A Dangerous Business

Date: 4th January 2026

Start: Narcissus Hut (km 60.2)

End: Narcissus Jetty

Distance Travelled: 0.3 km

Total Distance Completed: 96.58 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Do I Wanna Know by Arctic Monkeys

Scent Coming Off Our Clothes: Dan and Hammy are currently recoiling in disgust, hope that’s enough info

Gah, just short of 100 km. That’s annoying. Should’ve done a quick 5k run last night. Oh well, still a pretty good effort for 5 days of hiking. By the way, if you’re wondering why the daily distances don’t match the marked distances of each hut, I’m going off the distance my Garmin gives me for each day’s hike, which will take into effect any side trails we did. Plus, there’ll be some GPS error in the figure, gaining a few metres here and there when I stop for a break in a forest and the trees prevent the satellites from getting an accurate lock on my position.

Onto a different question, why is Narcissus Hut the end point of the Overland Track? Why not Cynthia Bay? See this is where things get interesting and where some people may think we haven’t technically finished the trail. So yes, there is a trail of about 17 km that leads around the edge of Lake St Clair to finish at Lake St Clair Lodge. I’ve heard mixed reviews about it, some say it’s boring, other have said it’s been the highlight of their entire journey. There is an alternative, and that is taking a ferry along the lake direct from Narcissus to the lodge. It’s mentioned in the official trail notes published on the TasParks website and is the option taken by most Overland walkers. As such, I don’t think skipping the walk around the lake means that the track hasn’t been completed. On a more pragmatic note, all four of us are nursing some sort of ailment, so not having to walk the extra distance will help us all to recover.

Anyway, onto the ferry. There’s three daily departures and in an deal world, I would’ve booked the ferry well in advance so we could get the 1:30pm service that would connect straight onto our shuttle back to Launceston. Guess who left it to the last minute? By the time I contacted the lodge, only the 9:30am service – the first of the day – was available, hence the long walk from Kia Ora yesterday. It’s not super early thankfully, so we had a relaxed morning packing up our stuff. There’s a radio in the hut that you have to use to confirm your booking; once that’s done, we walked down to the jetty to wait for the ferry to arrive. Take a wild guess at what we did to pass the time.

The Ida Clair is quite a bit smaller than the ferries I know, only seating 18 people and their bags. The driver fired up the two enormous outboards and made quick work of the journey to the southern end of the lake.

Right, now to kill 4ish hours until the shuttle gets here. First things first: real food. Weirdly I was the only taker for this initially, grabbing an omelette and coffee as the breakfast menu was still available. The coffee took forever to come, but I was grateful for a proper non-freeze-dried meal, the first since the cafe in Sheffield. Everyone else held off for lunch to start. More time for 500, I guess. I should say by this point I had gotten the hang of things and was actually having an impact on how each round was played. Despite Bek and Hammy being easily the strongest players to this point, Dan and I – assisted by 6 days of physical and mental fatigue and Hammy constantly calling open misère – utterly dominated the next couple hours.

Then it was time for lunch. I was still full from lunch so just got a beer, the rest of the crew all tucked into some pizzas. The shuttle arrived a little while later, considerably less full than our shuttle to the start of the track.

The scenery going back to Launceston was still really beautiful, sadly I was too exhausted to take any photos of it. 2 and a but hours later, we pulled up outside Bek’s house, wearily walked in, collapsed on the couch, but not before rotating through the showers, which was absolute heaven. Everyone that is, except Hamilton, who had planned to visit family up in Devonport. The day finished with a meal together with Bek’s housemates before crashing onto proper beds for the first time in 6 days.

And that’s all she wrote. The three of us still in Launceston had separate plans after the hike was over. Bek was obviously staying in Launceston because, y’know, she lives here. Dan travelled to Adelaide to spend some time with his brother, and I returned home to Brisbane (I really didn’t appreciate the humidity I felt when I landed), wishing I could’ve spent more time exploring Tassie. I kept internally replaying key moments of the hike upon my return to work; Dan’s bolognese, the nightly team “meetings”, the Ossa snowball fight, countless in-jokes, and the neverending mountain views we were blessed with. The good news is there’s plenty more where that came from in Tasmania and it’s not going anywhere, the question is always if/when I will get the chance to see it. But hey, opportunities can spring up at anytime, and I hope there’ll be another adventure with this crew at some point.

Onto the next trail.