Travel, walking, sadness all take their toll,
and none of us is ashamed to be heading to our tents by 8pm. Currawongs call
reveille, but otherwise our camp beneath the pines is quiet. A deep stillness
settles on the nearby lakes, which mirror twin hills. The peace of being here
bears me swiftly towards sleep.
 |
[Twilight beneath the pencil pines] |
The zip of a tent wakes me. I fumble with my
torch, learn it’s 4am. That’s 8 hours of sleep, my fuzzy mind calculates. A
good night’s rest, it continues. When it starts to add that perhaps we should all be up
and about, I quickly hose down the idea. Instead I get out to relieve myself,
and find Jim doing the same.
It’s cooler now, though not cold. The sky is
filled with stars, but they’re oddly muted, untwinkling, as though seen through
gauze. It must be mist or high cloud.
Our friend Tim D will be joining us later
this morning. He’s estimated he’ll arrive by 10am. But as he’s never been to
this place, I wonder if it could be closer to 11. So it’s back to the tents for
a lie-in.
I lie a lot, doze a little, until voices
start exchanging greetings and weather reports. I have a low-level glimpse of
the lake out the end of my tent, and see what’s either low cloud or fog.
Eventually I unzip the tent and emerge to find a breaking fog, and a couple of
boiling billies.
We’re slow over breakfast, knowing we’ll be
waiting for Tim D before we go anywhere. Tim O enthralls us with his adventures
in breakfast cuisine. This time it’s bhuja and scroggin-infused muesli topped
with liquorice, chocolate and milky tea. The less adventurous brew straight tea
and follow it with some coffee, which in turn requires “second breakfast”.
 |
[Happy campers on a slow morning] |
Eventually Jim gets restless and decides
he’ll go out to check on Tim D. It’s just as well. He finds Tim a few hundred
metres east of our site, in the act of walking on towards the next lake. It
seems a photo I sent him, which was meant to indicate the rough vicinity of our
camp, was of somewhere else entirely. Ooops – mea culpa!
I brew a compensatory coffee, and help Tim
find a good spot for his tarp/tent set-up. By the time he’s had a rest and got himself
set up, the sun is out and it’s almost lunch time. We consider eating that first,
but shame ourselves into at least starting our walk. Putting lunch into our day
packs, we set off for an afternoon stroll to Little Throne.
For a change we wander west around our lake,
and Middle Lake, towards Little Throne Lake. Before we get to that last lake, we
need to do some running repairs on Mick’s right foot. Despite trusty old boots
and not much walking, he’s developed a nasty heal blister. He’s fussed over for
quite a while, and comes out of it with an improvised bandage. This lasts all
of twenty minutes, by which time he suggests he’ll go back to the tent and rest
his foot.
 |
[Over-servicing? Mick gets blister treatment.] |
The rest of us make for Little Throne, which
again proves surprisingly far away and slow to reach. But it also rewards us. From
the top we gaze out on thousands of lakes, the in-filled hollows resulting from
the vast ice sheet that once covered the area. It’s the kind of perch from
which anything seems possible. A map is one thing; this bird’s eye view is
something altogether more tantalising. Tim D and I figure out some reachable
mountains, and hatch a quick plan for tomorrow’s walk. Jim looks down at a nearby
watery short-cut across Little Throne Lake, and announces a plan of his own.
The shallow crossing proves a little more
involved than it appeared. Tim D offers to try it out, slips off his boots,
socks and trousers, and eventually gets across the water.
 |
[Tim D. pioneers the lake crossing] |
We’re shamed into
following. It’s not especially cold, but the bottom is alternately mud and sharp rocks,
and our barefoot progress is slow and cautious. Libby gets across with minimal drama, then
remarks on the unmanly squeals coming from some of us, most particularly the
plan’s originator. We point out that a long-legged woman has certain advantages
over shorter-legged men, one being her height and the other being … how shall
we put this … an “anatomical absence”, perhaps?
After a deal of laughing, videoing and
whinging (from some), we’re all safely over. Once there and dried off,
everything is fine again. Despite his earlier whinging, and the fact that our
short-cut has saved us all of two minutes, Jim declares “his idea” a winner. We
hear about its marvels much of the way back to camp. And lucky Mick hears a
much-expanded version when we’re re-united, even though certain video evidence
takes the edge off Jim’s alleged heroism.
 |
[Mick captures the triumphant return] |
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