Text and photosTerry Cornall

Moroka River

I perpetrated this blog, about a trip in January 2022 when I completed a 13-day hike with Gordon Bedford. We hiked the McMillans Track in Victoria, Australia. It was a bit of a mixed bag, and now I want to share the good, the bad and the ugly of it all with you.

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The McMillans Track is one that I know my friend Gordon has had his eyes upon for some little while. I personally had never heard of it until he started to mention it occasionally when we were out doing some other adventure. It sounded long and bush-bashy, but one attractive feature was that it was all within Victoria. After almost getting locked out of our home state during the COVID border-closure ructions in Jan 2021, we were keen to avoid a repeat.

It's 220 km long and travels from near Mt Hotham to Woods Point over many roads, 4x4 tracks, bush tracks, trackless tangles and even some virtual tunnels carved through the living bush. It goes up and over a lot of ridges, contains a lot of nice rivers and flats, has great views, interesting geology and biology.

It was hard on the feet, generally easy to navigate but in places very hard to find a path. Parts of it I loved, parts I hated and parts were plain boring. I'll never ever do it again. Once was sufficient. I might do sections of it again though, armed with a machete perhaps.

Why, why why?

Why what? Why is a duck? Because one of its legs is both the same, of course. Why this blog? Why do a 13-day hike? Why go hiking with Gordon? Why go in summer when it's hot?

Life is full of 'why' questions and I had a bit of time to ponder these during the hike. As for why this blog - well, you can blame a nice man at Eaglevale campsite on the Wonnangatta who, after his wife suggested it, came over to offer us some cold water and have a chat. This guy was full of questions, and one of his first was 'Are you going to blog it?' The question stuck in my mind, and I decided to give it a go. I love writing. A Bachelor's, a Master's and a PhD theses, two

The hike compared to most of the rest of Victoria. Big, isn't it?

Terry by the walk's sign

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Black Sallee Lake

Whoa oh Black Sallee, wham da lam

Day 1: Cobungra to Black Sallee Lake, 8 km, 2 hrs

It was a short, pleasant walk from the Cobungra turn-off from the Omeo to Hotham road to the first campsite, along Victoria River Track. The lake was dark and gently misted when we got there, as the air had turned cold. We saw what we initially took for brumbies on the other side of the water, but it turned out they were riding horses, and we saw and heard people once in a while.

Getting water from the lake was a bit dicey as the edges were soft and it looked a little manky anyway. So I found the inlet stream which was flowing weakly and followed it upwards a bit to get to somewhere that looked better. I had to throw away the first water I got because I also found a dead deer leg just upstream from it, but then even further upstream I found better-flowing water anyway. I tried the Lifestraw filter bottle I'd brought to clean it up a bit, but it was way too slow. I got about 2 litres through it before my hands started cramping from squeezing it and deciding that this was silly, and just doped the

water up on iodine and/or chlorine pills. The filter bottle got put away and abandoned in a drop-barrel at halfway. I doubt I'll ever use it again, except maybe as a personal drink bottle, which is probably what it was designed for, to be fair.

Road, him go up, him go down again

Day 2: Black Sallee to Lankey Plains Hut via King Spur Track, 17 km, 8 hrs

I've decided that a lot of the roads in this part of the bush must have been built by a primitive race that hadn't invented contouring. Either that, or some guy in a bulldozer had been instructed to minimise distance, tree-felling and rock cutting. We called him George, but learned later from the cold-water guy that his actual name was Aubrey. Many of the roads we encountered took the shortest path from A to B, and if that resulted in a 25% or more grade, well, too bad. Greater than 25% means it rises more than 1 m up for every 4m forward, which doesn't sound like much, but you try walking up it for a few kilometres in the heat! It's not as steep as a staircase, but it feels like one without treads! A bit of rain then turns it into a rockface in some

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Nice work

of the road but then we had to descend a really steep single-track, which zig-zagged down through the bush to 25 Mile Creek. Even though some of the zags were pretty precipitous, it would have been a nice section, except it was at the dirty end of the day. Then across the creek to a tiny campsite, just barely big enough for our tent. Baths in the creek followed to wash the trail dust away. No nudie photos. I do have some sense of good taste.

Here be dragons

This big water dragon I didn't even have to sneak up on. After making soup, I sat down exhausted on a nice rock to rest my feet, and there he was, only a coupla metres away. It even stayed still long enough for me to get the camera out and snap a few shots. That's star quality that is.

