Deep in the Woods: Eldon Range Traverse

“Where are you going?”

“The Eldon Range.”

“Oooh. Where’s that?”

“Kind of west of Lake St Claire.”

(Blank look)

“North of the Lyell Highway?”

(Unconvinced half-nod)

“Basically right in the middle of nowhere.”

The Eldon Range and the vast sprawl of rocky, scrubby, trackless wilderness that surrounds it, is a mecca for the slightly deranged: from the salted-meat chomping, tweed-wearing pioneers of old to the obsessive peak baggers and scrub warriors of today.

Between the three of us, I think we just managed to scrape together the requisite amount of madness and masochistic tendency to qualify.

Organising the trip was Jared, the club's former Vice-President, hoping ten days of the nastiest walking Tasmania has to offer would be enough to compensate for his long exile in Melbourne. He somehow convinced me, the current Vice-President, to come along for the ride. The third nutter involved in the scheme was Mark, who is not affiliated with the club, but as a retired Army adventure training instructor and freelance tough guy, he was a handy person to have around. And in front. Ripping through the scrub with his bare, bloodied arms.  

   

The adventure began before we had even Velcroed of gaiters on. Getting to the start of the route involved a 5am wake-up, a dubious breakfast at New Norfolk, a specially charted minibus from Lake St Claire to Lake Burbury and a bouncy ride in an aged tinnie helmed by an equally aged fisherman who can be described, fairly uncontroversially, as a “character”. Our ferryman dropped us and our obscenely heavy packs on the far side of Lake Burbury - two days walk from the road – and motored off into the distance. 

Second thoughts could not be easily accommodated.

We set off, heavily-laden but sprightly, buoyed by Jared’s insistence that the first day would be “a cruisey three hours.” Eight and a half hours of poor navigation later, we waded out of the Eldon River into a beautiful campsite in the rainforest. Dinner was eaten out on the shingles.

Pictured: Shingles. Not Pictured: Dinner

 The destination for day two was Eldon Peak: 3 km east of us and nearly 1.2 km above us. The morning’s other daunting statistics included: the dry weight of my pack (24kg), the number of litres of water I needed to carry (3) and the number of scrub free routes to the summit (0). Upwards was the main motif of the day, at first through open rainforest, then thicker stuff, then proper, bona-fide scrub (Mark offered to lead – we graciously allowed him to) and finally boulders to the summit. I decided to complement the views with a 50ml bottle of Bacardi I bought specially for the occasion. It was good. We pitched tents just below the summit at what must be one of the best campsites in Tasmania.

 

Good.

The route ahead was manky. The main ridge connecting Eldon Peak to Eldon Bluff could be accurately described as a spine, assuming of course, that the owner of said spine had a hunchback and  a severe case of disc herniation. It did not look like fun. 

We got up early on day three, packed up and pushed on. The dolerite mayhem began.  Car-sized boulders jutted phallically in all directions, leaving big leg-breaking, person-swallowing, skin-scraping holes between them. A fairly uniform pattern emerged: When the boulders got too hectic we would drop down low into the scrub, and after half an hour or so of squeezing packs under dwarf myrtle and scorparia realise that actually, no, anything is better than scrub. So we would climb back up to the ridge-top, see the gaping holes and towering pillars and begin the cycle again. After six hours of inching our way forward over the spine’s seemingly infinite number of “vertebrae” we reached a saddle, and collapsed for lunch. Afterwards the fun continued. More boulders! More scrub! More agonising little hills!

While I hate to use it, I think the word "gnarly" can be justified in this context.

We reached a high plateau and pitched tents. Jared’s fanatical peak-bagging nature overcame his exhaustion and he decided to do Eldon Bluff that evening. Weirdly, I agreed to go with him. For some reason I wasn't tired anymore; perhaps it was delight of finally taking my pack off, perhaps the “Growling Dog” energy bar I had for lunch was laced with something, or perhaps (more likely) the unending repetition of boulder after boulder had wreaked so much psychological havoc that I had come to enjoy it. We got up there in a bit over an hour, and what was left of my mind was blown by the views. Jared’s sedentary Melbournian lifestyle made itself apparent on the return, but I was still in state of boulder induced mania and bounced my way back to the tent, climbing in and crashing almost 13 hours after beginning the walk.

On day four we awoke to rain, hail, cloud and tent deforming wind. I don’t think the call to have a tent day was actually formally made, we just kind of lay there and waited. I stunned myself with my daytime napping ability.

Day five was marginally better: the wind wasn’t as bad, but it was still wet, and freezing. We packed up soaked gear with numb fingers and slipped on down to the saddle where the ascent of Eldon Bluff starts. It is generally advised to climb over the Bluff and drop down the other side, but we decided to sidle the bluff instead. We were sidling like pros that trip. Wet, steep, slippery scrub ensued as we stuck close to the cliffs that are potentially the highest in Tasmania.

Textbook sidling.

A couple of hours later we came to a grassy plateau that led to a ridge out to Dome Hill, a fairly unassuming, no-nonsense little lump that Mark and Jared were set upon climbing. Getting out there was the easiest walking of the whole trip, and while it wasn't a particularly exhilarating climb, it was quite something to think that there was not a single road, walking track, man-made object or human being for 20 km in any direction. The views back to Eldon Bluff were also quite something. Eldon Bluff is big.

Pictured: Big

We bashed down through a grove of pandani whose serrated fronds were just looking for an eyeball to slice, and reached Lake Ewart. For some reason, Parks have installed a log book at Lake Ewart (evidently, I lied a bit about the man-made object part before) which, since 2010, has had a grand total of three entries. To reach our campsite there was a climb, and more scrub. It was bad. I was tired. Mark described the mood rather succinctly: “This is quite shitty.” However at the top after nine and a half hours, things turned around:

Warmth, food, drying gear and a minature bottle of Jagermeister.

