The Overland Track - Preparation

Barn Bluff from the Overland Track, early day 3

In December 2011, Emily and I visited Tasmania to experience Australia's premier multi-day bushwalk: the Overland Track. Arguably our country's most famous walk, the Overland Track features in various "Top 10" lists of the greatest hikes in the world. Having done the trek (and some others from these lists) I can confirm that this is absolutely justified! Beginning at Cradle Mountain and finishing at Lake St Clair, the 74 km walk traverses a seemingly ever-changing montage of spectacular landscapes. Although many people choose to do the walk in 6 days we completed it over 8, factoring in a rest day and giving us sufficient time to include some great side-trips.

Significant planning is required for any multi-day hike, and fortunately there is an immense amount of information available online for helping plan a hike on the Overland Track. We found the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service website a great resource to help with planning, in addition to reading trip reports on various blogs. Given that all this information is already readily available, I will just touch briefly here on what steps we took in preparation for the Overland Track - our gear list, how we organised transport and food, and ultimately what worked for us (and what didn't).

Logistics

The Overland Track is a through-walk, but there are coaches that will take you to the start and pick you up from the end. Launceston is the logical starting point, being Tassie's second biggest city and just a couple of hours' drive to Cradle Mountain. From Lake St Clair, coaches can ferry you onward to Hobart. We took the Tassielink Transit coaches, and booked ahead to ensure a seat (although I believe some people just rock up at Lake St Clair and book it when it arrives). The coach from Launceston will drop you off at the entrance to the national park, but you must take another short shuttle bus ride to Ronnie's Creek, where the Overland Track starts.

During peak season (October to May) the track can only be walked from north to south, and you must pay a fee (as of August 2014 the fee is $200 pp, about $40 more than we paid in 2011). Note that this is separate to the national parks pass fee, required for entry to Tassie's national parks. During the peak time it can get very busy on the track, and as places are limited to 60 people starting per day, you may need to book several months in advance to guarantee a spot.

Due to the coach timetable, we didn't begin hiking on day 1 until 1pm. Some opt to stay at Cradle Mountain overnight to get an early start, but we found it wasn't necessary in Summer as it doesn't get dark until nearly 9pm! Winter is a different story, however, with darkness encroaching around 5pm and hanging around until 8am the next morning, if the weather is clear.

We carried John Chapman's Overland Track as a guidebook, and found it to be very easy to navigate with. It was also very handy for planning our days in advance, and helping us to decide which side trips we would squeeze in.

Huts are located at each of the campsites, but it is necessary to carry a tent also, for flexibility in case of sudden, severe weather or injury. There is limited sleeping space in some of the huts, and because we tend to walk slow and were usually the last group to arrive each day, sometimes we had no option but to tent it anyway. All of the huts have bunks (no mattresses), composting toilets and rainwater tanks to fill up water for the next day. Wooden tent platforms are also present at each campsite.

Gear

Everything we lived off for 8 days, except the food! Only gear to the right of the walking poles was packed in our bags

This was the first multi-day hike for either of us, so we spent a lot of time reading and reviewing blogs before deciding what gear to buy and take along. My final packweight (including food and water) on day 1 was just under 19 kg, while Emily was carrying about 12.5 kg. The weight breakdown (for me/her):

- Tent, sleeping bags/mats, backpacks: 8.65 kg / 3.9 kg
- Water and food: 5.3 kg / 5.5 kg
- Additional clothing: 2.2 kg / 2.2 kg
- Everything else: 2.75 kg / 0.9 kg

Our gear list looked something like this:

- Tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats
- Backpacks, small day pack, walking poles
- 2 x 1 L water bottles (each)
- First aid kit, first aid book (Travelling Well by Dr Deb), compass
- Headtorches and spare batteries
- Toiletries (inc. sunscreen, rid, zyrtec, panadol and water purifying tablets)
- Knife, rope, pegs
- Hand towel, shammy towel
- Gas burner, gas, matches
- Billy, oven mit, scourer
- Hankies, paper towel, garbage bags (for "water-proofing" our gear)
- Sporks, bowls, thermos mug
- Charged camera w/spare battery and memory cards
- Small notepad, pens, playing cards
- mp3 players, headphones
- Glasses, moneybelt (good for holding onto credit card/licence/cash during the walk)
- The Overland guidebook (John Chapman)
- Hand trowel, toilet paper, pillow case (with clothes stuffed in for makeshift pillow)
- Twistie ties, zip-lock bags (very handy)

We carried a small, 2-man tent and took a 65+10 L and a 50 L backpack between us. However, we still found that we had to attach various bits and pieces on the outside of our packs (see below!). In retrospect, the sleeping bags we took (2 kg each) were simply too heavy and bulky. Although the small daypack came in handy for side-trips, it had to be stuffed inside my larger pack and took up quite a bit of space and added another half kg of weight.

Zip-lock bags were extremely handy, as you can stuff food/rubbish/books/cameras/little things that don't go anywhere else into them, and they compartmentalise the small stuff very well.

Tent, sleeping bag/mats, hankie, food... all on the outside of my pack. Those crackers
flapped around while I walked on the first few days until we ate them.

