Breaking a 20+ Year Drought

Over the Victorian Labour Day long weekend, I did my 1st overnight hiking camp in more than 20 years. A week or so before that I purchased a 65 litre hiking backpack, and some new hiking boots. What follows describes that hike. I had already tried the camping tent, sleeping bag, and self-inflating pillow and sleeping mat, so I didn’t expect any problems arising from them. Most of the reason for doing this multi-day hiking camp was try out my new hiking backpack, and see how I went hiking the distance I planned. This was all in preparation for a 7 day isolated base camp I have planned for the end of March and start of April (more on that after it happens). On the isolated base camp, I will have to hike a short-ish distance (about 7km) from the nearest public transport to the camp ground, then I can do day hikes starting from that camp ground over the course of the next few days, before I pack up camp and hike back to the nearest public transport, to head to either Kyabram or home.

11th March 2023: Forest Camp

Forest Camp, Killawarra, is located in northern end of the Warby Ranges, amongst what looks like ironbark trees. There are no creeks of other water sources in the vicinity and the tank at the campsite was not giving any water when the tap was turned. There were lots of march flies there. They are tough little things! Even a hard wallop on them sometimes only stuns them and once they have recovered they come back fopr another attempt at biting you. Ground hard to get tent pegs in without hammer. The camp site has a rotunda, plenty of tables and camp fire places. It was so quiet there! Only the noises of nature: flies buzzing, birds, rustling in the undergrowth. No traffic noise at all, and only the occasional jet flying high overhead broke the natural feel.

Rebecca dropped me off about 3:30pm, and I then set up camp. After she left I went for a walk.

A bit before Rebecca left, a car with 3 campers arrived, and they set up camp at the other end of the camp ground. Those 3 other people were bird watchers. They picked this place to camp because it seems nice and quiet, which suggests they weren’t the rowdy type. That was a bit of a relief! Personally, it seemed to me like God had sent them there to ease my sense of isolation! There was no Optus mobile coverage at all, not even for emergencies. And “Emergency calls only” coverage with Telstra.

12th March 2023: Hike to next camp-site.

The birdwatchers left Forest Camp about 7:15am, and I left about 15 minutes later.
I had to pick what I thought was the best route to my next overnight camp, which would be either Black Spring Camp or Wenham Camp.

After about 11km of hiking, I could feel blisters forming under my left foot. At that point I calculated I was over half way to the next camp site, whichever one I chose. As I continued the blisters became more obvious, with one forming under my right foot too, and by the time I got to Wenham Camp Site I could hardly walk they were so painful.

I set up camp there, and had a light lunch, then proceeded to boil enough drinkable water so I had about 2 litres for tomorrow’s hike. I was hoping the blisters would have settled down a bit by then. About 1pm it started to rain and it then rained on and off and with varying intensity from then on into the evening.

After I had set up camp, 2 cars arrived with some young adults. I wondered whether they would be shatterers-of-the-peace, but I needn’t have worried. Apart from some (not too loud) music emanating from their camp-site I would hardly have known they were there. As the afternoon drew on the wind picked up and the temperature got lower, so I spent quite a few hours in my tent apart from when I cooked and ate my evening meal.

I also noticed there were more man-made noises there: the sound of high revving engines from a speedway down in the valley. I wondered whether those car sounds might have been from Winton Speedway to the south west of Glenrowan. There was also other traffic noise, maybe a train or two, and the planes overhead seemed louder. Not as peaceful and serene as Forest Camp.

Around 7:30pm a few more cars of people arrived at the camp-site. So I shared the Wenham camp ground with a few other groups of campers.

The distance of this day’s hike was 19km. Strava activity.

13th March 2023 – Hike towards Wangaratta.

The original plan for this weekend of hiking was for today’s hike to be from where I camped Sunday night into Wangaratta.

The blisters I acquired from the previous day’s hike were feeling a bit better, but I doubted I would make it all the way to Wangaratta. I wanted to at least try, though. By 7:30am I was hiking again. Initially the blisters weren’t causing much pain and I was able to walk along OK. By about the 7km point of the hike the feet were hurting about the same as near the end of yesterday’s hike. So I looked at the map and decided to at least to try to get to the intersection of Walker Rd and Wangandry Rd, Wangandry and then decide what to do once I reached there.

By the time I got there the feet really needed to stop, so I decided not to go any further. I phoned Rebecca and she drove out to pick me up and take me home. This day’s hike ended about 9km shy of Wangaratta, having hiked 11km for the day. Strava activity.

Thus ended the hiking weekend. Over all I hiked or walked almost 35km over the course of the weekend, which included the walk I did on Sabbath afternoon. Not a bad effort, especially as almost 20km of that was with blisters.