Another day along roads brought us to Miena for a rest.
Somewhat not surprisingly, given all of the wallaby poo we saw around the picnic area last night, there were some wallabies grazing on the grass this morning.
It was nice and sunny out, with barely any clouds, when CareFree and I left the Arthurs Lake Pumphouse Campground. Following the campground and pumphouse’s access road back to Poatina Road, we followed Poatina Road north briefly to a private road owned by Hydro Tasmania, the Tasmanian state-owned hydroelectric power company responsible for all the power infrastructure we’ve passed the last couple of days. Unfortunately, the road was blocked: a sign on the gate said the road was closed from early January to May for maintenance along Arthurs Flume. Only the fifth of January, and still before 9 am, the closure stung a little: were they really doing work already? And did the detour really have to be along “big” roads? (This is all relative, of course. Just about every road we’ve seen so far in Tasmania is only two lanes.)
Without the closure, the trail would have followed Arthurs Flume up to Tods Corner, where water pumped from Arthurs Lake flows into Yingina / Great Lake. The detour probably also cuts off some elevation gain and loss.
Alas, with no real option, we doubled back and continued south along Poatina Road, and then turned west on the A5.
At least there was a reasonably wide shoulder and not an excessive amount of traffic on either road on our detour. And if the trail route hadn’t been closed, we’d have wound up on the A5 eventually anyway.
There was, though, a lot of dead wombats and wallabies on the side of the road. Given the A5 in particular seemed like you could actually maintain the 100 km/hr posted speed limit, this wasn’t terribly surprising.
Our detour (and a break) took about two and a half hours, and then we reached the junction where the trail joined the A5 coming from Tods Corner.
After passing over a high point along the road, the landscape opened up, trading the trees lining the road wide-open bush.
We took a short diversion from the trail, going to an overlook of the Miena Dam for a break. This is one of the dams that has been used to raise the level of Great Lake for hydroelectric power generation.
Another half-hour along the road brought us to Miena and the Central Highlands Lodge, which contains the post office we sent our resupply box to from Latrobe. We picked our resupply up, then decided to get lunch at the lodge’s restaurant. This may not have been the best decision — the chicken parm we both had was possibly too much food when we still had a few kilometers left to hike, and to a hotel that had a restaurant, even!
But, it did break up the last part of the day into a few short hikes interspersed with breaks, which got us off the road for a while each time as the road continued to get hotter in the afternoon sun.
The restaurant had a good view of Yingina / Great Lake, as did a few places along the A5 as well walked to our final destination for the day, the Great Lake Hotel.
Wanting to keep costs down, we got a “fishing cabin” with shared bathrooms, rather than a hotel room. Across the parking lot from the hotel was a gas station and roadhouse, which provided us our soda and ice cream fix.
The rest of the day was largely uneventful, and we relaxed the rest of the afternoon and evening.