Our Hiking Blog

Our Hiking Blog friend, Matthias, has an interesting tale of a young German walker who came across him recently on a walk from Lake St Clair, Pine Valley, Never Never, Walls of Jerusalem, Lake Ball to Dixon’s Kingdom.

Matthias was alone at the camp near Dixon’s hut, but just as the weather set in and visibility reduced to 50m, in strolled a young German backpacker.

Experienced walkers can tell hair raising tales of young travellers poorly prepared for the unpredictable weather encountered in Tassie’s highlands, but Matthias says this young fellow was extremely poorly prepared, with only street clothes and cross runners, a plastic poncho and three plastic bags of supermarket food.

With no hiking boots, proper raincoat, gaiters, GPS, …

We love to read stories of adversary and tough times. Sometimes hiking conditions can test and challenge you like never before.

In this article we welcome Greg, who has been kind enough to share his recent Tasmanian bushwalking experience on a trip from the Walls of Jerusalem via the Never Never to the Oveland Track in Tasmania.

We have done this trip twice. Our article Lake Meston Hut to Kia Ora Hut via the Never Never has a small map of the area and documents our experiences. It might be an interesting background to Greg and his son’s story.

So, over to Greg who reflects on the trip, often referring back to the GPS waypoints we sent him a couple of months ago to help navigate through this area:

My 15 year old son and I aimed to replicate the walk you gave me on the GPS. It seemed the most logical thing to do regarding distances covered in one day etc. We even started out the same with a trip with Simon from Tasmania Tour Company to the beginning of Walls of Jerusalem! Simon asked me my walking intentions and when I said I was going across the Never Never to the Overland Track he kind of paused and then said, “Take it easy through there. There has been a lot of rain down that way.” I replied, “Yeah, no worries!”, sounding confident but not really sure of what his definition of ‘a lot of rain’ was! He did remind us though that we would see ‘no one’ through there in winter.

The first day was spent walking to Dixons Kingdom Hut and we had an evening of wind, heavy rain and then a decent blanket of snow.

Thought I would put up a few pictures to show some of the delightful scenery we came across on our recent walk. More words and pictures to come!!

Inside the Hut , probably about 6pm

Lots of ice, everywhere…..

A lot of the walking on the last day or two was pretty difficult, icy, slippery and slow
In the “Never Never” early in the morning

The Never Never to a snow capped mountain on the Overland Track

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