Rained out

I failed today's mission to walk 16km with a 16kg pack. I have to do this as a fitness assessment for a hike I'm going on in December. I was keen to climb Grey Mountain which is the tallest peak (830m) that we can see across the Huon from our house. In good weather there should be pretty good views too. Unfortunately I picked the wrong half of the day to do it. Started out in thick fog (very atmospheric and pleasant) and ended up 30 minutes later trudging in bucketing down rain, and finally blocked by several large pools of water across the track that I couldn't cross. After 2 hours walking I got nowhere near the distance I needed to. Now I somehow have to find time to do it again in the next few weeks, which won't be easy.

Welcome Swallows

A pair of welcome swallows has selected our back verandah as an ideal place to hang out over summer and hopefully hatch a little family. They are very pretty little migratory birds. We decided to put up with the mess they are making and enjoy watching the cute little guys at work. You can just spot both of them in the photo below, and beneath that is the work-in-progress that is their nest made of clay mud and grass clippings.

 

What plant is that?

Seriously... any ideas?

We have four of these young trees, which have just come out in pretty reddish-pink blossoms. The only label I can find that might relate to them simply says 'pink rosea' - two words which mean the same thing. Deciduous, not native... I'm no botanist, no idea.

Wombat scat

Someone told us not long after we arrived in Franklin that you can identify wombat droppings or scat because it is square, and typically deposited on top of a log or rock or similar. Well, it is true. And at the risk of offending someone, here are some pictures taken on my weekend walk. Want to know why wombats do cube-shaped poop? You can read all about it here.

Pack horse

Yesterday I took my recently acquired 65-litre Macpac backpack for a test walk, as I resumed training for the upcoming Wild Women on Top Mt Kosciuszko and Mt Townsend climb. The weekend trip is to commemorate the centenary of mountaineer Freda Du Faur's historic climb of Mount Cook, and it's only 6 weeks away! The hike itself is by all accounts not difficult, mostly metal pathways and walked by thousands of people each year. The bit I need to train for is carrying a full pack with all the gear required for the trip - 16 kilos all up - so just over a third of my own weight. Normally I just walk with a day pack.

The recommended training program includes a weekly 4-hour "undulating trek", which is what I did yesterday. I headed into the forestry area and attempted to walk behind our property and back in a circle. I won't bother trying that again. Most of the paths are just bogs. At one point I was surrounded by pools and bogs and not keen to go back through the bogs I'd just walked through so had to push on. Ugh. The one benefit was that I saw some great animal prints in the deep mud - see the Tasmanian Devil footprints in the photo! On the way back I walked up Phillips Hill (493m), which was much nicer. We can see it from our house. It is the most recently logged area and has been replanted, but the trees are still tiny. I saw an echidna, but the photo I got was blurry, as he scuttled off through the bush. The tracks and views were lovely, and the hill is a good challenge. I'll do that again for training, next time trying out some of the other tracks.

Our house can just be seen peeking out from behind some trees

View east towards the Huon from felled area on Phillips Hill

On the tourist trail

My parents and my aunt and uncle from the U.K. came to visit us over the past few days. It's lovely that we have room for visitors now and can enjoy showing family and friends our new home and some of the local area and attractions. This time we visited a couple of things for the first time ourselves: the Wooden Boat Centre and boat building school in Franklin (pictured below is chef Tetsuya Wakuda's boat under construction), and we had a beautiful lunch at Home Hill winery in Ranelagh.

Freshly smoked salmon

Salmon farming and processing is another major industry in the Huon Valley. This evening we got a taste of the local produce, when a neighbour dropped by with a slab of salmon that he had procured, which was then smoked by another neighbour. This is how it arrived on our kitchen bench. Still warm and absolutely delicious. How lucky are we?!