains road a little and then off into tussocky plains to find a boundary fence which we followed until it got us to White Timber Spur North track. The tussocks were a complete pain and made for slow going. The road and fence are such that we actually went some way along the fence more than we needed to before doing a hairpin turn on the road and coming back to find the turnoff, which was bit too low down for us to see from the fence.
Then down that track to Ritchie Road and over it to White Timber Spur South track. It was a hot day and my feet were killing me already. Really glad to see the end of the road but then we had to descend a really steep, but thankfully zig-zagging single-track through the bush, down to 25 Mile Creek. Even if some of the zags were pretty precipitous, it would have been a nice section except it was at the dirty end of the day and I was knackered. Then across the creek to a tiny campsite just barely big enough for our tent. Baths in the creek followed to wash the trail dust away. No nudie photos. I do have some sense of good taste.
- [b]Here be dragons[/b]
This big water dragon I didn't even have to sneak up on. After making soup I sat down exhausted on a nice rock to rest my feet and there he was only a coupla meters away. Even stayed still long enough for me to get the camera out and snap a few shots. That's star quality that is.
He was pretty chill
Blackberries, benching and Bulltown spur
Day 4 From 25 mile creek to Bulltown Spur
Parts of the track on the next days first section had nice stonework holding it up and making for a good benched track. We did have to carve our way up out of the campsite through blackberry bushes to get going, but I managed to find a jewel in the brambles, a small raspberry with some tasty fruit on it. Yum. After all the bush-bashing to get to it that morning, this clear part of the track was delightful walking. This photo shows where it had probably been recently restored.
- Nice work
- trackwork.jpg (356.54 KiB) Viewed 2632 times
On to Thirty Mile Creek and then to Crooked River, hiking on reasonably good tracks high above the river. No real crossings until we got to Bulltown Spur that evening. When we got to where we were planning to stay after fording the crick, there were a few blokes sitting at their cars and vans, playing gin rummy or something and I bellied up to them and asked brusquely, "Are you blokes going to be partying noisily all night, or what?" They answered "No, certainly not" or similar, with affronted mien, to which I responded, "Bugger that then, I'm not staying here". After ensuing hilarity (wry grins, 'cos they were laconic Aussie blokes) one of them pointed out a nice grassy campsite a few hundred meters down the track. It was one of the better spots we camped at. Nice starscape too.
Astrophotography
I love the astrophotography feature on my Pixel 5 phone's camera app. Well, let me rephrase that. I love the results (when I can get them) and I hate the user interface. Here's how I would describe the process: Open the camera app and select 'night vision'. Keep the camera very still in a dark place and magically it will decide to go into astro mode, which takes multiple images and 'stacks' them and does other automatic editing tweaks. Dare to move it whilst trying to press the 'take the *&%$#! picture' button and it'll drop out of astro mode back to single-shot night-vision and admonish you for not keeping still. Now imagine doing all that whilst the camera is pointing straight up. (That's where the stars are, right?) So, the screen with the button and the icon indicating astro mode is pointing straight down, which means that to see it you have to have a tallish tripod (nope, left it behind, too heavy) or you've managed to balance the expensive phone/camera overhanging enough from a rock or log with enough room to get your head under it to see what's going on. Or you manage to use the timer feature and hope that it goes into astro mode and doesn't just take a single night-vision shot. All the while you are standing on your head in the dark and the mossies are sucking you dry and you are freezing to death. (Slight hyperbole there, it was actually fairly warm. The mossies were real though...) Oh, and if you do manage to be lucky enough to start the photo in astro mode, it does it all silently so you don't really know it has worked until you wait for three minutes and then pick it up and have a look. (I ruined a couple of tries by picking it up early) Of course, it does tell you what's going on, but it's all on the screen you really can't see because the camera is on its back on a log! I spent a good part of my walking time during that hike composing a scathing letter to the idiotic developers of that app asking why they couldn't just have a fixed astro mode instead of one that turns itself on and off! Also designing a makeshift 'tripod'.
I have since learned that the best way to use the Astrophotography mode on the Pixel if you don't have a tripod is to face the camera down on the grass, pointing at the ground so you can see the screen. In the dark and not being jostled, it goes into asto mode and then you can press the 'go' button and flip the camera the right way up again and point it at the stars. Seems to work well. Maybe even use the shutter delay feature though it doesn't seem to care.
