We had a comfortable night in Green Gully hut. The fireplace there was fantastic! Also can I say the toilets have been very good on this trek. Toilet paper provided and the doors actually lock. I liked that the Green Gully hut has an old stockyard next to it. All these huts on this track are 'heritage' - they were owned by farming families who then later sold them to the NPWS. One observation about the 'heritage' aspect - they take it to extremes. Like I understand they want to preserve the huts - but there's preserving them but making them useful, or preserving them and making them inhabitable. The Green Gully hut had a calendar from October 1971! The tin huts are not insulated and the fire places are ineffective (except at Green Gully hut) because they haven't got any deflectors.
Anyway, no obvious antechinus visits last night thankfully. We set off at 8.25am and immediately headed down a small hill to the creek, where we basically stayed all day. The first creek crossing was freezing. I have my old ASICS and my feet were comfortable from rocks but numb from cold. Poor Karen was shivering! We had worn shorts because long wet trousers all day is very unpleasant. There were apparently 35 creek crossings and I think we had 100! It was madness (actually Michael counted 38).
At about the 4th creek crossings we were lucky to spy some endangered brush tailed rock wallabies high up the rocks. They are so cute.
Fortunately the creek crossings weren't too deep (not as deep as we'd read they could be) - at most just above the knee. But some were quite fast flowing. Generally the rocks weren't too slippery which was good. Michael almost face planted in one particularly deep bit. He has struggled and requested at least 2 breaks, quite lengthy each time - which is completely unheard of for him - but this allowed us a nice morning tea break and a beautiful lunch spot, which we appreciated.
When we hit the gorge we had to choose between about 5 kms of bush bash or walk in the creek. For the most part we were able to stick to the banks, criss-crossing the river, but we did have some walking up the creek.
it seemed an eternity before we hit the '4km' sign and the road. This 'so-called' road went on forever - and trust me, no vehicle has been down it for a while! It was sad to see too the damage that deer have done - the road was really chopped up. More criss-crossing of the creek, then finally we got the "Colwell's hut 150m" sign. Yay! Straight up a hill. Not yay.
This hut is miniscule. Its a joke. I have no idea how 6 beds fit in here. It's the tiniest of the lot and the fireplace is crap. There's an outdoor shed, so we moved 2 beds out just so we could have some room.
Tonight's dinner is re-hydrated Butter chicken. Last night's re-hydrated Moroccan lamb was nice so hopefully this will be too.
Anticipating another very cold night... forecast was for -1 in Yarrowitch... gonna be colder than that here...
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