The view at the end made it all worth it - or at least the company did

Tolmie trip - part 2

We spent Saturday walking around Mt Samaria state park in the rain, snow and for a brief period at the end, sun. Given it was only a day walk, I, like many of us, did not really give much thought to my preparedness for such conditions. In the rush of packing my bag the previous morning, I must have given it some thought though because I managed to find one glove when I was getting ready for the walk. Thankfully, I did also manage to find my thermal top and rain coat, which is more than I can say for Michael who braved the cold in tracky dacks and a jumper.

The drive to Mt Samaria SP was a small adventure in itself, starting with the departure from James' house. The snow on the ground made for some slippery conditions, and so a fair bit of wheel spinning was involved in getting our cars up the drive way. James' 4WD was fine, however Alec's car required a little extra assistance, so us passengers had to get out and push. After getting the car on the road, we made our way to Mt Samaria, where along the way we dodged kangaroos, drove through rivers, and all the while, Alec appeared to take great pleasure driving over every pot hole he could find.

At the start of our major walk of the day, Michael found an information board describing some of the history of the area. He pointed out to me that the author of this information was a a member of my clan (i.e. a McCarthy). This news wasn't particularly exciting given there are many McCarthy's in Australia (an Irish surname). However, I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little curious as to who this mystery McCarthy was, which is why I walked over to the information board to have a look. In the top left corner of the board, I found the name: "M. J. McCarthy", or as he his better known to his family and friends: "Michael John McCarthy". How do I know this you ask? because its my Dad. It turns out that this mystery McCarthy historian was in fact my Dad. Mt Samaria has a railway and sawmilling history, and my Dad - well - he has what can only be described as a passionate interest in the history of railways and sawmilling in the whole area we were in (pretty much all of Eastern Victoria). He's written books about it (read more about it here). So it all made perfect sense. I, of course, was quite excited and made sure everyone read the board (or at least a paragraph or two). I explained to them that my Dad was, for a brief time at least, possibly the best selling author in Warburton! People seemed suitably impressed by this, so I allowed us then to move on.

The walk itself was great, though weather conditions and the level of difficulty of the track varied. We walked to a height of about 900 metres (but probably started no lower than 500 metres). The walk went pretty much without incident, with the exception of the occasional mystery fork in the track, where a little guess work was required. I would like to say that when we reached the summit of Mt Samaria, we were greeted with a fantastic view, but in reality, what we saw was something more like this:


(photo by James Wettenhall).

The white in the background is fog. Team Samaria, starting from the left-front and going around the circle consisted of: Lisa, Michael, Alec, Claire, Cathy, me (looking down because that was probably the best view available), and Aff. James was behind the camera of course.

We kept walking for a little while longer, saw a waterfall (well, we stood on a viewing platform for a waterfall that we couldn't really see, though some people decided to go, quite illegally, beyond the viewing platform to see if there was actually a waterfall at all. James took this photo:



After finishing the walk, we headed back to Team Tolmie HQ where we were delighted to see that despite most of the snow having melted along the road side, quite mysteriously, it still remained around James' house. Of course, the powdery snow of the morning had now turned to icey sludge, and so a continuation of my morning's frolicking in the snow was not really an option. At this late stage of the day, soaked right through and clearly again "f#$@cking freezing", I was happy to leave the snow outside, and find warmth inside. James responded to this need by cranking up the "Hush Master" again for electricity. Michael was on wood fire duty, while the rest of us gathered around the kerosene heaters .. it was a multi-fueled heat fest, and it wasn't long before James' temperature gauge ascended to double figures - we were toasty! After a shower, and a moment of sitting in front of the heater in quiet contentment, there was only one finishing touch required. Thirty seconds later, this was resolved when I opened my first beer of the night. Others were getting tucked into the wine that had been left chilling on the back porch in the snow. And so began the evenings festivities.

... the final instalment still to come