- Starry, starry night...
This photo was taken at our campsite near the Bulltown Spur on Crooked River on the end of day 4. I managed to 'paint' the trees with my torch just at the right time to get them lit up in the photo. (This was a matter of luck. It doesn't spend all its time acquiring so a brief flash might get missed) There is some blurring on the leaves, but who cares. It's a marvelously starlit image from such relatively unsuitable camera hardware, (small lens, small sensor, low exposure time) without needing a tracking mount, thanks to the 'stacking' methodology and other tweaks. (Google 'astrophotography on Pixel' to find out more.) Pity about the useless user interface, but now that I know better, I'll use my 'facedown' trick or I'll take a superlight tripod next time, or a phone holder I can clamp to a hiking pole or a tree or something. Maybe one with a bluetooth shutter trigger (K Mart have one for $25 with said accessory. I got one a few weeks later and it does the job.)
Why did the hiker cross the river?
Day 5 Bulltown spur to Eaglevale
In the section down the crooked river on day 5 there are 23 fords to cross. It was a hot day and the rush of the cool but not cold water wasn't too challenging most of the time. It was fun. Did have to watch out for 4x4s coming thundering over the banks of the fords and running us over though. Gordon was halfway across when one pair of cars came thru, but they slowed down and didn't swamp him. At another crossing I had to hold onto a lively young pitbull puppy that had come waggling across the track to greet us just as a convoy came recklessly splashing across the ford. Doggie wanted to run back to his boss, right under the wheels of the cruisers, didn't he? Barely managed to hold him and didn't get bitten even once.
I could usually tell how high the water was by sending Gordon first and checking the pitch of his voice. When it reached soprano I knew it was too deep.
A plum spot
Talbotville made a nice lunch spot on day 5 after all the river crossings in the morning. There was a big open parkland with lots of people having a good time. We found a delightfully shady place in an old orchard that had ripe plums to eat but unfortunately unripe pears and figs for us to only contemplate. The plums were delicious. I've often come across fruit trees at old settlements and this was the first time they've been ripe. If only *&%$#! Baron Von Mueller had thought to send out packets of apple seeds instead of blackberries to be sown in the wild, things might have been much better.
Oh, the horror!
After our restful lunch, we metaphorically girded our loins (how exactly do you do that?) and then we had to toddle along Brewery Creek Road for a bit and then divert off onto a short section of the Bicentennial Trail that coincides with McMillans track to bash through insane blackberry and bush regrowth down to the Wongungarra river to get from Talbotville to Station Track. Yuk!
Then there came the horror of Station Track, which was another of those 'straight up to the top' roads, but with added spice of a very hot day and very little shade. We must have looked in dire straits as we struggled up it from tree shadow to shadow. A convoy of 4x4s came down and the lead one stopped to offer us some water. When finally we made it to the top and recovered, it was down from the Cynthia Ridge track almost to the Wonnangatta River, along a private fence through horrible long grass to the suspension bridge and then into a nice open flat, accompanied by 'doof doof' music from the car-campers. One of the campers, egged on by his wife, came over to redeem himself by offering us some lovely cold water and to chat about the hike.
Moroka River, hunting thundereggs
Day 6 found us going up the Moroka Junction Track (road) until it abruptly stopped being a road and turned into a walking track. Rested there for lunch and were amused by the 4x4 drivers that roared in, had a look and then roared out again.
- Mmmm, relaxed Zenned out mindlessness, I mean mindfulness...
- zen.jpg (341.57 KiB) Viewed 2632 times
After lunch we tried to walk alongside the Moroka river but failed to have a lot of fun. The track was indistinct and there was plenty of bush to push through. We found it a lot easier to go down to the river and either wade up it or better, walk on the pebble shingles. This is where I first realised that gaiters and rushing currents were not a good combo.
- Wading up the Moroka River. Most of the fords were about this depth too, but some got a bit deeper!
