Much of the track is boardwalked, but you’ll still end up thigh-deep in mud. There are eight basic stove-heated huts (not for cooking – bring your own stove) along the route, with composting toilets, but there’s no guarantee there’ll be space, so you should carry a good tent; a warm sleeping bag is essential even in the heated huts in summer.
From Christmas to the end of January the track is at its most crowded with up to fifty. Most people walk north to south, which is more downhill than up, but you can register at either end in the national park office, where you receive an obligatory briefing and have your gear checked to make sure it’s sufficient; if you haven’t already got some sort of park pass, you’ll have to purchase one. The office sells last-minute camping gear and supplies: fuel stoves, meths, water bottles, trowels, warm hats and gloves.
The Cradle Mountain–Lake St Clair National Park map and notes ($9) is an essential purchase, and the Overland Track Walkers Notebook ($8.95) is a handy reference. Once you end up at Derwent Bridge, exhausted and covered in mud, you can use the hot showers at the campsite, for which there’s a small charge.
The logistics of doing a one-way walk are smoothed by a couple of operators: Maxwell’s Coaches can do transfers to get you back to your car, while Tasmanian Wilderness Travel has special Overland Track fares which include transfers from Launceston to Cradle Mountain, and then back from Lake St Clair to Launceston or Hobart ($69; $75 if you start in Hobart). They can provide baggage transfer for an extra charge.
Guided tours are available, the best offered by Craclair Walking Holidays (Oct–April; eight days $1085, ten days $1380); you’ll still have to camp and carry a six-kilo pack, however; cheaper tours (where you have more to carry) are offered by Tas Expeditions (eight days $940). The easiest option is to stay at Cradle Huts (six days $1450 departing and returning Launceston), staying along the track at private lodges with hot showers, beds and delicious meals.
A personal account of Overland Track
As we walk through the cirques and glacial troughs, the formations around Waterfall Valley Hut remind me of school textbooks of dinosaurs and prehistoric man: the dramatic peak of Barn Bluff emerging from the moist clouds; Mount Ossa silhouetted against the sky, inviting us to scale its rocky flank. Summer offers no predictable weather patterns: hot sun, cold rain and biting winds, all within a few hours, are common. The night’s damp chill requires good sleeping bags, even in the huts with their warm coal stoves. Conversation here is lively; energized by fresh air and physical activity, people really talk.
Most of the day is spent dealing with what is immediately around us, driving rain on Pine Forest Moor, muddy slopes at Frog Flats, leeches everywhere, and a rumbling stomach. The large numbers of wallabies and snakes add to a sense that man has not managed to interfere too much with this particular place. Being able to drink clean water (the colour of tea) from a stream is a bonus most people appreciate. Frequent rain washes down the mountainsides and over buttongrass plains, filling the various rivers and spectacular waterfalls southwest of Kia Ora Hut.
The last stretch of the track is along the length of Lake St Clair. For a more remote final day, we take the track behind Mount Olympus. The scenery is less spectacular than at the Cradle Mountain end but impressive nonetheless, with Bryons Gap giving wonderful views of the Franklin Lower Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and of Frenchmans Cap. Without the guiding trail of boardwalk, a good eye for post-spotting is needed. This part is particularly leech-infested and even more like a set from The Land That Time Forgot. We take our time savouring the tranquil beauty of Lake Petrarch, disturbing a sleeping snake and watching it uncoil and escape. The forests of ghost gums sway with the coming of a storm, and a sleepless night is spent underneath a creaking bough as thunder rattles along the valley.
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