Wild Dogs

After our incident in North Bowens Creek a few weeks before, this was Rachel's "comeback" walk, in preparation for some harder walking post-Christmas. The plan was to head from Green Gully over Ironpot Mountain and down to the Coxs River. Then we would head back up Breakfast Creek and camp at Flying Pan Flat. That would give us an easy day the next day.

Like all good plans, it had plenty of flaws. We started fairly late and it was mid-afternoon by the time we were driving down the dirt road to Carlon's Farm. The plan almost got stymied before it started. A large tree had fallen across the road, taking the power lines with it. Luckily, when we arrived there was already an Integral Energy truck there, and we had passed another one at the top of the hill switching off the main power line. I watched in interest as they cleared the road quite quickly allowing us to pass.

A group of three British tourists had been trapped by the fallen tree as well and had been doing short walks from the car park. We mentioned that the tree had been cut away, but their might still be some delay as they were now rerigging the overhead wires. They headed off for another short walk, as we left in the other direction towards the Coxs. We didn't get too far. On the far side of Ironpot Mountain Rachel's leg started to hurt. We had a brief council of war, decided that the Coxs was now a bit ambitious, dumped packs and went for a bit of a wander along the track. There were some good views over the upper parts of the river from outcrops along the way.

After a break, we returned to our bags and set up camp on top of Ironpot Mountain. There was a convenient little lookout not far from where we pitched our tent, so we took our dinner over as the sun began to set, and took in the views. Then it was off to bed for an early night.

The next morning we packed up early and returned to the car. This meant that we could head for breakfast at the Wattle Cafe in Blackheath, which we did.

A nice little walk in the end, even though not as planned.