Our penultimate day on the Tasmanian Trail gave us another round of excellent scenery as we made our way to Geeveston, and then a little beyond.
Sometime after CareFree and I ducked into our tent last night, two bicycles and another tent arrived. We got to chat with them shortly before we left Judbury. Cycling the Tasmanian Trail, they’re also almost finished, but one of them had several tire punctures on the gravel roads yesterday, exhausting all of their repair supplies, and forcing a detour today to a cycle repair shop in Huonville, to the east. We’ll probably see them again tomorrow, somewhere on the way into Dover.
Leaving Judbury, we immediately crossed the Huon River, following the road along farms as we climbed up into some mountains. Bright and sunny, a stark contrast from yesterday, the heat and humidity quickly got us drenched as the road was a fair bit steeper than yesterday morning’s. We also had much better views, as a result of there being fewer trees near the road.
In a small wetland depression in the hillside just below the road, a chorus of frogs called out, then quieted just as CareFree got out her audio recorder to record their song.
After walking past houses for a while, we passed a couple of pastures, before eventually entering the Bermuda Forest, a mixed pine and eucalyptus plantation. The shade helped take the edge off the heat, at least until some clouds blew in, bringing in even more humidity.
Some of the best views we got today were near the end of our climb in the plantation. To the southwest, we could see almost fifty kilometers to the sawtooth-like Western Arthur Range. In only a few years, once the pines near the trail grow, that view will be gone.
Our steepest descent today was down the access road in a power line clearing. I’m no stranger to crossing power line clearings, but it’s pretty rare in my experience for trails to actually follow the clearing or access road for any length of time. (Of course, most recently was going to Arthurs Lake, but aside from that, I can’t actually remember when the last time was.)
The power line clearing was brief, but also the steepest downhill of the day, and then we turned back into the plantation forest.
Eventually, the forest road brought us to the rural homes and farmland outside of Geeveston, and we stopped for a break at a small bus shelter for school children. Now, less than an hour from Geeveston, we finally set about trying to find a place to stay for the evening. (Apparently, the prior official campsite had some issue with someone tenting, and now requires all campers to be self-contained; e.g. vehicles only.) There seemed to only be two other options in Geeveston; one was an exorbitantly-priced “experience” that was $600 AUD per night; the other was unexpectedly closed (temporarily, we think). Our alternative was to walk another few kilometers to the next town over, Port Huon, to stay in a kind-of pricey hotel there, and we got a room reserved.
We finished our walk into Geeveston, turning off the trail and stopping at Sol’s Roadhouse for dinner (with fantastic burgers).
From the roadhouse, we had a little more roadwalk, mostly on sidewalk, until we departed the road to take the Port Huon to Geeveston Walking Track, which was poorly signed from the road, but visible via a sign at its entrance if you looked for it.
The walking track was a mixture of trail in the woods adjacent to the road, and sidewalk, with the last half-kilometer on a boardwalk through a marsh near the mouth of the Kermandie River, just above its confluence with the Huon River, now tidal and over a kilometer wide
While checking into the Kermandie Hotel, we learned that there is a bus service that runs between Hobart and Dover, which passes through Port Huon and Geeveston, and we can catch that tomorrow morning so we don’t have to walk the three kilomters back to Geeveston to continue. (Tomorrow is already over 30 km, so not adding further distance would be preferable.)
With only one more day to go, we’re quite looking forward to being finished. While we make fast progress down roads, roads are very tiring to walk on, and we’re ready for a rest.