Month: February 2022

Hello!
All things going to plan I will be away for a couple of weeks
I am booked to fly out to my home town today

My Dad turns 80 on the weekend and I want to be there to offer support and walking sticks and whatnot haha

Sadly Jeff and Pip have to stay home, but I am looking forward to catching up with the family and a few friends while I am there

Hope everyone is doing well!
Cheers xx

Hi!
Busy busy here.
Had a wedding to shoot yesterday. Was a lovely day – of course a long long one on my feet.
I officially slothed today

Above is where I left off with the chook yard.
Last week Jeff and I got to and pulled the rest down

This little shelter was never convenient. Especially if the chooks decided to lay eggs in there. No easy way to reach the back corner

And gone

The duck yard is sorely neglected. The blackberry was a pest to sort out

That stuff has grabby thorns EVERYWHERE!
Pliers and snippers helped as the thorns went straight through my gloves.

Time to bring out the parang

The structure I put up intending to grow things up on it… Sigh.
At least the blackberry got a bit of use out of it

Time for the whippersnipper

We didn’t actually set out to clear the duck yard but… with everything out of the way and cleared it will make rebuilding anything a lot less crowded and irritating

Meanwhile… Flossie found a zucchini leaf to snooze under…

Better

More manageable.

I am still keen to save the wisteria!

Oh… I found an excellent hollow log in the duck yard from one of the failed gardens and repurposed it for the new white geranium that I bought at the last market

Found a spot…

And filled with potting mix! So far its looking quite happy there!

The next Overland set of photos isn’t far away… then I have my eye on about a thousand images from yesterday to sort and post process.
That’ll keep me out of mischief!!
Cheers!

Hello!
Continuing on through the damp countryside on our way to Pelion Hut

It was the right time of year to see the Myrtle orange fungi (Or beech orange)
(Cyttaria gunnii) It grows specifically on myrtle beech trees.
Apparently its edible but I’ve not tried it.

From what I understand, the fungi emerges from the galls.

Pretty sure I’ve photographed that stick before…

Jeff would disappear every now and again

Everything looked rather spooky – so no sweeping views but also not so hot!

Still lots of interesting things to look at

Jeff gone.

Back into the forests

A steady trudge upwards – picking our way carefully over the rocky trail

Lots of moss covering everything!

And still we go up…
I think its one of our favourite stretches of track

Twisty trees

We were on the lookout for Jeff’s favourite boulder

There!

Bob the Boulder??

From big things, to the small things

Moss and lichens

Onward!

A slight stretch of downhill is nice.

And just when one has had enough of stepping over rockys and roots,

We come back out into the ‘open’

The views got a bit limited

But they had artistic scope,

back into the forests…

This river is usually rushing – that day it was a mere dribble

This part of the trek does seem to go on for a good long while

How beautiful are the tree trunk colours?

They are a bright spot in a predominately green world

Your head needs to be pointed down a lot on these tracks.

Having the camera makes me stop and look up a lot more

I think the colours are richer in the rain too

Nothing much has been done to this part of the track where it nearly washed away a couple of years back

At least with the trees blocking the way, if you lost your footing you wouldn’t go too far down

We stopped by the Forth River for a bite to eat.
I was appreciating the fresh apples!

Fresh fruit like this is heavy to carry but I think worth the effort

From this point we had a long ascent up before going down into Pelion so I put the camera away. By that point I needed to remove the weight from around my neck.

Welcome to the tracks most stinkiest dunny.

They were diabolical! Usually they aren’t the most fragrant places but this time they must have been five minutes from being due from an industrial clean out.
The aroma floated quite away from the structure too!!
We camped a fair way up and away and were grateful we had masks with us!
Ahhh… the joys!

Oh! Of course I didn’t have my camera out on the last part of my hike in when I saw a big fat Tasmanian Devil hightailing it down the path in front of me!!!
Doh!

I’ll leave you with the non-view from the hut at Pelion
Shame… one of the nicest views from the huts on the track!
Cheers!

Hi!!
Just a quick garden update while I fiddle-faddle around with the next lot of Overland photos!
I think the corn doubled in size in the week we were gone. Just noticed some fluffy tops showing and tiny cobs forming!

We are also drowning in apple cucumbers and zucchinis.
And YUM on the new potatoes.

Ahem… well, the garden and lawns were a bit feral… so we had to put some effort into bringing them back under control

Jeff on the mower and whippersnipper and me pulling out stuff left right and centre

New lettuce patch! I left one in there going to seed to collect them.

Yikes on the main garden. It didn’t get mowed last time Jeff did the yard and now we are paying for it!

I filled three or four barrow loads while Jeff went mad on the whippersnipper

Now I can see where my veggies are!

The carrots are healthy looking but again… a number are trying to race to seed before any are ready to pick!!

