Day 9
11 images Created 19 May 2019
Our last day dawned just as grey as the one before and the one before that. Fortunately the rain held off for most of the walk out. We were booked on the 1pm Ferry out of Narcissus Hut and so woke early at 6am, packed and had a final brekky before heading off at 7.30am.
We made surprisingly good time back to the main Overland Track and were also pleasantly surprised to find most of the final part of the track was downhill, albeit the same rubbishy scrubby bush and with the same boggy, root ridden track that we hoped we might just get a reprieve from today. Eyes down again, the rain blew in and out and after a final swing bridge over the Narcissus River we arrived at the final hut at 10.30am – this time used only to radio the ferry and confirm our 1pm booking.
With a couple of hours to spare we drank our last, wonderful Ona (Raspberry Candy) plunger coffees and savoured that caffeine moment and our last little bit of time on the track. The ferry dock was a short walk from the hut and on the way we spotted a rainbow ending at the dock which we thought was some kind of message - we were just unclear what that message was: well done, good riddance, it’s still raining, it might get sunny or your pot of gold awaits. A short ferry ride took us to the Tasmanian Parks Information Centre at Lake St Clair where our Overland Track Transport bus was waiting to take us back to Launceston. But first, we just had to enjoy a bag of $7 potato chips each from the Lake St Clair Lodge (a convenient, but seriously overpriced place).
We arrived back at our hotel in Launceston at 5.30pm on Saturday 4 May 2019. Some really long hot showers and clean clothes welcomed us back after nine days and around 95km on (and off) the Overland Track. We had for much of it simply endured and survived. The pictures I took along the way of course tell a very different story of beautiful scenery and epic mountains and forests but to quote an elderly Rose from the movie Titanic: “the experience of it was quite different”.
We made surprisingly good time back to the main Overland Track and were also pleasantly surprised to find most of the final part of the track was downhill, albeit the same rubbishy scrubby bush and with the same boggy, root ridden track that we hoped we might just get a reprieve from today. Eyes down again, the rain blew in and out and after a final swing bridge over the Narcissus River we arrived at the final hut at 10.30am – this time used only to radio the ferry and confirm our 1pm booking.
With a couple of hours to spare we drank our last, wonderful Ona (Raspberry Candy) plunger coffees and savoured that caffeine moment and our last little bit of time on the track. The ferry dock was a short walk from the hut and on the way we spotted a rainbow ending at the dock which we thought was some kind of message - we were just unclear what that message was: well done, good riddance, it’s still raining, it might get sunny or your pot of gold awaits. A short ferry ride took us to the Tasmanian Parks Information Centre at Lake St Clair where our Overland Track Transport bus was waiting to take us back to Launceston. But first, we just had to enjoy a bag of $7 potato chips each from the Lake St Clair Lodge (a convenient, but seriously overpriced place).
We arrived back at our hotel in Launceston at 5.30pm on Saturday 4 May 2019. Some really long hot showers and clean clothes welcomed us back after nine days and around 95km on (and off) the Overland Track. We had for much of it simply endured and survived. The pictures I took along the way of course tell a very different story of beautiful scenery and epic mountains and forests but to quote an elderly Rose from the movie Titanic: “the experience of it was quite different”.
