Tasmanian Central Highlands

This week saw me taking a gentle amble into the Tassie Central Highlands. I walked in following a very pleasant track through a mixture of Eucalypt forest, Myrtle forest and open grasslands until reaching my destination, a nicely open grassland area surrounded by mountains. Pitching my tent next to a stately lone Myrtle tree it was satisfying to survey my surroundings with nary another person in sight.

My usual tent these days is a Moondance 1 full nylon, an excellent tent for Tasmanian 3 season use. Roomy for a 1 man tent, light, well ventilated and stable in a wind, it’s my home away from home.

It was a typical Tasmanian Autumn day i.e totally unpredictable and the showers that were forecast to fall all day long were completely absent. It was also a very mild 16-17 degrees C.

I cooked my dinner after setting up camp then went for an exploration of the area, finally coming back to my tent just on dark.

I was soon settled into my sleeping bag looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

The sleeping bag that I use for the majority of my walks in Tassie is a Helium 450 (actually an XL 500 as I am tall). I have long thought that this is the ideal bag as I have used it down to -7°C with complete comfort and yet it is still comfortable at much warmer temperatures. This night it would only drop to 12°C and I was still comfortable so it has a remarkably wide comfort range. And it always feels luxurious :)

As I packed camp I looked across at the nearby hills thinking to myself “the mist is coming in”….before changing that to “it’s gonna rain”.

And indeed, the mist did come in around the mountains, along with the rain. I love walking in the rain, dry and cosy in my rain gear, enjoying the fresh smells in the air and saturated colours of the vegetation.

There were quite a few stops on the way back out as I tried to capture the mist swirling through the trees and mountains, always a delight to witness.

It wasn’t long before I was back at my car, having seen not a soul on the whole walk. Perfect :)

Geoff Murray
Mont Ambassador