Day 10 2 March 2010 Queenstown to Lake St Clair

Queenstown has “mining” written all over it, and all over the hills around it. Gold and now copper. There is a naked beauty in the scarified hills, and a lot of history in the buildings. But it still has a hard feel to it, and we didn't stay long. Just long enough to climb Spion Kop for a bird's-eye look around, then watch the Abt steam locomotive come in from Strahan, and to explore the evocative train exhibits at the old station. The station is well worth a look, but the train journey itself is more for the well-heeled than for the likes of us, we decided.

Visiting Lake St Clair was a long-held dream for David. Despite living in Tasmania for a couple of years he had never been there. So we booked into the campground for a couple of nights and set about realising the dream.

Day 11: 3 March 2010 Walk to Shadow Lake
This was the walk which decided me that I would, from henceforth, pay more attention to what David was proposing for the day's activities. It was one of those limits-defining walks, that lets one know how much one is (and isn't) up to achieving. Seventeen kilometres, up then down 330m, and nearly seven hours long. But in retrospect, it truly was magnificent. Stringybark and tea tree forest, then mossy, ferny myrtle and sassafras rainforest, then sub-alpine vegetation with pencil pines, snow gums and richea near the lake. Plains with buttongrass in the foreground and views of Mt Rufus in the distance, alpine tarns, it was all so glorious. We took about a hundred photos, swam in the lake, and didn't see another soul on the track.

We must have looked so tired on return, our camp neighbours enquired as to our wellbeing. Back at our tent, the reclining sun-lounge I had insisted on packing demonstrated its reason for existence, and earned a place in any future camping trip I ever do, even if I have to carry the thing in on my back. That night as we sat chatting with Alan and Jenny, a little pademelon came snuffling up and very prettily held and nibbled a bit of cabbage we threw it. Not so reticent were the brushtail possums that came later and launched themselves at the rubbish bag, the washing up bucket and David's bathroom bag. They were not taking no for an answer.