A hot, but short, day advanced us on our planned itinerary into the Cobboboonee National Park.
After some deliberation, we decided to continue hiking forward. The fire danger was “only” high (as opposed to extreme, or catastrophic), we still had cell service, and there are were several road crossings that we could use as an alternative to leaving the forest, if necessary. And we’ve hiked in worse conditions elsewhere. That said, we still continued to check the weather and fire information throughout the day to see if there were any changes.
The trail continued through forest for the whole day, mostly on wide trail that probably also functioned as a forest management road. The trail continued to be well-maintained, much to our delight.
Yesterday, and also today, I noticed that there were a fair number of (solitary) bird feathers along the trail, more than I recall seeing on other trails. The forest has no shortage of bird life; we didn’t go very far between hearing the call of one bird or another.
We saw several more wallabies today, and a few more red parrots, though no koalas.
Passing a farm, a sign on a gate to the field said “Entry is free. Bull will charge later,” with a drawing of an angry-looking bull. Proximity to farms also brought back the flies that tormented us yesterday afternoon.
About halfway through the day, we stopped for a break, which was nearly an hour long given the heat, and also because we didn’t have very far to go today — weren’t in a rush to be anywhere.
The trail went through a previously burnt area in the forest. It seemed at least a few years old, and felt like it was a prescribed burn rather than a forest fire.
Shortly after entering the Cobboboonee National Park (after leaving the Cobboboonee Forest Park) we saw two emu ahead on the trail. After we startled each other, they ran away, joined by two others we couldn’t see from our vantage point. I wasn’t expecting to see them in the forest, and we didn’t get a very long look at them before they were out of sight. Hopefully we’ll see more later.
The last few kilometers of the day were a road walk, as a result of a trail closure due to a bridge that had been damaged by a fallen tree. This was a bit of a slog in today’s heat (forecast this morning for 91 °F/33 °C), and the detour added almost 3 km to our day, but we made it to camp shortly after 2 pm. 3.5 hours of hiking (and about an hour break) for 18 km in hot weather felt pretty good. At least part of it was nicely shaded.
Cut Out Camp was quite similar to Cubby’s Camp from yesterday. A welcome surprise, the privy even had nice toilet paper!
Yesterday and today, I noticed a lot of small anthills along the trail. At camp, there were anthills all over the place; it was a little hard to find a spot for our tent that wasn’t near an anthill!
We saw one or two cars on the roads we passed today, but no other hikers. Not that we were expecting to see any. When we booked our campsites a couple of weeks ago, none of them had any other bookings.
As yesterday, the water in the water tanks is light yellow, a color which remains even after being filtered. We’ve taken to calling it “koala pee”. A note in the campsite’s log book suggests that there are worms in the water tanks, making us doubly glad we have filters.
Not being allowed to use our stoves, we cold-soaked our dinner. (This was my first time ever doing cold-soaked pasta.) It turned out surprisingly good, all things considered. It helped that we had plenty of time after we arrived to relax and let dinner soak.
For most of the afternoon, it was overcast, though still fairly bright out. At least the clouds helped keep a little of the sun’s heat out of the forest. After 7, the sun came out briefly, but then quickly dipped behind the clouds again.
Tomorrow will be a longer day, 23 km to Fitzroy Camp. Unlike today, we’re setting an alarm to get started earlier, while it’s still cool.