A long day took us across the Mersey River, and along the Gog Range, to the Golden Valley.
We slept well last night; I was pleasantly surprised that we didn’t get woken up at midnight by New Year’s partiers, but except for the generator they had running all night, the other group at the campground was quiet.
It was cool this morning, so I was also pleasantly surprised that our tent was dry, even though we were camping in a field.
Leaving camp, we immediately crossed the Mersey River, which was at most knee-deep, and climbed up through a brief tangle of blowdowns to reach more forestry roads. (Yesterday, the Northern Coordinator said he’d cleared a narrow path through the trees, with more tree-clearing work to happen later this month. It wasn’t always the easiest path to follow, but it was pretty evident a lot of work went in to making it passable.)
We followed more forestry roads for a couple of hours, the roads often shaded thanks to the trees and the early hour.
Towards the end of the forest, a long steep climb up the road gave us a great view behind us of the Gog Range. It was a definite reminder of the need to look behind you sometimes.
Leaving the forest, we had to go through another gate with a trail lock. Getting through the gate was easy. Getting it locked again was much more difficult: a chain of three locks and the minimum possible number of chain links secured the gate shut, and it took a while to figure out exactly how to position the gate and the locks in order to have enough slack to lock it.
The trail followed more public roads along farms, with scenic views into the valley north of the Gog Range.
Three times today, large herds of cows followed us as we walked along the roads next to their pens. Fortunately, they were deterred by barb wire fences, because if they really wanted to, there was very little stopping them from overrunning the fences and chasing after us.
We also passed along another poppy field. This one actually had blooming poppies, most of which were purple (with the occasional red adding more color).
We eventually reached Axe Point, at a bend in the Meander River. Noted in our trail guide as a possible place to pitch a tent, we’d already made the decision to go all the way to the Quamby Corner Caravan Park because we were making good time today.
We stopped for a break there anyway, under the shade of a tree, so that we could collect water from the river to filter and drink. We’ve felt like we probably haven’t been drinking enough water, so a spot where we could easily take a break and “camel up” was a definite win.
When we reached a crossing of the Meander River, a sign warned anglers of the river’s hazards, which apparently includes electric fences. As we crossed the bridge over the river, we saw an eel in the water.
A little later, we passed a house that had a turkey in its front yard. Later, we saw an echidna in the bush.
We joined a highway, walking along its reasonably wide shoulder, before diverging to a bush track that paralleled the highway. A little rougher and more hilly than the main road, it was still nice to be off the highway, and especially the heat of its asphalt.
Eventually, we had to rejoin the highway shoulder, which took us almost the rest of the way to Quamby Corner. Along the way, we passed by Quamby Bluff, a prominent peak off to our right.
Heading towards Golden Valley, we turned off the highway to a smaller road, and quickly found ourselves at Quamby Corner.
Quamby Corner is a somewhat small affair for a caravan park, but that also made it nice and quiet.
After quickly checking in, we picked out a campsite, got showers, and started dinner. During dinner, we looked more into the long day we will have two days from now: from where we’ll be tomorrow, it’s going to be nearly 45 km to the Great Lake Hotel, where we’ll be staying for two nights. A shortcut to cut off the town of Bracknell (a town the Northern Coordinator mentioned most hikers skip) cuts 10 km from the trail, but doesn’t significantly reduce the distance we’d need to go that next day.
We settled on splitting the 45 km day into two 20-something days, hoping that a bush campsite a bit off the trail roughly halfway would work for us.
During that conversation, we talked a little with two older men from southern Tasmania who knew the area, and it came up that Quamby Corner had free laundry. Despite there being a laundry room next to the shower, we hadn’t considered doing laundry since we didn’t have cash to feed the machines. Laundry being free didn’t even occur to us, since it rarely is, and our campsite only cost AUD $25, which was already on the cheap side. Already after sunset, we quickly gathered our clothes and got them in the washer so they’d have time to dry in the dryer before the 10 pm quiet hours cutoff. (We got them not quite dry, but most of our clothes were drier than when we arrived at the campground, so that was still a win.)
Settling in to our tent rather later than usual, we planned to sleep in a bit in the morning. Now, we only have a 21 km day planned for tomorrow, to the Old Liffey School, now a town hall, where we can camp on the grounds.