A Dangerous Business

Date: 12th October 2024

Start: Duwul Campsite (km 84.1)

End: Yarram Campsite (km 110.5)

Distance Travelled: 26.3 km

Total Distance Completed: 110.5 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: We Are The Champions by Queen

Opinion Of Rocks: burn them all

A roaring wind tore through our camp in the night, forcing me to frantically pitch the guy lines and replace a corner peg that had come out of the ground. Weirdly though, it was probably the warmest night of the trail so far.

Anyways, Matt and I had business to attend to. Namely, walking 26km over some pretty rough countryside. That called for an early start, leaving camp at 7:45. One more short stint of rock scrambling led to, of all things, a road walk to the summit of Mt William.

It’s the highest point on the trail, marked by, checks notes, an air traffic surveillance tower.

The trail then hops over onto the Major Mitchell Plateau. One small problem with that, Mt William and the plateau aren’t actually connected, and for some unknown reason, Parks Victoria have neglected to help is poor hikers out with a bridge or cable car between them. Instead we’re forced to descend (steeply) into a gap between the two mountains and then climb (just as steeply, but this time with stairs) onto the plateau. Thankfully once you’re up there it’s pretty smooth sailing, with a mixture of flat rocks to hop over and a steel boardwalk over some of the more delicate parts of the trail.

Already pretty tired by this point, I was still grateful for the clear skies above our heads. In worse conditions, I can imagine this part of the trail would be pretty treacherous.

At the end of the plateau is the summit of Durd Durd, the same height as Mt William but not as prominent.

Now for the fun bit: getting off the mountain. Apart from a short scramble at the start, the rest of the descent was silky smooth.

We finally reached the first campsite at 1:30pm. All things considered, we’d made pretty good time. Before we began I was fully expecting to arrive at our destination right on sunset, but now it was looking like we’d get a bit of sunshine.

But we still have to get there. For starters, how about more descending?

This took us to a gravel road with a noticeable number of food drops left for smarter hikers taking the usual amount of time to complete the trail. From there Matt and I climbed through bushfire scarred forests on a track that just got steeper and steeper. Proportionally to that was my frustration and camp fever growing stronger and stronger with every step. Once the path turned into yet another rocky scramble, I had enough and more or less sprinted the final kilometre to the campsite. And what a campsite it was!

In hindsight, I would’ve split up these two sections over two days, both to take a bit of physical pressure off myself but also so I could actually enjoy spending time at these lovely camps, instead of rushing to set stuff up and get dinner before the sun goes down. In the moment, none of that really mattered to Matt or myself. We’d done it. Exhausted with sore feet, legs, joints, etc., but we’d done it. Now we could relax for a bit, comforted by the knowledge that the toughest bits of track were behind us.