Barely 3 weeks after returning home from Nepal we’re motoring across Lake St Clair a little after 9.00am on an unseasonably cool December morning. Our skipper has just delivered a ponderous safety demonstration lamentably filled with the most excruciating attempts at humour (“If we run into a bus or truck out on the lake, don’t worry, we have a life raft”) and now we’re covering the distance of the 6 hour walk along the western shore of the lake in under 20 minutes onboard the local ferry.

On returning to Australia I especially wanted to get out into the bush again to take advantage of the fitness we’d gained on the trail in Nepal and a tough 4-day walk into Frenchman’s Cap was exactly what I wanted. We booked the animals into a kennel and were ready to leave but a week’s worth of steady rain had me thinking twice about crossing the notorious Loddon Plains - a 6 hour walk through thigh deep mud on day one of the hike to Frenchman’s Cap.

We thought better of it and decided instead to head for Pine Valley at the southern end of Tasmania’s famous Overland Track. Now, as we motor north across Australia’s deepest lake I’m excited to be out in the wilderness of home.

Neither of us has been into Pine Valley but we've heard the area is quite a beautiful place to walk. Day one starts under the leaden skies so common on our west coast and the lake water is black and choppy in the morning wind. Lake St Clair is a glacial lake from which the headwaters of the Derwent River begin their run down to Hobart and its western shore sits beneath the impressive Mt Olympus massif, with Mt Orthys and the Seven Apostles forming an impressive backdrop to the wet sclerophyll forests by the lake. On the eastern side is the plateau that stretches from here half way to Tasmania’s east coast.

We disembark along with a handful of other hikers, mostly day walkers but also a walking guide from Maria Island named Sophia. She’s meeting her ranger boyfriend here and hopes to spend 3 or 4 days at this end of the park so maybe we’ll be seeing her again. She tells us she’d like to bring an inflatable boat in here so she can cruise Cephissus Creek 3 or 4 kilometres to where it empties into Lake St Clair. What a great idea.

With the familiar weight of our backpacks on our shoulders again we make the short walk to Narcissus hut and tuck into an early lunch. From here it’s a gentle walk on duckboards and clear tracks along the southern end of the Overland Track to the turn-off to Pine Valley and we cover the 4.3km in an easy one and a quarter hours. Sherridan says she’s having trouble finding her rhythm on the trail but she makes good time and after a snack at the turnoff we start the remaining 4.5km walk to the hut.

The next kilometre or so is more of the open eucalypt forest we’ve seen since setting out from Narcissus but as we cross Cephissus Creek for the second time the forest canopy closes in and we now find ourselves walking through an increasingly dark and wet temperate rainforest as the track enters the moist valley formed between the Du Cane Range and the Acropolis. The track through this section becomes quite difficult to tread as the ground begins to undulate and the gravelly path is replaced by moss-covered tree roots so slippery and difficult to navigate every step is an exercise in cautious concentration.

Almost 3 hours and 9km since the start of our walk and we’re both starting to feel the effects of fatigue and the hut can’t get here soon enough. My concentration waivers briefly and I lose my step on yet another tree root and before I know what’s happened all 90 of my kilos plus 22 more in my pack come crashing down on my forearm and I land in a heap, clutching at my arm almost certain it’s broken. Sherridan would later tell me the first thought to occur to her as I lay on the track was “Oh, damn. Am I going to have to carry him out of here....?”

Fortunately for Sherridan I wasn’t too badly hurt and was able to gather myself and keep walking.

The last kilometre of the walk seems to take forever as we clamber through, around and over the mess of tree roots and branches but, despite our exhaustion, it’s one of the most enjoyable sections of walking I’ve done anywhere in the State. Tree trunks and limbs are cloaked in the deepest green moss, the forest floor is littered with the golden leaves of the nothofagus, and the understorey is brimming with pandani. The entire area has the feeling of a showpiece Tasmanian garden and I have to remind myself to watch my step rather than look around at the gorgeous greenery.


Later at the hut we settle in with one eye on the door. The building is quiet and empty of people but the veranda outside is crowded with packs and inside 8 or 10 bedrolls are stretched out in readiness for their owners to return from hiking. We savour our moment of peaceful solitude, expecting that any minute now a crowd will descend and take over the hut.

Sure enough, they arrive while we’re having a snooze. A large group of youngsters (oh joy!) on an end of school excursion quickly take over every spare centimetre of space. The group is accompanied by teachers, but their exuberance and general hub-bub shatters the serenity so Sherridan and I end up cooking and eating outside in the cold rather than trying to compete for space at the communal table.