- wading.jpg (362.95 KiB) Viewed 2632 times
Rollin' stones
I knew from notations on the maps that thundereggs (geodes) could be found around here and I kept my eyes open as we waded up river, possibly accounting for how slowly we made progress. Didn't find any conventional candidates, but did find some unusual opaque, white, egg-shaped pebbles, possibly river-tumbled amorphous quartz or quartzite, that had what looked like a web of harder, probably quartz veins embedded in them and slightly raised on the surface in a polygonal pattern.
- I shall call them dragon's eggs until I get a better classification
Had to find two that were small enough to carry for the grandkids. (I've got 4 grandkids but only two that are old enough to care about unusual rocks. The other two would either try to suck on them or eat them or throw them at something at their age) I eventually found 3 and left the larger one behind, so they are not that rare.
Using 'lens' image search on the phone, the best hits I got were for geodes, but none of the returned hits had that polygonal 'web' so I am still puzzled. My guess is that they were formed by hot fluids depositing the quartz veins and a slightly softer matrix of quartz or quartzite. Then tumbled in rivers for millions of years.
Shelob and her spawn (Caution, upcoming arachnid images)
At the campsite (confluence of Carey's creek and Moroka River) for day 6 I sat down with a tree at my back for a much needed coffee and happened to glance down and find a silken tube about 4 cm across sticking up dangerously near my groinal area. Rather than mindlessly panic (which I really should have but I needed that coffee. It'd been a hard day), I finished my coffee and then after wisely retreating a bit I tickled the edge of the nest with a stalk of grass to see who was home. The big (maybe female wolf spider) critter that came thundering out covered in spiderlings, I called Shelob and after teasing her out of her nest I relented and left her alone. Poor thing, all those kids constantly on her back and they with a wandering father, she didn't need people knocking on the front door all the time.
- Hey Mama. What big fangs you have, and those evil glowing eyes!
Drop-barrel day!
Mmmmm, drop-day goodies
Day 7 was drop-barrel day and we really had to earn it. Started well with a wander up the Moroka River but then we decided to bypass Playboy Creek and the dubious 'interesting' bit up a possibly poorly defined D4 track to climb up the Moroka River Track to meet Doolans Plain track and then a bit back down Moroka Road to Volkswagen instead. It's named after a long removed junk vehicle. That climb was a nightmare for my poor feet, but we got it done and then we could celebrate with some orange juice and some lovely chunky soup in addition to the usual freeze-dried Lamb Roast with Vegetables (or whatever) followed by juicy pineapple pieces. And I changed my boots. I love drop-barrel day!
Day 8 Volkswagen to Shaws creek
From Volkswagen, we marched up through Arbuckle Junction the next day and then over Mt Arbuckle, had lunch at Kelly's hut (unattractive on the inside so we sat on a nearby log) and this morning was some of the nicest walking we did. (Maybe drop-day celebratory feast helped) Gordon reminded me that we'd been here before when we went skiing on Mt Reynard a few years back. I remembered the log.
Then on towards Shaw's creek. We had a chat on the road with another 4x4 driver who expressed some interest in the McMillan track, despite his little girl urging him to 'let's go Daddy, stop talking to those weird men'. Then on to the campsite where we found a few car-campers sitting around and one of them trying to catch fish. We camped a bit away from them on a tussocky hill and hoped that they didn't decide to shoot at the deer that was bugling nearby in the middle of the night.
Petticoat junction
Day 9, Shaws creek to Long hill
We decided to 'skirt' the part of the McMillans track that went via Mt Tamboritha and Breakfast Creek in favor of going around via Long Hill and Mt Ligar (The Crinoline) because Gordon didn't like the Breakfast Creek route (long and booring) last time he did them and besides this gave us a chance to summit on Ligar and take in the views. (Hah!)
On the way we stopped for lunch at the Rock Shelter. Nice spot with good shade on a hot day. Actually it was almost cold, but that was a welcome relief.
- Does this look like a lady's petticoat to you?
