Day 45 Tingle Trees and one snake. 22 Oct

After breakfast with 79 year old Mary and her boys, I wandered off with my pack filled with 7 days of food, enough to get me through to Denmark (the town not the country).

The day started alongside the peaceful inlet, through a caravan park where I stopped for a juice and another bottle of water.  The day was looking to be a hot one.

However I spent most of the day under the cover of the magnificent Tingle tree forest. This was the nicest days walk of the whole track. Easy under foot as the volunteers had obviously been there recently trimming the edges, some small hills but nothing too taxing.

I saw one snake today that obviously saw me before I saw it and was slithering away into the undergrowth as I skidded to a halt.

I stopped at the Giant Tingle tree chatting to a big family from Singapore.  Tourism has returned post Covid-19 so there was lots of people here putting money into the local communities again. It was a bit strange to see so many people in there nuce clean clothes amongst the trees. I am quite happy with being the only human in the bush.

The Frankton River hut was home for the night. It was the first hut i have come across on stilts  probably because of its close proximity to the river. I had my lunch, a wash then went down and sat at the river’s edge and read my book in the sun.  Peter had arrived soon after me and ud thd same.

John, the hobo  who seems to live on thd track had arrived looking even scruffier and dirty than last time we shared a hut with him back about 3 weeks ago.  He is about 45 ish and carries a lot of heavy cheap gear, smokes and drinks coffee and seems to only eat 3 minute noodles. He us a nice  quietly spoken man who is a bit if a mystery.  I try to get some background from him but dong get many specific answers. He seems to have been wandering along thd track for a few years now and prior to that he says he lived in the bush in the Snowy Rivef area for 9 years.

He is heading back to Warpole so I suggested he pop into the Opportunity Shop and get himself some clean clothes and have a shower. He agreed that maybe it is time.

After seeing this sign I put my whole pack into one of the big boxes as didn’t want the dirty river rats scratching at my stuff.

John put his tent up on the platform and I didn’t hear any rats in the night as my new set of earplugs are keeping out all noises. Also I don’t even think the rats would want to get you close to John.