   

On day six, Mark and Jared - like good little peakbaggers - rose early and climbed the nearby Castle Mountain. I stayed in bed. I did not regret it. They returned and told me what a great climb I’d missed out on (I strongly suspect it was shit). As we packed up camp Jared discovered that some unknown creature had chewed halfway through the handle of his knife, which had not been used to prepare food. That’s the thing about the Eldon’s: even the animals are nutjobs. 

The weather was nice but the scrub was shit. Just shit. We encountered many different types of scrub and it was all shit in subtly different ways. I found that vague, manly sounding grunts helped when it got really bad. Sometimes it would feel like I was getting the hang of it and almost even having fun, and then my foot would get caught on something and my pack would swing forwards and I would end up with my arse in the air and a twig up my nostril. If scrub bashing is character building I should be wonderful person by now. We made it across a series of ridges and knolls to High Dome and camped on a saddle, climbing to the summit just before dark. That night the weather happened.

Good morning!

Day seven greeted us with serious cold and virtually every possible form of precipitation. We abandoned our plans to reach Lake St Claire and decided to scamper down to the Lyell Highway. Tragically, Mark had to give up on his dream of summiting another of his obscure little lumps: the famously underwhelming and difficult to reach Tramontane. We went south, scrubbing it up past Five Duck Tarn, and down into a valley. The going got steep, the forest got thick and things began to look a bit nasty. Then someone said: “Hey, this has been cut!” It was true. There was a branch, a whole bush, sheared off cleanly by a very un-wildernessy force, one most probably associated with a power tool. Someone had cut a track. There was no tape marking it, no real signs of use and no foot pad leading into it. Just a reasonably wide track cut in the middle of nowhere. Was this an attempt to recreate the historical Ewart track? Someone’s secret route into the Eldons? A maniac with a brush cutter and a deep hatred of native vegetation? Despite its illegality and dubious wilderness ethics, we were grateful.

Scrub-a-dub-dub.

We reached the bottom of the valley and the track stopped, reappeared for a short time, then ended completely.  We spend the rest of the afternoon bashing upwards towards Junction Hill. The wind was strong and it was too cold to stop for a break. The only sheltered campsite was underneath Rocky Hill and we had no idea how long it would take to get there. Remembering Jared’s time prediction on the first day, his suggestion of “maybe an hour” wasn't particularly reassuring. I caught a peek of the ridge between the two hills and I really felt like giving up there and then. It was already 4 PM and from the look of the scrub I could imagine it taking well over 5 hours. The others were keen to have a go and despite some mutinous thoughts I begrudgingly followed.

Cold and grim.

The chainsaw wielding saviour was back! Sometimes the destruction of untouched wilderness can be a wonderful thing. We followed Brushcutter Bob’s (Stan the Chainsaw Man’s?) path of carnage across the ridge, climbed another small hill and scrub-bashed down to a lovely, pine covered shelf to camp.  

Day eight probably had the worst weather of all, with more rain and tent flattening gusts of wind.  I was quite keen to get to the highway but Mark was not in a good way. The previous day had knocked him around and he was on the edge of hypothermia. Another tent day was the only responsible choice.   

Not bad.

The weather finally came right on day nine and we skedaddled out of camp and down a long bumpy ridge. It was mostly button grass and scrub, but as always, our power tool loving hero was there when we needed him most. Mark called his wife on the satellite phone and organised a rendezvous on the road. As we climbed over the last little knoll on the ridge we could see the car. The end - a shifting, abstract concept that had alluded us for the last few days – looked like it was finally here. We stumbled down the last slope, expecting to wade across the ankle deep Collingwood River and stride triumphantly out onto the sweet tarmac of the Lyell Highway.

We’d forgotten about all the rain. The river was almost flooded. This was problematic for a number of reasons: a) the bridge was a full days walk away, b) I was the only one could swim with any degree of proficiency and b) the Hungry Wombat Café in Derwent Bridge close their kitchen at 4PM. It was a race against time. I jumped in and swam across, leaving my pack on the wilderness side of the river. I headed towards the road, found Mark’s wife and the car, which (thanks to Mark's foresight) contained a rope and a life jacket. I took the rope back to the river, tied it to a tree and threw it across. It was too short. I adjusted the knot and tried again. Still too short. I swam back across with the rope and almost went into convulsions from the cold. It was just long enough to hook my pack to, but not quite long enough for people. I pendulmed back across with my pack. I tried a bit further downstream but I couldn’t throw the rope across. I tied my drink bottle to the end for weight. The drink bottle broke. I tied a stone to the end. The stone slipped out. I found a better stone. About eight throws later Jared managed to catch the rope with a long stick. We got Jared and his pack across. Mark, who can’t swim at all, refused to cross without the lifejacket. I couldn’t throw it across. Swim number four. Weird little jaw muscles I didn’t know I had went into cold induced spasms. Mark, shitting himself, life jacket clad, got hauled across with his pack. Swim number five. We were bedraggled and panting, but all across.

"Yeah, it's not too cold."

"Gwuff!"

"F-f-f-faark."

We picked up our water filled packs and bashed through our last bit of scrub towards the waiting car. I almost felt nostalgic.  

Thank God they kept the fryers working until 4:05 PM. Next time you're in Derwent Bridge, go to the Hungry Wombat Cafe. Buy a burger! Buy a souvenir t-shirt! Support this fine institution!