We get to sleep at a reasonable hour after the kids are ordered to bed. The next morning they’re packing up and on their way by 8.00 so any thought of a sleep in is futile.

It's peak season on the Overland Track, and on this day too we're invaded by another crowd of school kids plus a few international visitors - maybe French or German, it's hard to make out their accent over the noise from the kids.

Next morning the kids move on (after hours of noisy pack up) and peace reigns once again inside the hut. We’re alone with the foreigners - both French and German as it turns out. The French couple stay and chat for a while before heading off to finish their conquering of the Overland Track while a young German girl, Laura, settles in for a three night stay of her own.

For the duration of our stay we encounter the usual eclectic mix of trekkers. A father and son from New Zealand, an Irishman and his son who came up from Hobart and the French couple who haven’t been home in over a year. They regale us with tales from visiting Mongolia, Thailand, New Zealand and countless other countries on a journey they’ve enjoyed while on an extended break from their business consultancy jobs back home. A couple from Canberra stay a night as they complete their last leg of the Overland Track and late in the trip we met Andrew and Mark from Hobart with their young sons. They’re regulars in the Tasmanian National Parks and they share a couple of highlights with us about Growling Swallet, a river that disappears into a cave before surfacing on the other side of a mountain 30km away and a Huon pine forest named for famous Tasmanian conservationist Olegas Truchanas and only reached by kayak from Lake Pedder.

The one person we encounter who really made the trip something special for us was the German girl Laura. Her incredible 15-month journey was an inspiration to everyone she met and we were privileged to have gotten to know her.

As for the walking, the valley was every bit as spectacular as we’d heard. On our second day we climbed to the peak of the Acropolis, a 5 hour return walk north of the hut. The walk takes us through more Middle Earth style rainforest thick with moss and featuring some beautiful winding rivulets before climbing a steep escarpment to the exposed southern ridge. On the climb we discover a spectacular glacial moraine overhang complete with waterfall showering onto the rocks below, I can’t resist filling the water bottle here.


From the ridge the climb rises to the eastern side of the Acropolis before traversing along the face and upwards to the summit. It’s a fantastic climb and despite heavy cloud cover we get an awesome view from the top. The boulder field at the summit is painted in bright orange and yellow lichen and nearby are great towers of rock sitting like totem poles along the eastern ridge.


The view to the north from the summit takes in the spectacular sheer cliffs of Mt Geryon and the northern peaks of the Du Cane Range. The valley below is forested with mountain eucalypt species and deciduous beech.


We spent most of the following day lounging around the hut as a steady rain fell outside. During a brief break in the weather we ventured up the trail to Cephissus Falls where I walked out to the middle of the river in search of a good vantage point for a photo. Naturally, as soon as I set up the tripod and camera in the freezing knee deep water the rain started to hose down again and I quickly fired off a few shots in a downpour.

The time spent back in the hut wasn’t wasted while we waited out the rain. It was a good opportunity to get to know our new friend Laura a little better and when we noticed the sky had cleared around 4.00 we invited her to join us for a dash up the Parthenon and into the Labyrinth. The Parthenon is a 1200 metre wall-shaped peak west of the hut forming one side of Pine Valley. Behind it lays a network of lakes and tarns named for the maze-like Labyrinth of Greek mythology.

The climb up the Labyrinth is nice enough, and the lakes area at the top of the plateau is quite pretty, but the best part of this day’s walk was the weather. A strong wind was blowing showers and hail across the mountains and the clouds were rushing overhead bringing the whole area to life in a wild squall. I think the highlands are at their most spectacular in weather like this but we were soon treated to a fantastic dumping of snow that whipped across the range and made for an awesome sight. We stopped briefly for a photo and a chocolate bar at Lake Cyane before making the 2.5km return walk to the hut, arriving a little after 7.00pm.

Walking out through the rainforest to catch the ferry the next day was as tricky as the walk in but once we were onto the clearer section of track we hit our stride and made it back to Narcissus Bay in two and a half hours.

The Pine Valley is a surprisingly spectacular walk - surprising because it stacks up well so soon after a walk in the Nepal Himalaya. Sure, the mountains in the Everest region are unmatched for their striking size and beauty, but the Pine Valley has its own spectacular collection of highlights despite the relative lack of elevation. I can’t wait to get back in there again and hopefully spend some time in our tent up in the further reaches of the Labyrinth. That would be an amazing winter walk.

For more pictures from Pine Valley follow this link to the Photo Gallery.