Absolutely crap sleep last night. Seems the best sleep I had was the hour and a half I had prior to 10 pm when I then woke up thinking it was morning. If I do this trip again I'm bringing a hammock.
It's Anzac Day today. It's 4.30 am and chilly. It's raining, which I think is making our mood even more sombre. We pack up and eat in the dark. We are all wearing the same thing today for the service. I had a little hissy fit about that too because I couldn't find my shirt for a little while in the dark. We look like a team today (but still stink).
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| Team Kick Ass after the Dawn Service |
Piper Joe played Danny Boy as we made our way up the hill in the dark, a thin trail of headlamps, to where we are having the Dawn Service. I have never heard everyone so quiet.
I go to an Anzac service every year. This one felt the same emotionally but much more intense. Greg spoke at length, about lots of things, it was really moving. The guys had chosen several people from our teams to speak, all of them with some kind of connection to the track. Most had brought along medals from relations. This was the really emotional part of the service. There were times they could not speak at all. That was hard to watch. There was not a dry eye anywhere that morning.
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| Rainbow over Menarie after the Dawn Service |
The Last Post and Reveille were beautiful that morning with the sound echoing down the silent valley and the sun rising over the mountains. After the service a rainbow appeared over the hills. Could have been a coincidence but considering the day and the time it just seemed like it wasn't.
Off again. Today will be another long day. Greg told me that today is his least favourite day of trekking. Today we are entering the quagmire. That's what we ended up calling it anyway. After climbing up Menari Pass and then down 'the wall' (that says it all), we entered the quagmire. Days of managing to keep our feet dry were over.
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| Sunrise Anzac morning |
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| The quagmire |
I have no idea how I did not fall over in the quagmire because everyone else did. Especially since I have the coordination and grace of a flamingo wearing gum boots. I have never seen so much mud. Ever. Not even at that music festival a couple of years ago. It was slow going, our feet buried in mud up to our ankles, the ground sucking at them as we tried to lift our feet for the next step. It was like this for hours.
Eventually we hit Brown River. This was our first major river crossing with no bridge (logs). Water was about waist deep, brown after the rain and fast flowing (Maybe it's always brown, it is called Brown River?). Didn't even bother taking our boots off because tomorrow is worse and we are already soaked. Finally the heavy mud was gone, now replaced with boots filled with water that can't get out because of the gortex lining.
More swamp and then more hills. Today we are walking up and down what is called the 'nine false peaks'. People talk about these like they are the worst thing ever but I didn't even notice we were climbing them until I was up to about the 5th peak. It seemed to me that there were false peaks every single day and this was no different.
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| Rob and I muddy and loving it |
Today is huge. We have used so much energy. There is really nowhere to stop to eat. At about 1 pm it happened. Everyone that knows me knows I love food. A lot. As we had not had lunch yet we had no new ration packs. We pretty much had no food left until then. In addition my metabolism is super fast. Suddenly I had no energy at all. Kat who was my buddy quickly noticed I was feeling crappy (apparently I stopped talking). Pretty hard to walk up these hills when you have absolutely no fuel. I struggled for maybe an hour, really struggled. To make things worse Rob was trek leader today and he walks fast!
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| Rob the medic who specialises in harden up pills and teaspoons of cement |
I really had to dig deep. I thought about lots of things. I thought about lunch and the the quicker I walked the quicker I would get it. I thought about Woogie telling me that I was more capable than I thought. I thought about a friend who used to be a marine who used to carry 50 kg over ridiculous distances and I tried to make myself believe that what I was doing was not hard in comparison. I thought about maybe having a rum tonight. Somebody found me some type of nutty bar and about fifteen minutes later I was feeling better sort of. We eventually had lunch after 3 pm. Breakfast was at 4.30 am. I have no idea how the diggers did this.
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| Instant creek |
After lunch a couple more hours of walking. It started to rain, really rain, the most rain we had had so far. 6 inches in just two hours. I started to get really cold, so I ended up putting my jacket on which kept me slightly warmer. It was actually easier to walk in the rain, the water was pouring down the hills in torrents, it was like walking in a fast flowing creek, but it was washing away the mud and leaving hard ground underneath.
We actually made really fast time that afternoon despite the conditions. One more water crossing before Ofi Creek, our camp ground, on the other side. Luckily we had made good time, Ofi Creek was almost impassable and already swollen and rising fast. We made it across with just minutes to spare. I tried to imagine living like this for months on end, being frightened and scared, being away from loved ones, being shot at, shooting at other people, no food, terrible weather. After 6 days on this track I still cannot fathom what it would have been like for the Australian, Papuan and Japanese soldiers 70 years ago.
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| Ofi Creek camp, slippery central |
That night was actually kind of fun. I ate all my dinner and lots of everyone else's. Being Anzac Day and Australian we had to have a drink. Now I knew why Joey was stealing everyones condensed milk. He was using it to mix with rum. It actually wasn't bad. I was able to drink Bundy rum mixed with it without feeling instantly sick (bad previous experience). Was a really good night. Everyone was happy, laughing and tired. I was walking around with plastic bags on my feet because I still hadn't been able to fix my thongs and I was terrified of hookworms now. It was so muddy, wet and slippery, it was funny. Overall a good day and a win in the sense I drank Bundy for the first time in 18 years and got a good feed eventually.
