We left at 7:30am with a day’s hard slog ahead of us. Even
though the previous day had been overcast we discovered that we were getting
quite sunburned and made sure to apply sunblock before starting off.
The track is overgrown in many places and I was getting
tired of the narrow trenches. I’m not sure of the purpose of these but they
have straight sides as if they have been cut with a trenching tool of some kind
and are often just wide enough for one boot. I got my boot caught in one of
those deep trenches and overbalanced, wrenching my knee. When the track opened
up and I could walk it was fine, but there are very few places where you can
actually walk. It is often trench warfare, with narrow slits cut into the
quartz just wide enough for one boot, so you either have to have one foot in
the trench and the other on the rim, or straddle the trench. I found the first
option better, with my injured left leg in the trench and the right leg doing
most of the work on the rim of the trench. Other times it is scrub bashing or
bog hopping.
Owen’s feet were starting to give him trouble and when we
got to Watershed he wasted no time getting his boots off.
Watershed camp is not a bad spot, but we’d only covered 9km
for the day so far, so after a short rest we pushed on. Watershed to Spring
River is badly overgrown in many places and more than a few times I wondered if
we had lost the track. It was a hard slog and my arms and legs were scratched
and bleeding. The pandani leaves are also treacherous with sharp edges and I
recommend long sleeves and trousers, but unfortunately I didn’t have any apart
from my wet weather gear and it was too warm to walk in that. At times it took
us 20 minutes to cover 300 metres.
At one point I asked Owen if he still had the combat knife
he’d brought with him. When he said he did I asked him to kill me now. Owen
suggested turning back to Watershed camp, but knowing what we’d already been
through I didn’t want to do that again.
I hoped the terrain ahead might be friendlier. I was wrong.
I hoped the terrain ahead might be friendlier. I was wrong.
It was quite tiring fighting through the scrub and I was
really looking forward to reaching Spring River. We finally arrived at a
campsite next to a river and I was happy to believe it was the Spring River
campsite, but Owen said the real campsite was another 300 metres further on. I
took a bit of convincing, but there was some very wet ground just past the
campsite and I didn’t want to face going through that at the start of the next
day.
Owen had the GPS and I was relying on him for estimates of
our schedule, but I was starting to become a little sceptical of his estimates
of distance and times. Travel times are very difficult to estimate as it
depends very much on the terrain and distances based on grid squares can be way
out when the track is meandering. 300 metres turned out to be 1.8km when we
finally arrived at Spring River at 5pm.
C&A had already arrived and set up
their tent at Spring River. I was surprised to see them again. They were
motoring along so well when they passed us on day 1 that I didn’t expect that
we’d catch up to them. They also commented on the totally unexpected condition
of the track. We were also able to return the favour of the previous day as
Owen had found a rain jacket that they had dropped along the track.
I was exhausted and let Owen pitch the tent on his own. I
crawled into my sleeping bag and I was
done for the day. I couldn’t even summon the energy to cook dinner and my left
knee was still painful.