Green Gully Track

Nice easy start to the day. No hills scheduled, thank God. Just a lazy 13.5kms following the Green Gully Creek upstream the whole way to the next hut. Some of it will be on tracks, some we will have to make up ourselves.

It doesn't take long for us to reach our first creek crossing though. Feet are wet. Hello squelching, my old friend.

John manages to scramble across the first one or two crossings and keeps his feet dry. There are 35 more crossing to come through...

We've walked through an ants nest. Hope that doesn't come back to bite us.

Courtney spots a wallaby having breakfast, snacking on some tree leaves. It freezes while we check it out. OoouuuUuCCHH! John has been bitten by an ant. The wallaby doesn't get spooked, surprisingly.

Some very picturesque scenes walking by the creek. The trail is self-explanatory for the morning. A management trail but all grass. Nice underfoot. We see a recently deceased dog. We later learn it was a dingo. As we're hovering over it checking it out up close, another ant bites John and sends Courtney jumping like the dog bit her.

We stop for a snack near the creek in some shade and discuss life plans. It's hard to think much past doing stuff like this at the moment.

Packs back on and we soon make it to the end of the marked trail. A sign says to follow our own path now, just follow the creek up stream.

We have to cross the creek a number of times to get the best path. Usually we can see where the best path is. Sometimes we make it up.

To our left, scrambling up the rocks is a lyrebird.

After a couple of slow kilometres we make it to the Green Gully Canyon. Very similar to last night's Brumby Pass with the sleep cliffs on either side, but this time there is a watering hole in the middle. We strip off and jump in. It's cold but welcome in the hot sun!

Lunch in the sun as we dry off and just soak up this magical spot. Very special. A rock wallaby bounces up and stops to say hello before bounding away. The only issue now is putting on the wet socks and boots again and immediately having to wade across the water hole to keep going. We are lucky though, the water is only thigh-high today.

The going after that is very sketchy for a kilometre. Lots of scratching our heads about which side of the creek to be on, and lots of slippery rocks to get there. Courtney falls in at one point. Half her bag gets wet and things weren't as rosy as they were an hour ago.

We push on and it's very raw and tough at times. A proper choose-your-own-adventure that John is thriving on.

We know that at some point a management trail will bring us home for the last 4km. A bitter-sweet thing because we have loved the wild tracks, but to be within striking distance of the cottage is also very welcome.

The management trail is very nice, just like this morning. We follow the creek as the sun is beginning to get low in the sky. It sets a beautiful scene. The trees have also changed and the feel of the place is completely different as the creek and surrounding flood plain opens up a little bit. But we are all starting to fatigue at this point. We stop for snacks and some pep-talks and we push on for home through a few more creek crossings.

Courtney hits her stride at this point. The desire to take the boots off is a powerful motivator.

The cottage is very small but we don't mind. The billies are on and we get stuck into our charcuterie board before the mega chicken tika masala. Dessert is on the way as is gets dark and the possums move in. 3 families fighting it out for our crumbs. We retreat inside to finish boiling water for tomorrow.

Despite the steep hill we walked at the end of the day, John and Jeff decide to head back to the creek to see what's happening. They find plenty of bright green frogs like John found the night before, plus what they think was a Spotted Quoll roaming around on the other side of the creek.

Back up the hill and off to bed for an early night given the plans for an early start to beat the heat.