We arrived at the campground/car park at around 7:30am and
after registering our walk we set off. When I did the Western Arthurs many years
ago, I think we must have left from Red Knoll, as the first part of the walk
was unfamiliar, but we were soon out onto the button grass plains. there was some
mud, which was to be expected, but we arrived at Junction Creek at around 9:20
and stopped for about 10 minutes and then pushed on to Crossing River.
My plan had been to camp at Crossing River, but we arrived
quite early, around 1:30pm and Owen was keen to push on to Watershed camp. The
boat crossing at Bathurst Narrows worried us, with the possibility of bad
weather delaying our crossing, so Owen wanted to get that out of the way while
the weather was good.
Added to that, there is no way to avoid getting your feet
wet getting across Crossing River, so we didn’t want to do that at the start of
the day and as it was still quite early, we continued on to Watershed. The
Parks and Wildlife track notes say there are campsites on both sides of the
crossing but I didn’t notice the one on the southern side, though I admit that
I wasn’t looking out for it.
Crossing River has a respectable flow even in January and
while the shallower water seems like the best place to cross, the water is
flowing faster there and we found the slightly deeper, slower moving water the
safer option.
We should probably have taken the time to change our wet
socks as our feet started to give us trouble and a couple of kilometres past
the river we were becoming uncomfortable and we started looking for possible
campsites. There aren’t very many as the open ground is mostly quartz outcrops,
but luckily we spotted an area just off the track, just big enough for a tent.
While it was covered in quartz pebbles these were small enough not to be a
nuisance and we had just passed a small creek 50 metres before, so we had water
available.
Also the track notes don’t make Watershed camp very appealing, saying “The campsite is usually wet but do not be tempted to continue as there are no sheltered sites for many hours” and I didn’t want to make a huge effort to push on just to end up sleeping in a bog (as it turned out, Watershed camp is quite good and not at all wet when we arrived).
Also the track notes don’t make Watershed camp very appealing, saying “The campsite is usually wet but do not be tempted to continue as there are no sheltered sites for many hours” and I didn’t want to make a huge effort to push on just to end up sleeping in a bog (as it turned out, Watershed camp is quite good and not at all wet when we arrived).
The location of our camp for day 1 is MGA Zone 55 431100.000,
52257000.000 (-43o
7’5.88”, 146o9’11.03”)
to the north west of Mount Robinson.
As we pitched our camp, a couple of walkers (Col and Amanda)
passed along the track. Col had found the watch I had dropped somewhere along
the track and returned it. They were making for Watershed camp and were moving
along at a good pace, unlike us.
Dinner for me that
night was Macca’s cheeseburgers and cup a soup and I was quite happy to lose
the weight of those cheeseburgers from my pack. We’d covered 21km on day 1 and
found it quite tiring.