Blackberries, benching and Bulltown Spur

Day 4: 25 Mile Creek to Bulltown Spur, 13 km, 8 hrs

Parts of the track on the next day's first section had nice stonework holding it up and making for a good benched track. We did have to carve our way up out of the campsite through blackberry bushes to get going, but I managed to find a jewel in the brambles, a small raspberry with some tasty fruit on it. Yum. After all the bush-bashing to get to it that morning, this clear part of the track was delightful walking. This photo shows where it had probably been recently restored.

Walk a crooked mile

On to Thirty Mile Creek and then to Crooked River, hiking on reasonably good tracks high above the river. No real crossings until we got to Bulltown Spur that evening. When we got to where we were planning to stay after fording the creek, there were a few blokes sitting at their cars and vans, playing gin rummy or something, and I bellied up to them and asked brusquely, "Are you blokes going to be partying noisily all night, or what?" They answered "No, certainly not" or similar, with affronted mien, to which I responded, "Bugger that then, I'm not staying here". After ensuing hilarity (wry grins, 'cos they were laconic Aussie blokes), one of them pointed out a nice grassy campsite a few hundred metres down the track. It was one of the better spots we camped at. Nice starscape, too.

He was pretty chill

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Astrophotography

I love the astrophotography feature on my Pixel 5 phone's camera app. Well, let me rephrase that. I love the results when I can get them, and I hate the user interface. Here's how I would describe the process: Open the camera app and select 'night vision'. Keep the camera very still in a dark place and magically it will decide to go into astro mode, which takes multiple images and 'stacks' them and does other automatic editing tweaks. Dare to move it whilst trying to press the 'take the bloody picture' button, and it'll drop out of astro mode back to single-shot and admonish you for not keeping still. Now imagine doing all that whilst the camera is pointing straight up. That's where the stars are, right? So, the screen with the button and the icon indicating astro mode is pointing straight down, which means that to see it, you have to have a tallish tripod (nope, left it behind, too heavy), or you've managed to balance the expensive phone/camera overhanging enough from a rock or log with enough room to get your head under it to see what's going on. Or you manage to use the timer feature and hope that it goes into astro mode and doesn't just take a single night-vision shot. All the while you are standing on your head in the dark, the mossies are sucking you dry, and you are freezing to death. Slight hyperbole there, it was actually fairly warm. The mossies were real though... Oh, and if you do manage to be lucky enough to start the photo in astro mode, it does it all silently, so you don't really know it has worked until you wait for three minutes and then pick it up and have a look. I ruined a couple of tries by picking it up early. Of course, it does tell you what's going on, but it's all on the screen you really can't see because the camera is on its back on a log!

I spent a good part of my walking time during that hike composing a scathing letter to the idiotic developers of that app asking why they couldn't just have a fixed astro mode instead of one that turns itself on and off! Also designing a makeshift 'tripod'. After I got home, I discovered that I could have pressed the volume button to take the photo, there's a setting in the camera app... That would have helped a bit. Anyway, here's my 'tripod' design. Yeah, yeah, only has two legs... You know what I mean, stop being pedantic. That's my job.

I have since learned that the best way to use the Astrophotography mode on the Pixel, if you don't have a tripod, is to face the camera down on the grass, pointing at the ground so you can see the screen. In the dark and not being jostled, it goes into astro mode and then you can press the 'go' button, flip the camera the right way up again and point it at the stars. It seems to work well. Maybe even use the shutter delay feature, though it doesn't seem to care.

The photo on the next page was taken at our campsite near the Bulltown Spur on Crooked River at the end of day 4. I managed to 'paint' the trees with my torch just at the right time to get them lit up in the photo. This was a matter of luck. It doesn't spend all its time acquiring, so a brief flash might get missed. There is some blurring on the leaves, but who cares. It's a marvellously starlit image from such relatively unsuitable camera hardware (small lens, small sensor, low exposure time) without needing a tracking mount, thanks to the 'stacking' methodology and other tweaks. Google 'astrophotography on Pixel' to find out more. Pity about the useless user interface, but now that I know better, I'll use my 'facedown' trick, or I'll take a superlight tripod next time.- Or a phone holder I can clamp to a hiking pole, a tree or something. Maybe one with a Bluetooth shutter trigger. K Mart has one for $25 with said accessory. I got one a few weeks later and it does the job. It is light, has a good smartphone adapter that works with my thickly armoured Pixel, and the Bluetooth trigger just works. Nice.

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Then there came the horror of Station Track, which was another of those 'straight up to the top' roads, but with added spice of a very hot day and very little shade. We must have looked in dire straits as we struggled up it from tree shadow to shadow. A convoy of 4x4s came down and the lead one stopped to offer us some water. When finally we made it up and recovered, it was down from the Cynthia Range Track almost to the Wonnangatta River. We walked along a private fence through horrible long grass to the suspension bridge, and then into a nice open flat, accompanied by 'doof doof' music from the car-campers. This is when the 'cold-water guy' that inspired me to perpetrate this blog came over and had a chat.

