The Overland Track – gourmet style

No sooner had we got our feet back under our desks than we were off on our next big adventure; this time to Tassie to walk the Overland Track with our friend Tim.

The bumf says: The Overland Track from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair is Australia’s premier bush walk. It is a true wilderness walk which travels through spectacular dolerite mountains, near beautiful waterfalls, through a variety of fascinating ecosystems and close to Tasmania's highest mountain, before finishing at Australia's deepest lake, Lake St Clair.

They’re right – it does all of those things….

We set off from the cradle mountain visitor centre on 22nd December laden up to the max. You have to take everything with you and carry all your rubbish out too. Even the composting toilets are emptied by special ‘poo’ helicopters to stop the nutrient rich bush walker’s waste affecting the delicate nutrient-poor ecosystems. I spent a while considering how upset I would be if I’d spent years training to become a helicopter pilot only to land myself a job as a ‘poo’ pilot…

So off we set with our packs stuffed full of all the basic necessities for seven festive days in the bush; a gallon of instant mash potato, plenty of porridge, 6 packets of cheese, a litre each of wine and a splash of port.

As the bus dropped us off the rain started to gently patter down and I was glad that we’d decided to listen to advice and bring plenty of rainproof garments. We started along the wooden walkway which has been built along a fair amount of the walk.


The wooden track
As we started up the first climb of the walk it started to rain a little heavier, but it was still absolutely beautiful and exhilarating. By the time we got to Miriam’s lookout, we were finding it difficult to find the lookout in the low cloud, let alone look out of it. We pressed on to the first hut to shelter from the rain for lunch.

The rest of the afternoon is really just a blur of concentrating on trying not to be blown off the wooden walkway and brief glances at the amazing alpine tussocks and cushion plants in the few seconds the rain fell from horizontal to diagonal. We eventually squiged our way to the aptly named ‘waterfall hut’ to find it completely packed full of soggy walkers.

The rain made it impossible to pitch our tents so we opted to share the floor of the hut for the night with a hardy family of four. After a warming brew, a little cheese and biscuits and a splash of festive wine we had forgotten the sogginess and were more than happy to bed down for the night listening to the rain on the roof.

We woke in the morning and the clouds had lifted to reveal a beautiful valley surrounded by the peaks of Barn Bluff and Cradle Mountain and filled with colourful heaths. We set off happily in our soggy boots basking in the sunshine and the spectacular views.

After a three-hour walk we got to the next hut and decided to set up camp and spend the afternoon drying our gear out in the sun.


We spent a happy few hours basking on our camping platform overlooking Lake Windermere watching an echidna snuffle around in an ants nest and a couple of playful wombats mosey past.

The one thing that you talk about more than anything else when you’re walking is food. What you’re eating, have eaten or are going to eat are all acceptable topics of conversation. The added benefit of eating, you see, is that your pack gets lighter the more you eat. We ate hearty, and fairly bourgeois, lunches of corn bread wraps filled with semi-dried tomatoes, avocado and tuna fish…all very civilised.

That evening we dined on instant mash potato with peas and corn on a bed of salmon covered in hollandaise sauce….together with an aperitif of cheese and biscuits and wine…..


Tim demonstrating the bush walking fashion; boardies, long johns, socks and sandals....effortless style

Christmas Eve morning was a bit drizzly which was a good thing because Matthew had managed to impressively burn a 20cm strip of skin on the backs of his legs that had shown between his gaiters and his shorts. We packed up camp and set off through the myrtle-beech rainforests to the next hut. Seventeen kilometres later when we reached Pelion Hut the temperature had dropped significantly and we were told by the ranger that the weather was being brought up from the Antarctic and to expect snow.

Now we were prepared for cold weather. By Christmas Eve night I was wearing every single garment in my rucksack; 1 thermal t-shirt, 3 thermal shirts, a fleece and a big jacket, thermal long johns and a fleece beanie - brrrrrrr. It’s at times like that when you really appreciate the person who invented inside toilets.


Christmas Matthew
On Christmas morning we woke to find snow gently falling on the ferns and palms around the hut, after a festive breakfast of porridge we set off to climb Mount Ossa, the tallest mountain in Tasmania. As we climbed the snow got thicker and although it was all very exciting, common sense eventually kicked in when we couldn’t see which way to climb anymore and we had our Christmas lunch of cheese (obviously) and tuna wraps in a handy cave…


View from the Christmas Cave

We didn’t stick around for long, our frozen feet and hands compelled us back down the mountain to the next hut, which was toasty warm by the time we got there. We had a great Christmas evening chatting with our fellow walkers, eating cheese, couscous with pine nuts and drinking port.

The most enjoyable part of the walk (apart from the food!) was the sheer variety of landscapes that we passed, making each day completely different from the last. From alpine moors filled with splotches of bronze button grass to colourful windswept heathlands, gnarly stooped forests dripping with moss and lichens to grand eucalypt forests filled with bright birds flitting about. Every minute there seemed to be something new and exciting to entertain us, as well as Tim, who’s pretty entertaining…


The track winding through a forest
Boxing Day was Waterfall Day – lots of them, all very impressive. Whilst the weather improved significantly for the last couple of days we’d got quite used to sleeping in the huts with our fellow walkers. Although the snoring was pretty impressive at times it was preferable to camping outside on the soggy platforms and wrestling with the hardcore possums who are fearless and will go to great lengths to relieve you of anything edible.

For our final night we walked up to Pine Valley Hut, which was as atmospheric as the name suggests. We had a fantastic walk to the top of the labyrinth; a plateau of unique vegetation wedged into the gaps between a limestone pavement – pretty impressive. When we got back to the hut we set about eating all the food we had left as it turned out that I’d heinously over catered – no one was complaining though.


Pandanis at Pine Valley
Unfortunately we had to share the hut that night with a man, who for the purposes of this blog we will call Mr. W. Mr W had seemingly dragged his poor girlfriend/wife/friend on an 80km walk and she was not enjoying herself. He did and said various offensive things but our favourite Mr W outburst was ‘you wash up now!’ at his ladyfriend loud enough for the rest of us to hear – attractive.

In the morning we had to set of pretty early to get to the Narcissus hut in time to get the ferry over Lake St Clair to the bus, which would take us back to Hobart. We knew there were limited spots on the ferry and we also knew that Mr. W was planning to get the same ferry. We set off about an hour after Mr W, but a good distance along the track we overtook him meaning that we got to the ferry stop first. The ferry duly arrived and it turned out that there were only 3 spots free on the ferry.

Now this is the funny bit. Mr W refused to back down declaring that he absolutely HAD TO GET ON THE FERRY. I haven’t seen Matthew lose his rag many times, but it was brilliant to watch both him and Tim have a full scrap with Mr W. In the end it was apparent that Mr W was far more unreasonable than either Matt or Tim, so he won and jumped on the ferry. Luckily the ferry man came back 3 hours later and had phoned our bus so that they knew to wait for us we also spent a happy few hours lazing around next to Lake St Clair eating the final scraps of scroggin and noodles. As luck should have it, when we finally got to the bus, we jumped on to find Mr W with a packet of Tim Tams as a peace offering. Grrrrrrr.

Getting back to Hobart and showering for the first time in 8 days was fantastic, we quickly hit the Taste of Tasmania festival and spent a good few hours filling up on scallops, oysters and raspberries – telling ourselves that we deserved it after ‘roughing it’ for 7 days! We left Tasmania 2 days later still talking about food…yum!

Tim has put up an excellent photo guide of our trip too!