I don’t have a lot of pictures from Day 2 and there was a good reason for that: it was easily our hardest day on the hike. The good news is that most of the track along here was dirt track, which made for a pleasant change after the rocky steps on our first day. The bad news? 20 kilometres of steep uphill terrain from here on.
WHAT IS MY LIFE? I asked the skies. Why exactly am I putting myself through this just to walk from Point A to B?
25kms left
20 kms to go
We had planned to camp at Alum Creek for the day. But after pushing ourselves all morning, we managed to get to Alum Creek in time for lunch (mountain bread, laughing cow cheese, canned tuna … never again). With the whole afternoon ahead of us and still a lot of uphill terrain to cover on Day 3, we decided to engage in an act of pure masochism and keep moving.
And so we walked on, this time with no established camp site in mind, and having to wade across Little River a few times as the path crossed and deviated from the creek. After the creek, we climbed steeply up the hill to the Black Range, and eventually made it to what appeared to be a middle saddle with a rocky clearing. The landscape was barren, rocky, and full of blackened trees trunks due to bush fires and burnings in the area. To add to the eeriness, when the night descended, there was a full moon. Owls hooted. Wild animals screeched outside our tent. Was it close? Was it faraday? We couldn’t tell.
The winds started after that and the tent caved in on us, its poles bend from the sheer force of the gusts. It was a wildly long night, and after what seemed like an eternity, someone looked at their watch and cried: “IT’S ONLY 1:30AM”.
We all groaned. Unable to sleep. Unable to do anything else in the eerie darkness, except to lie there with half the tent caving in on our faces, listening to the sounds of an unwelcoming nocturnal world.
xx doots
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