19 April: Franklin river to Rame Head

32km

It rained overnight so I’m carrying a wet tent again. 

The morning was a bit overcast and misty and the trail a lot more undulating than I had expected. 

More tingle trees, and lots of beautiful wild flowers. 

I thought this one looked like a wombat and the other one is called “the pleated princess”. 

I stopped at the Tree Top Walk - Maria, who I met at Boarding House, about 300km north from here, had told me that there was a coffee van with yummy cakes. Oh, the disappointment when I walked up to it and it was closed - 300km of anticipation... I treated myself to an ice cream from the gift shop instead (10:30am isn’t too early for ice cream, is it?). 

I walked past the Giants campsite (named after the size of the trees around there) and had lunch on top of a hill with views of what I would later learn the track for the next couple of days. It was drizzling on and off, but barely enough to put my rain jacket on. 

Today was the first time since I started walking 4 weeks ago that I thought about running. So interesting, as I have defined myself so much as  “being a runner” for the last 10 years or so and running usually plays such a huge role in my life. And I only realised today that I hadn’t even thought about running for weeks. I don’t think I have ever NOT run for 4 weeks in.. I don’t know... at least 30 years. It will be interesting to see how running will go after this- Birger will be bringing my running shoes. I’m certainly fit, but probably not “running fit”. 

As the afternoon went on, the rain started to become heavier, I put on my rain jacket, and kept walking. It got heavier. As I got towards Conspicuous Cliffs, the rain was coming straight from ahead into my face. It was one of those moments when the only option is to hold on to hat and hood, put your head down and keep walking (sometimes I feel like Dory in Finding Nemo who goes “keep on swimming, keep on swimming...”). 

I arrived at Rame Head campsite pretty drenched - there were 2 guys there, Mark and Matt (?) from Adelaide who turned out to be great company. Mark was scoring first points with me when he started eating Nutella with a (silver!) spoon out of the jar (he had found the spoon on the trail) and they were just really interesting, insightful and entertaining. Both of them between jobs, planning to take their time and stop at every hut, one of them had previously worked in a mine in Kalgoorlie, the other one planted trees for a conservation project after digging for dinosaur bones in the Northern Territory. They were also planning Larapinta trail and we had lots of laughs about hiking incidents and going to the loo in the bush.