12th August - day 3

Waalegh to Mt Dale Campsite

Today was an easier day and we needed to recover a little after walking 30 km with heavy packs. Double hutting today was fairly straight forward. Our first wet day was also quite a cold day. By this stage Rone and I were walking apart and meeting up every half hour or so. After Beraking hut where I had morning tea with Rone I met two track volunteers. Great scenery today with many granite slabs along the way. After crossing an ugly Pine Harvesting area we got into the Mount Dale Conservation Park with splendid views of granite along the way.

In the approach to Mt Dale Road the weather became very wet with heavy rainfall and strong winds. Because of this, we didn't bother walking another 500m to climb Mt Dale. On Omeo Road we saw our first emu. At the campsite, a mirror was provided so I could have a shave. Perhaps it was the weather but I was beginning to realise what a huge challenge it would be to complete this walk but because I was doing it for the Leukaemia Foundation sponsored through my School, life would be very embarrassing if I didn't at least make it to Pemberton.

Looking through the red book we could see one person doing the end to end about two days in front and another fellow called Kevin about a week in front of us. Two weeks in front of us were a couple of Grandmothers "Great Grannies", and before them were "The Olymphatics", "Psycho Sisters" both doing E2E for charity and in front of them "Mountain Tim" and "The Mad Axeman" The mad axeman is Jim Freeman, a bloke who has walked the E2E about 9 or 10 times.

Rone and I resolved to get up early for a triple hut challenge of 35 km to Monadnocks on day 4. The Jarrah forests around us even though they were all regrowth forests were still very pretty and as far as I could tell with a significant amount of ecological value attached.

Day4 Mt Dale to Monadnocks Campsite