Day: 003
Date: Thursday, 08 November 2018
Start: Cobboboonee Camp
Finish: Moleside Camp
Daily Kilometres: 32.0
Total GSWW Kilometres: 76.5
Weather: Cool early and partly sunny with occasional rain showers.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Muesli
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated Mee Goreng
Aches: Very tired and blister on one little toe.
Highlight: Seeing a mother emu with two chicks.
Lowlight: Still not feeling 100%
Pictures: Click here
Map: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
It again rained a lot overnight and again while I was packing up, so I was happy that my tent was inside the shelter. Although I had a reasonable number of hours sleep, I still woke with a mild headache and didn’t feel 100%. It seemed to take a long time to pack up, but I was hiking by 7:45am, which wasn’t too bad.
Knowing I had 32km to hike, I was keen to just keep moving along and keep my breaks short. The weather was cool early and I stayed rugged up, but there was occasional sunshine and the early morning forest was magic and quintessentially Australian with the eucalypts filtering the sun onto the bracken and my path below. Birds sang and darted between the trees, while somewhere kookaburras could be heard calling in the distance.
I didn’t force the pace and just walked along, trying to pick up some more news about the US half-term elections on my little radio. Around mid-morning, I startled an emu mother with two large chicks and they all crashed off into the bush as I tried to get a photo. That was the only terrestrial wildlife I saw until late afternoon when I encountered an echidna on the trail, and later some kangaroos hanging around the campground.
Apart from a couple of times when the trail paralleled some rural land, all day was spent in the forest, some of which was more heathlike, although a scenic highlight was the Inkpot, a small lake absolutely black in colour f4om the tannin released by rotting vegetation.
I’m now in the Lower Glenelg National Park and my campsite, which I reached about 5:30pm, is on a bluff overlooking the Glenelg River at the point where the trail reached the river. It’s a popular river for canoeing, so I wasn’t totally surprised to meet my first humans for two days, a school group occupying a large part of the camping area. Initially, I thought I was going to have to pitch my tent amongst them, but then spotted a sign pointing to the “Walkers Campsite” which I have to myself, though within easy earshot of the students.
From here, the trail follows the river downstream for the next couple of days when I will reach Nelson, a small town where I have a food parcel waiting for me at the post office, and a motel room booked. Hope I feel a bit better tomorrow.
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