The back veranda garden needed an overhaul… the feverfew was a bit… tired

I pulled one up and replaced it with a young one (they self seed everywhere) but the one on the right was still quite sturdy… just needed a haircut

I also moved a couple of self seeded cape gooseberries up to the side garden that I cleared a while ago. They look SO SAD

But they’re tough and will probably bounce back

I want them to hide that corner and the unused hot water cylinder

This side was also looking a wee bit out of control. So I got brutal and sorted it out.
Now I need to throw in some more rocket seeds. I am missing the rocket already in our salads

Still not oodles of tomatoes – and there is a rat or mice in the hothouse nibbling on the ones I do have… Not pleased about that!
Have to pop some live traps in there to try to remove them!

I’ve been sharing out the zucchinis and cucumbers – just too many for two people!
I’ve been enjoying making zucchini fritters – we had some tonight! Makes a lovely side to the dinner.
I’ve also eaten through my latest batch of pickled beetroot so I am going to have to get cooking again soon! There are some big ones in the garden totally ready for action!

Hope everyone is enjoying February so far!

Cheers!

Hello!!
Hmmmm perhaps I should have tilted that photo a wee bit.
Never mind.
So… we were up before 5am last Monday to drive down to Lake St Claire to drop off our car at the finish point, then drive back up to Cradle.
One of my lovely cousins leant us her car so we could do a car shuffle (they were travelling down to Cradle later to collect it)
In itself that’s a big day as you’re looking at about 8 hours on the road driving.

This was actually the day before our official start date on the Overland.
The plan was to collect our passes then hike up to Scott-Kilvert hut for the first night, which is part way down the track, then start officially the next day.

It was HOT! We aren’t used to hot anymore.
We’d booked at this time of year to accompany friends on the journey… but they bailed out and we didn’t really think to postpone. Just stuck with the dates we took.
March/April is our preferred time.

I struggled right from the start. (Can you tell? My photos are STILL crooked haha) The heat was a killer, the early start, a nice dose of anxiety and of course with my foot – not quite as fit as I would have liked to have been.

In the end I just felt awful. I pushed on for a while (because I am stubborn) but we rounded a bend and I saw where I had to go really steeply up and my face must have etched out this picture… Jeff said he hadn’t ever seen that look before and took it upon himself to bail out and go back before heat stroke became a ‘thing’

Very luckily we found a place to stay… (I had looked but nothing was available when I was trying to book a week earlier)
So we got a better nights sleep and set off for round two the following morning – our official start.

So…off we go again. Back on the bus to Ronny’s Creek to try again.
Even though we were on the track earlier, it was still drainingly hot and hard work.
I was looking forward to getting to Crater Lake so I could jump into it.
I wasn’t full of energy, but today it was Jeff that struggled.
He is super fit and ready for this but he just couldn’t get it together mentally or physically! We think the recent booster shot had something to do with that.
We were at the Lake for probably 30 minutes in fierce debate on whether to continue or not!
The biggest problem with going back was transport. Our car was at the finish line and we don’t own phones to just call people to come on a rescue mission… apart from the VERY big ask that would be. And around here? Buses aren’t a ‘thing’
(OK yes, it also would have been a pretty solid ego blow haha)

Finally Jeff said “Lets just go”
I had actually no idea if he meant forward or back – in the end of course… it was onward and upward.

I didn’t have the camera out until we got to the top of Marions and let me tell you… that was one miserable hard slog that day! (The camera is heavy and I didn’t want to think about it dragging on my neck until I had done the worst of it)
You’ve seen the photos before… you know what that climb looks like (if you are new to this blog… link to photos of going up Marions is here )

Basically I go 10-20 steps and stop. Rinse – Repeat. Might not win any land speed records but it gets you there in bite sized pieces.

We sat for a while and had more to drink and a snack and then continued on.

It wasn’t until this point that we both felt quite a weight (metaphorically) off our shoulders and knew we could really do this!
Was amazing the difference.
Of course the camera had to come out – because if I didn’t use it I might as well have shoved a 2kg paperweight into my pack!!

Across the top towards the base of Cradle… it varies between boardwalk and rough stone ground.

Every water way is a refill in our bottles.
A lot drier up there than usual of course. (Except us… we were puddles of sweat.)

I do like trundling across this part.

(Barn Bluff in the background there… I was pretty positive that there would be no extra mountain climbing for us this trip!)

There was a bit of cloud about and it made the hiking that little bit easier when the sun dipped behind them.

I never fail to feel the awe of this mountain when I am right beside it.
It just looms and makes me feel a little bit insignificant in the grand scheme of things. (But not in a bad way)

Its odd to see this path without water! 3 out of the previous 4 times I’ve done this, its been under water and a lot of mud and rock hopping!

A quick look back

It was a pretty season for wildflowers

Starting to feel a lot more remote now as we look across the mountain ranges

No running water.

Most of the tarns up here were dry

A little bit of water in this one made for some nice reflections

I like the way the path disappears into the greenery here

We filled our bottles again here which was good as it was the last bit of running water we saw between here and the hut

We have a Sawyer Mini filtering bag and depending on the source, we will sometimes filter and sometimes not. But its a handy thing to have to make sure you are not drinking anything dodgy.
These bits of water were good for soaking our hats and heads before moving on.

Anyway, I will leave you here and hopefully work on some more photos tomorrow – you’ll get the whole trek in odd chunks this time instead of neatly packaged into days!
Hope you are all having a lovely week so far
Cheers!