We were lucky to get this vista of Mt Ligar (The Crinoline) on day 8 from Long Hill because the next day when we climbed it, it was all misty and we could see nothing. When I went back to the area a couple of weeks later to retrieve the drop-barrels, I climbed the Crinoline from the other side (starting at Breakfast ck. I will write it up separately so if you are interested in what the view should have looked like, look for it here: https://terrycornall.wixsite.com/websit ... -crinoline)
After the rock shelter we had an issue with the path going invisible and eventually we just followed the rock rim around to the campsite rather than try to push thru the bush. Getting water wasn't fun because although there was a blazed tree showing where to go to get it, the path faded to nothing after a few hundred meters and I just had to keep heading east, pushing through the bush until I got wet feet to find it. Nice water though. Cool on the toesies.
Misty Mountains
Hmm, the path is around here somewhere
Day 10 and from the camp on Long hill we went up Mt Ligar in the mist, after a bit of a bash through wet bush. Had the morning bath at the same time. Getting to the summit wasn't hard, even though we couldn't see much. Once we got across the narrow ridge that joins Long Hill to Ligar, the bands of rocks that give it the Crinoline monicker make nice terraces, with a bit of a scramble to get up between them in a number of places. The difficult bit was working out what path to take to go to get from band of rock to band of rock. Gordon did a great job of pathfinding and we didn't waste a lot of time searching for these transitions. In places the path goes up slopes of gravelly rock that slips under your feet, and some short climbs are required. It's not terribly exposed (or shouldn't be if you are taking a good path), there are good steps and handholds and occasionally making use of some handy vegetable handholds helped.
There's a nice copse of trees on the summit of Ligar that would make a reasonable campsite, if the winds weren't too strong and from there following a fairly well formed path along the ridge down the South West side gets you to a junction with McMillan's track again. This path is nicely zig-zagged and not crazy steep anywhere. Another little rock down-climb is needed but it's easy. Do be careful though. I make light of the difficulty but in a number of places on Ligar a slip would result in a painful and possibly dangerous tumble. Just take it thoughtfully as you go.
Then down to the Macalister River and after a pause under the porch of a farmer's caravan/hunting-hut/retreat overlooking the river, we went up the long dull, soggy Glencairn road to Middle Ridge Road and then to Rumpfffffs, Flat. (Or however you stop spelling it) Couple of 4x4 drivers asked us if we were Ok on the way past but didn't offer us a lift. We would probably have said 'no thanks' anyway. At least the first time.
A maze of twisty little passages, all alike
Rumpff Flat to Lazarini Spur via Mt Shillinglaw, day 11.
Next morning we endured a long steep climb out of Rumpff Flat along McMillan Spur Track to get to the Jamieson-Licola road and then we were almost back on familiar territory for me as the AAWT intersects McMillans Track near here. I still have post-traumatic flashbacks about hauling our drop-day barrels and water over the Rumpff Saddle on that particular trip. (Bad planning to leave drop-barrels too far from camp, and the Barkly River Jeep Track there is a perfect example of why you don't make roads so steep that they erode away to rockfaces. Besides, it turns out that there is a perfectly good drivable Barkly River Logging Road that could have gotten us all the way to the camp to leave barrels there, if only we had known. Anyway, on this trip we didn't go so far up the Jamesion-Licola Road, turning off to go to Mt Shillinglaw and then camp at Lazarini Spur instead.)
For some reason I don't have photos of them, but on this day we traversed bush tracks like the imaginatively named No 18 Track that is maintained apparently by driving down it in a golf-buggy sized vehicle with whirling blades all around it. They were like green tunnels cut through the living bush and apart from some fallen logs and sapling stumps to liven things up they were easy walking. We did get so engrossed in whacking blackberries on one section that we missed a turn-off but that only cost us a few hundred meters and some embarrassment.
We got water before the camp at Lazarini Spur by going down a small track that went past a couple of caravans, apparently lodgings for weed-spraying contractors. I hope that they were there to get the damn blackberries. There was good water there, but also a LOT of leeches and we were lucky to get away without getting sucked dry. That evening when choosing a tent site, we were repelled from the best choice by an ants' nest. Gordon found an alternative saying, 'this looks ok, a bit soggy, probably why there aren't any ants here'. It rained that night and guess what happened... Yup, we discovered whether the tent could float. Fortunately it could.
