Day 12 - (the math &) the aftermath...

I ended up talking with Mark & Heather till 2:30am and beaky was at 7am with Mark cooking us bacon & eggs, Heather making us a cut lunch, and Hannah-Charis driving us to the plane at 8:15am..

Wow, what a day..I splurged, and we had the last night on the trail in a "budget cabin" at the Stanley Caravan Park. Hot showers, our own kitchen, places to charge our phones as we slept, beds, sheets, towels.

We had (the night before) checked out some of our options for the next day, &  the Caravan Park was happy to mind one or both of our packs till the arvo.

We weren't sure how we'd do the last day... It depended a bit on our feet.

Grego knew he wanted to get to the top of The Nut (one of the iconic landmarks of Tazzy, an outstanding volcanic plug in Stanley)

I knew I wanted to attempt to get to the Northern point of North Point (NP) - the tip of the peninsula above the town of Stanley.

I woke at 4am and heard Greg rustling with stuff in the kitchen. He thought he might try to climb The Nut then, and after that maybe come with me to NP about 6-ish...

I was thinking of leaving now (that I was awake) for NP. So we decided to have breaky, pack up, leave most of our gear with the Caravan Park Reception, try to do NP together, then if there was time in the arvo before Hannah picked us up Greg could "do" his nut (so to speak).

It took a while to pack 'n' clean. I think we left our packs in the designated spot at 6:30 or 7, then headed off on the approx 9km trip (18km return) to NP.

The first half of our trip was on public roads, then the last half was across a farmer's private farm.

Our feet were very sore. I had developed another blister (on my heel) the day before, Greg's gammy foot was very sore (He thinks he's got a break in it, and is hoping to get some X-rays tomorrow).

The Eastern side of the peninsula had the cliffs (of insanity(?)) that way, the Western side might work, but would be best to be low tide to ensure we could get around it. The tides were the opposite of what we wanted. High tide was ~8:30am. I had decided to approach the farmer & simply explain what I was doing, and that I had come from South Cape, & ask if we could walk on the tracks on his farm to North Point, if he said "Yes", it might save us 5 km, if he said "No", then to the extent we had to, we'd have to go around the coast; but who knows, even then, he might even let me/us cut straight accross to the coast from there in his property, rather than retreating all our steps, back a km or so to where the public road came close to the coast.

I led us on a wrong turn so it took 15min longer, to get there, but when we got to the front gate of the farm, a sign said "No entry".

I decided to push on and try the "ask anyway" strategy.

When we finally found the beef-farmer (John Bruce and his wife Angela) after spooking their newly weaned calves a bit, he said this was the worst day in the year for it, the calves just weaned the day or two before were in that lane-way, but I could walk through in about 2 weeks; or go back along the road - to the coast and go that way, but, he warned us, it was very hard that way, especially if it was high tide..

When Greg arrived & I introduced him as my partner for this leg of the journey, John said "Oh if you go back through this particular  track on the West, those calves haven't been weaned yet, so you could go down the fence beside them through to the coast. I thanked him for this shortcut though his land, and we took off.


We had no idea how lovely it would be.























But also,
if it wasn't through Bramble bush or scrubby stuff,














 it was over loose rounded irregular rocks as big as one or two fists...










or on sea-weed






beautiful soft seaweed, that depressed 5-15cm every step... making it quite hard to walk through after a while...

on already swollen, (blistered- well, mine) very sore feet. Greg said that if he had known it was going to be this hard, he wouldn't have come. I was glad I didn't know it was going to be THIS hard, because maybe I mightn't have come either...

At ~10:30am after a few mistaken identities, we arrived at North Point, took some photos, sent some texts, and headed back to try to make "The Nut". On walking up the bank I had 3 bars of phone coverage, so I rang Trevor from the Anna-baptist Community who had offered to help by picking us up, to make my daughter's trip that arvo easier. If we could get a lift to the Nut that would make it quicker. I decided to shout Greg up the chairlift to "The Nut", then I'd ring Trevor, he'd probably arrive by the time Grego had finished. All happened as hoped for, when I rang John & Angela to thank them & let them know we'd made it, they congratulated us, AND let us walk back on the inside of their perimeter fence when we weren't disturbing any cattle in a paddock. This was heaps easier. Then a Farm Manager (Ray) picked us up from the bitumen road (saving us about 6km?) and took us to "The Nut", the chairlift was $16 return (instead of someone's hear-say that it might be $40 one way).

Trevor's son Andrew, and his friend Ruben, picked us up (then our bags), and took us to Trevor's place where we had some lovely home baked bread n jam, & a cuppa with his family.

Trevor then dropped us off in Burnie with a couple of hours to rest while we waited for Hannah-Charis.

We finally got to Mark & Heather's place in "Perth" (Tasmania) an hour late, but enjoyed a sea-food dinner with them, and their son Ruben, & daughter Bonnie. Grego was a real hit, and Heather sorted a Magnesium salts foot soak for him.

Mark & I took off where we'd left off about 25 yrs ago, sharing a house in Cooma, learning to try to follow Jesus in ordinary Australia. Mark passed on a little something verbally, that for some reason I really appreciated, having shared life with a very special woman for almost 30 yrs now: Then he found it on his phone & texted it to me



They asked me to please pass on the greetings & love to anyone they know on the North Island (Mainland Australia).

We're just now as I write, on the bus less than an hour from Orange...and putting our feet up. Yipee.

Thanks to all those who helped, encouraged, waved, shared life, along the Way.

Paul (the) Walker.