Clothing

Because we did the walk in the middle of Summer, we didn't bother with all the hard-core winter snow-type gear, but still needed warm clothing for the nights as it got quite cold. Clothes that I took included:

- Underwear (x2)
- Thermals (2 x top, 1 x bottom)
- Shorts (x2)
- Collared shirts (x2)
- Rain jacket and pants
- Light jumper
- Beanie, gloves
- Hiking boots, thongs
- Sock liners (x2), hiking socks (x2)
- Sleeping socks
- Hat
- Gaiters (a must)
- Poncho

Thongs were great for wearing at the campsite after a long day in the boots, and indispensable at Lake St Clair at the end of the walk, by which time we had terrible blisters and would have preferred walking barefoot to spending another minute inside of a shoe! Although I took a spare set of clothing (shirt, shorts, underwear) my first set never got wet and I didn't end up taking them out of the pack. A second thermal top was probably overkill too.

Overall we had very good weather, and only had to break out the ponchos on one day when it rained heavily, but they seemed to do a good job. I found I rotated my socks and sock liners from day to day, and tried to give the liners a quick wash and have them dry on my pack in the sun during the day as we walked. I found walking in a shirt, shorts and a hat was quite good, but Emily wore her thermals underneath every day (and sometimes a jumper too).

Food

Most of our food for 8 days on the Overland Track.

With 8 days of walking (and 7 nights) planned, we included an extra of each meal in case injury/extreme weather/general tiredness/some other catastrophe caused us to be a day late (in fact, we did have a minor catastrophe and were glad we brought extra). We used zip-lock bags to partition each days' breakfast and snacks to make things easier and stop ourselves from eating all the food in the first few days.

Breakfasts
I ate porridge with powdered milk each morning, while Emily did with 2 minute noodles and tea. I found the porridge very filling, enough to keep me going for several hours before I would start to get hungry again.

Lunches
Every day we had rice crackers (x4) with salami and cheese for lunch, mostly because this was the lightest option we could think of! At first we planned to cut the salami and cheese at lunch time, but found it to be rather cumbersome on the first day at Marion's Point, so from day 2 onwards just chopped it all up and wrapped prior to leaving the huts in the mornings. Although super light, the crackers took up a significant amount of space and had to be pegged to the outside of my pack. This seemed reasonable until one night when possums attacked my bag and ate the remaining few days' lunch! We also took a small amount of nutella, but from memory didn't eat any until afterwards.

Dinners
We considered purchasing a food dehydrator and preparing a series of meals before we left home, but it worked out cheaper (and much easier) to just buy 8 x pre-dehydrated meals that you can get at camping stores (about $10 each at the time). Most of the meals were actually very tasty. The great thing is that you simply add hot water to the pack and eat right out of it, so we didn't have to think or do much when tired at the end of the day.

Snacks
My "scroggin" mix was simply a combination of almonds and peanut m&ms, about half a kg for the 8 days of walking. Emily preferred chopped up lollies (snakes) and muesli bars, but found it wasn't quite enough and nicked some of my m&ms on some of the days. We also took 6 hard-boiled eggs - they kept fine for the first 3 days, and probably would have lasted longer if we hadn't eaten them all.

My 'scroggin' mix for 8 days on the Overland Track

Itinerary

We spent a lot of time considering our walking itinerary, and pretty much stuck to it when we did the hike (it basically followed the suggestion outlined in John Chapman's book, with a rest day at Pelion Hut). There are so many options for side trips that you could easily spend 10 days (or more!) out there doing them all, we only managed to fit in a few.

Day 1 - Cradle Valley to Waterfall Valley (inc. most of Cradle Mountain side trip), 7 hours
Day 2 - Waterfall Valley to Lake Windermere (inc. Lake Will side trip), 4.5 hours
Day 3 - Lake Windermere to Pelion Hut, 7 hours
Day 4 - Rest Day at Pelion Hut (inc. Mount Oakleigh side trip), 4.5 hours
Day 5 - Pelion Hut to Kia Ora Hut (inc. most of Mount Ossa side trip), 7 hours
Day 6 - Kia Ora Hut to Windy Ridge Hut (inc. Hartnett Falls), 5.5 hours
Day 7 - Windy Ridge Hut to Echo Point, 7 hours
Day 8 - Echo Point to Cynthia Bay, 3.5 hours

Overall, the itinerary gave us an even spread of walking in each day. We took somewhat longer to walk each day than the standard times given in Chapman's book, but we wanted to take it easy and soak it all in, take lots of photos etc. Most of the side trips we did were excellent, particularly Mount Oakleigh and Mount Ossa. Lake Will was probably the least interesting, Barn Bluff might be a better option for Day 2.

Easily the best campsite of the entire Overland Track was at Echo Point, nestled among the rainforest along the shore of Lake St Clair. Why most groups take the ferry across the lake and don't walk this section is beyond me.

Emily geared up and ready to go! (Day 1, Ronnie Creek)

A note about MUD

Everywhere in Tasmania is muddy, and the Overland Track is no exception. Although large portions of the track are now boardwalked to avoid particularly muddy areas, there is simply no way to completely avoid it. Experienced Tassie bushwalkers don't consider the Overland Track to be at all muddy. However, if you're coming from interstate (like us) you may be a bit overwhelmed. We found sections of day 2 (where the old boardwalk had sunk into the mud) and day 3 (where no boardwalks were present) to be particularly muddy. We would often tenderly poke and prod our hiking poles around to find safe stepping paths through the mud, while others stormed on past us unperturbed. Wearing gaiters helped to keep the ankle- to knee-deep mud off our clothes and legs.

Although definitely muddy compared to anything in south east Queensland, eventually we got used to the mud... it kinds of adds to the adventure.

It's really not that bad... (day 3)