I tried again to do some astrophotography that night, but the useless interface defeated me. It would only have been boring stars without any landscape anyway. Pah!

Moroka River, hunting thundereggs

Day 6: Eaglevale Camping Area to Carey Creek

13 km, 7 hrs

Day 6 found us going up the Moroka Junction Track (road) until it abruptly stopped being a road and turned into a walking track. We

rested there for lunch and were amused by the 4x4 drivers that roared in, had a look and then roared out again.

After lunch we tried to walk alongside the Moroka River, but failed to have a lot of fun. The track was indistinct and there was plenty of bush to push through. We found it a lot easier to go down to the river and either wade up it or better, walk on the pebble shingles. This is where I first realised that gaiters and rushing currents were not a good combo.

Rollin' stones

I knew from notations on the maps that thundereggs (geodes) could be found around here and I kept my eyes open as we waded up river, possibly accounting for how slowly we made progress. We didn’t find any conventional ones, but did find some unusual opaque, white, egg-shaped pebbles, possibly river-tumbled amorphous quartz or quartzite. They had what looked like a web of harder, probably quartz veins embedded in them and slightly raised on the surface in a polygonal pattern.

Using 'lens' image search on the phone, the best hits I got were for geodes, but none of the returned hits had that polygonal 'web',

Rocks in Moroka River

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few hundred metres, and I just had to keep heading east, pushing through the bush until I got wet feet to find it. Nice water though. Cool on the toesies.

Misty Mountains

Day 10: Long Hill to Rumpffs Flat Campsite,

17 km, 8 hrs

Day 10, and from the camp on Long Hill we went up Mt Ligar in the mist after a bit of a bash through wet bush. We had the morning bath at the same time. Getting to the summit wasn't hard, even though we couldn't see much. Once we got across the narrow ridge that joins Long Hill to Ligar, the bands of rocks that give it the Crinoline monicker make nice terraces, with a bit of a scramble to get up between them in a number of places. The difficult bit was working out what path to take to get from band of rock to band of rock. Gordon did a great job of pathfinding and we didn't waste a lot of time searching for these transitions. In places, the path goes up slopes of gravelly rock that slips under your feet, and some short climbs are required. It's not terribly exposed, or shouldn't be if you are taking a good path. There are good steps and handholds, and occasionally making use of some handy vegetable handholds helped.

There's a nice copse of trees on the summit of Ligar that would make a reasonable campsite if the winds weren't too strong. From there,

following a fairly well-formed path along the ridge down the southwest side gets you to a junction with McMillans Track again. This path is nicely zig-zagged and not crazy steep anywhere. Another little rock down-climb is needed, but it's easy. Do be careful though. I make light of the difficulty, but in a number of places on Ligar, a slip would result in a painful and possibly dangerous tumble. Just take it thoughtfully as you go.

Then down to the Macalister River, and after a pause under the porch of a farmer's caravan/hunting-hut/retreat overlooking the river, we went up the long dull, soggy Glencairn Road to Middle Ridge Road and then to Rumpfffffs, Flat, or however you stop spelling it. A couple of 4x4 drivers asked us if we were OK on the way past but didn't offer us a lift. We would probably have said 'no thanks' anyway,—at least the first time.

A maze of twisty little passages, all alike

Day 11: Rumpffs Flat Campsite to Lazarini Spur via Mt Shillinglaw, 20 km, 9 hrs

The next morning we endured a long, steep climb out of Rumpffs Flat along McMillan Spur Track to get to the Jamieson-Licola Road, and then we were almost back on familiar territory for me, as the AAWT intersects McMillans Track near here. I still have post-traumatic flashbacks about hauling our drop-day barrels and water over the Rumpff Saddle on that particular trip. (Bad planning to leave drop barrels too far from camp, and the Barkly River Jeep Track there is a perfect example of why you don't make roads so steep that they erode away to rockfaces. Besides, it turns out that there is a perfectly good drivable Barkly River Logging Road that could have gotten us all the way to the camp to leave barrels there, if only we had known. Anyway, on this trip we didn't go so far up the Jamesion-Licola Road, turning off to go to Mt Shillinglaw and then camp at Lazarini Spur instead.)

For some reason I don't have photos of them, but on this day, we traversed bush tracks like the imaginatively named No 18 Track that is maintained apparently by driving down it in a golf-buggy sized vehicle with whirling blades all around it. They were like green tunnels cut through the living bush, and apart from some

Hmm, the path is around here somewhere

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