Dad and me have been keen on an overnight hike at Lamington for years, and finally had the opportunity to give it a shot this Easter. Minor dramas centered around not being able to find our tiny lightweight burner on the morning of the walk, followed by rushed visits to several shops looking for gas that would fit dad's burner, not finding any, and finally replacing our plan for cooked meals with alternative non-cookable foods instead, meant we didn't get to O'Reilly's until 11:30am. Since we were only planning to take 5 hours to complete the hike, we didn't expect this to be an issue.
The first hour and a half of the walk followed the Border Track. Some cruel person layered bitumen along the first km, which isn't a great way to start an overnight walk with a 10+ kg pack on (at some time it might have been wheelchair-friendly, but the rainforest has since fought back and roots have mangled a lot of the surface). This part felt much like an overcrowded highway, but it also represented the least interesting part of our hike scenery-wise, so I didn't mind sharing the path with many other tourists. Some nice fellow placed a few signs along the way to explain what all the trees you're looking at are called (I don't remember any).
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| Huge strangler fig |
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| Antarctic beech tree |
We breaked for lunch at the 5 km mark, where the Albert River circuit branches off from the main Border Track. Dad, who was carrying a much smaller pack than mine (yet somehow several kg heavier), was keen to get it off his back.
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| Dad arguing with the rainforest |
After taking the second Albert River turnoff (100 m past the first one), the path immediately became narrow and, after a short uphill section, was mostly downhill over the next hour on the way to Echo Point Lookout.
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| Small grove of Antarctic beech beside the track...a beautiful spot |
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| The vegetation changed once we reached the escarpment at the edge of Lamington NP |
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| On the way to Echo Point |
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| A mini-scramble to Echo Point Lookout |
Views from Echo Point were awesome, so we took another break here.
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| Looking east towards Binna Burra, Springbrook and the Gold Coast. |
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Looking west towards Mt Durigan (left) and Mt Wupawn (centre). Rat-a-Tat Hut campsite lies in
the direction of the dip between the peaks, beyond Mt Durigan. |
Just a couple of minutes walking from here was the Echo Point bush campsite, where we would be leaving the graded paths and going 'off-track' into the bush. We arrived here by 3pm and estimated an additional 2 hours of walking time to Rat-a-Tat site, which would put us there before dark.
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| Echo Point campsite. You can see the path leading to Rat-a-Tat campsite at the back of the clearing |
After a few hundred metres, we passed a "For your safety" sign, just in case someone goes wandering off on this track thinking it's a cruisy stroll through the bush.
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| Dad consults Take a Walk for instructions |
The track weaved uphill for about 45 minutes to the summit of Mount Worendo from where there were no views, but a grove of lovely Antarctic beech trees. The path wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. Although narrow and indistinct in places, it was pretty easy to stay on track, particularly with all the little pink ribbons people put up on trees. There were a few fallen trunks over the path, and at one point we had to remove our packs to crawl underneath one. The scenery in this section was really spectacular, particularly with the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the rainforest canopy.
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| Track between Echo Point and Mt Worendo |
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Pink ribbons told us we were on the right track (or at least a track), but I kept
confusing them with red berries from walking stick palms |
Everything was going smoothly until we passed the Mount Worendo summit. We followed a trail for about 10 minutes until it kind of disappeared, and we realised we were heading west instead of curving around south (possibly this was the track to the Lost World?). After backtracking to Mount Worendo again, we wandered around in circles attempting to find where the true path was, without any luck, for another half an hour. Although we were carrying a topographic map (HEMA Lamington NP 1:25,000), it didn't include the location of the walk to Rat-a-Tat hut campsite on it, so we had to keep cross-referencing with the crude map in our Take a Walk book. Not the best idea in hindsight.
We reluctantly conceded defeat and were planning to return to Echo Point campsite and abandon the hike to Rat-a-Tat when we suddenly came across the right path. It turned out we had taken a detour from the main path some way back, and were on the northern side of Mt Worendo instead of the southern side. The two tracks were only seperated by a few dozen metres, but it wasn't until we roughed our way directly through the summit that we realised this.
Enheartened by our discovery, we decided to push on ahead to Rat-a-Tat now anyway. However, on the southern side of the summit, we were no longer in sunlight and would have to walk fairly briskly (and avoid getting lost) to make it before dark. The track headed fairly steeply downhill, then up past one or two false peaks before reaching the summit of Mt Wupawn, where there is a flat spot with space enough to squeeze in a tent (but again no views). If worse came to worse, we might have had to return here to camp (although we would have no water).
From this point, it was all downhill (and fairly steep) but we were running out of light very quickly. We knew from our track notes that we would need to take a right turn eventually, so after reaching a relatively flat section, we mistakenly took a very obvious right turn down to what turned out to be a dry creekbed (and not the walking track!). At this point we began to worry that we wouldn't find the campsite after all, and we had just wasted another 10 minutes.
Consulting the Take a Walk book again, we took a closer look at the text guide. It said: "Ignore the track leading steeply uphill to Mount Durigan and veer right...". Since this dry creekbed right turn was more like a right angle, we had to trust that the authors had worded the text particularly accurately, and so continued on ahead. It was extremely dim and difficult to make out the path in the low light - time to break out our torches. Five or 10 minutes later, we came across another junction and this time it was more of a Y shape, so we 'veered right,' moving as fast as we could in the dark without tripping on anything or losing the path.
It was simultaneously thrilling and relieving to finally see the Rat-a-Tat sign nailed to the tree, signalling that we had reached the turnoff for the campsite. From here it was a few minutes walking downhill past the creek to the clearing (
a mudmap dad printed off the net came in handy at this point). There were no other hikers here.
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| Made it! |
After dropping the packs, the next challenge was to find running creek water in the dark. Fortunately it was only 50 metres or so further past the campsite, we just needed to follow the trickling water noises (and avoid falling in). We set up our little 2-man tent in the dark a few minutes later, and ate a few morsels of food (surprisingly, neither of us was really hungry). By chance we had put up the tent next to the mudbank on the edge of the campsite, where we were treated to a beautiful light display by the native glowworm population. A long and tiring day, but tomorrow would turn out to be longer still.
Day 2
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