Welcome to Tombstone, population you
Day 12
From Lazarini Spur we went down to Black River and up again the next day. I vaguely remember some nasty 'short steep' bits and a bit of scrambling but don't recall it being too horrible. I must have blanked it out, because Gordon reminded me again about the short, overgrown but steep bit out of the Black River. Well, almost every day was a bit like that, so no wonder it has all blurred in my memory. Toss in blackberries and regrowth and it becomes the stuff of PTSD.
Oh, and there were leeches waiting for us at the bottom, around Black River. I unknowingly picked one up inside my gaiters despite vigilance and didn't find it until later after we'd climbed all the way out. It didn't survive the experience.
After the brutal scramble out of Black river and dealing with that impertinent bloodsucking hitch-hiker, we were sitting under some Cherry Ballart (Exocarpos cupressiformis - Wikipedia) trees, all of which were unfortunately bare of fruit. Except for one that improbably had just two of its tiny little red inside-out fruity goodies that caught my eye. They were tasty, but that was all there was. Gordon glared at me for not sharing...
On another cheerful note, I took this photo on day 12 somewhere between Lazarini Spur and Standers Ck where all these tombstones were poking up out of the ground. Spooky.
- Here lies Fred. Climbed this hill and now he's dead.
- tombstones.jpg (427.3 KiB) Viewed 2632 times
Although they look it, these bits of rounded sticky-uppy rock are not man-made, but rather something like a metamorphic mica-rich schist that has been tilted up and weathered. There was a whole graveyard of them. (I could make a pun about a pile of old schist but that wouldn't be gneiss...)
Then we came across an old ore crusher just before crossing the freezing Stander's creek at the end of the day's walking at Stander's Creek. How on earth did they get it in? The tracks are really steep.
This was one campsite distinctly over-endowed with verticality and lacking in horizontality. This was night 12 at Stander's Creek (Hah, standing room only creek...) and the only spot that looked at all possible for the tent was a narrow terrace, a relic of goldmining activity. We looked up and down the track for alternatives, even going to the point of walking further up the steep track to see if it topped out onto something usable. Nope. So back we went to this site and got paleolithic on its grass. I.e. we dug it up and extended it using flat pieces of rock as shovels, some flakes of slate that happened to be handy. After half an hour's grunt work we had a platform that might do but it meant one side door was unusable and that the tent roof on that side was a bit wonky, but we decided to leave it at that. It was at least level on the floor, kinda. (Not really, I had to wodge clothes and stuff under my sleeping mat to stop myself pushing Gordon out his side of the tent) It rained that night and a big pool of water gathered in the tent fly. We were lucky though that it didn't rain too much and we didn't get inundated.
Oh, you take the high road
Day 13 Last day!
The last leg of our trip on day 13 was up the monstrous slope of the Abbot Creek track out of Stander creek and then along a flattish bit until we got to Johnson's Hill.
Yep, I was so impressed with this bit that I walked up and down it twice.
Then along the Johnson Hill track and then the Goulburn river into Woods Point. At one place we chose to take the road above the creek. Looking down it to the valley flats showed another road that crossed the river a few times. It looked quite attractive and we wondered if it might have been better.
At this point at an old reconstructed miner's hut just before Comet Flats outside of Woods Point we read Chapman's notes and got quite confused by them. Eventually we worked out what he was trying to say though some of his comments didn't make sense to us at the time. (Looking back at the notes now they seem perfectly straightforward. We must have been brain-fogged by the thought of almost being finished...) Nonetheless we took his advice about keeping to the right on a road climbing above the river. It merely meant that we could follow a road above the Goulburn river and keep our feet dry. Going the low route meant a few more creek crossings, which wouldn't have been terrible.
I'm not a celebrity, but get me out of here anyway
Once the hike was done we needed a retrieval. Gordon's son James did us the favor of coming up to Woods Point to get us. We met him at the end of the track, by the not inappropriate sign pointing to an Ambulance Station. He drove us home whilst regaling us with stories of being a ski bum in Japan. So jealous.
And that's it, apart from going back to retrieve the drop-barrels one day real soon before everything in them goes moldy. I'll wait for some good weather though, and summit Ligar again and see if I can get some good photos this time.
Like I said above, I'm glad I did it, had fun on some bits, hated others and wouldn't do it again in its entirety for a great big clock. Life's too short.
Terry.
