From the dip
in the creek we crossed what we believe was Strike Creek, being the widest
creek crossing required so far, which we did using a combination of rocks
and logs – fortunately I crossed without incident. We
reached the junction with the Eastern Arthurs Track and continued on the
much more obvious track to reach the turn off for Cracroft Crossing,
where there is an extremely long section of boardwalk
to take you to the
river. We gave it a miss and
continued on, stopping a little further on for lunch in a sunny spot, as
shade was hard to come by today. We
had walked throgh a number of burnt out areas today and were covered in
soot, particularly our hands, with my hands the cleanest
as presumably a lot of the charcoal came off when I fell in the creek. We
hadn’t seen water in a while, but I assured everyone it would come soon
and I used some of our drinking water to wash people’s hands before lunch.
Not long
after lunch we did come across the first small creek where some slightly
dirty water was picked up. A
number of other small creeks were passed as we began our climb up over the
Razorback. The climb was very
gentle as we slowly gained height whilst sidling
the north side of the range, until the track
finally reached a low point in the ridge where
upon the track immediately descended on the other side. On thr north
side of the Razorback there was no breeze and the warm weather was quite stifling. When
we got to the top we were greeted by views of the Western Arthurs which
had been obscured for a while, and a very cool breeze!
The next
milestone in the track was Seven Mile Creek. Instead
of poor campsites we were greeted by a couple of nice campsites on the
north bank. At Seven Mile
Creek two creeks meet and flow into one. We
crossed one of the creeks using logs, but crossing the second creek proved
to require a bit of effort and Luca and I put on our “clogs” for the
crossing. Emma and Gordon
crossed the merged creek bare foot, which appeared a
much easier crossing. On
the south bank there were a number of beautiful campsites nestled amongst
the trees, with sandy ground, and we all wondered what
kind of conditions John Chapman must have had
when he wrote his description of the campsite. However we did
notice some debris amongst the higher levels of the trees and
realized that
the water level did get quite high which would mean those
campsites would be under water. In those
conditions crossing that creek would be very difficult.
I was happy
to stay put, ending the day before 5pm and relaxing at the nice camp spot,
rather than risking the dubious campsites described by Chapman further
on. Also, my shoulders were
getting very sore, as were Luca’s, after the previous two long days. Nonetheless
we decided as a group to move on to keep tomorrow’s walk shorter,
and we pushed on to Two Mile Creek.
Luca and I
decided that if we were going to walk another 8kms to Two Mile Creek, then
we wanted to do it quickly, so we shot off walking at probably close to
6km/h in places, however some muddy sections slowed us down, so we arrived
at Wullyawa Creek in just over an hour, with only 2.9kms to go. There
were a couple of bumpy campsites there, but there were also a lot of
mosquitoes, so continuing on to Two Mile Creek was preferred. When
we finally got there it was just after 8pm, and we thought there was a
chance that Emma and Gordon may want to push on, so we waited until they
arrived before we began to rest. Fortunately they had had enough, so
we set up camp in the two adjacent camp spots south of the creek.
After
collecting water we set up camp with the mosquitoes and prepared dinner. As
it was our last night Luca and I decided to finish off our parmesan and
put it into our last soup, Tom Yum, with coconut milk and beans. It
is fair to say that this was the best meal of the trip,
given the copious amounts of good parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano no less!) and that we would
even cook this at home!
