Travelways

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Fly into the South-West

THE pilot looks at the the metal rod protruding from my backpack and asks what it is for. I tell him the spear, known as an Hawaiian sling, is for the purpose of  shooting fish. The pilot tells us there was a bloke spearfishing down Tasmania's south coast once and he had a catchbag on his hip, full of fish he had speared. Some abalone divers said they saw this bow-wave heading straight towards him. Our smiling flyer illustrates the steady approach of the wave to the snorkeller by moving his hand, palm down, steadily from right to left: a great white took the snorkeller. My walking buddy, Dane Flynn,  and I just look at each other. The content of the story's no surprise. Everyone's got a shark yarn. The timing, however, could be better. We are about to fly into remote Melaleuca Airstrip and lug our backpacks through the wild South-West for three days and three nights. Snakes, spiders, leeches and ticks are looming large among possible hazards. We plan to snorkel for abalone, crayfish and perhaps spear a fish and now we have this vision of a toothy potential menace. I just know the shark attack story's going to be like that annoying song that you can't get out of your head. Our flight from Cambridge Airport near Hobart also carries three day trippers and it's a magnificent, unclouded February day. We rise over the Derwent River, seeing Hobart in house-by-house detail, and make our way west over the Huon Valley. The Hartz mountains, Mount Picton and Federation Peak rise to meet our dual-propeller aircraft before we sweep over Bathurst Harbour, Port Davey and the Breaksea Islands guarding Bathurst  Channel. Pick the right day and this flight is a humdinger. Par Avion says everyone who catches a great day on one of these is "blown away'' by the views. The Melaleuca airstrip first carved out of the wilderness by the bushwalkers' friend, Deny King, is bright, white gravel and looks like a salt plain among the buttongrass greenery of the lush South-West. The day trippers on our flight head to a bird hide in the hope of seeing the endangered orange-bellied parrot. The tour they are doing also includes lunch and a cruise on Bathurst Harbour. You can't fly with fuel canisters so the airline sells methylated spirits at the airstrip. We take in a litre of fuel for our stoves and are ready to head off. Flynny fills out the walkers' log book, useful in assessing walker numbers for track management and also for finding anyone who might have wandered off the beaten track; or spent too long spearfishing in the Southern Ocean. It's a Sunday and we have booked and paid for an exit flight at 4pm on Wednesday. All in order. Let the walk begin. We start on the South Coast Track and strut south over wooden boards parallel to Moth Creek for more than an hour. The going is flat and easy in the centre of a broad valley, with the white scar of Melaleuca airstrip diminishing at every backwards glance. It's quite a treat to be walking the boards but our turnoff looms and we cut west, leaving the well-travelled South Coast Track for the lesser-trod path towards New Harbour. The light gravel path winds around  small hills of the New Harbour Range before hitting boggy territory. There's a famous strip of bog on the track to Frenchmans Cap, some 150 kilometres to our north,  called the Sodden Loddins. Walkers have loved the buttongrass to death and worn a muddy trench. You plunge right through the middle of this black bog and accept the fact that your dry socks and dry trousers are about to become wet socks and trousers. It's slow going and torture on the leg muscles. Righteous walkers believe plunging through the middle of the bog does less damage than skirting it and braiding a broad area with dozens of tracks. The way to New Harbour, our first destination on this walk, has more than its fair share of bog and with a summer baking our track is a mix of sticky, half-dry mud that occasionally gives way to knee-deep slush. Often a battle through buttongrass bog is rewarded by a swift-running creek. At one such oasis we sit, gulp the sweet, fresh liquid and admire tiny fish playing in the tannin-stained water at the foot of a half-metre waterfall. The temperature is perfect - in the early 20s - and within a few hours of leaving the airstrip we catch our first views of the south coast. The glorious ocean vision is a tempting distraction but you still need to keep eyes down, on the track, making sure that each footfall is a safe one. Four hours after leaving the airstrip we are at New Harbour, looking for a place to pitch the tent.   Day one's various transits, by air and by land, are over. NEXT WEEK: Quoll time.