Lake St Clair and Mt Rufus

Today is dedicated to the memory of Keith Alfred Wilson, 1922-2014. Friend, Godfather, mentor. Passed away peacefully as a resident at Burpengary Gardens, but long time resident of Kedron. He will live on in my memory every time I use one of his tools. I heard of his passing at the summit of Mt Rufus, on a clear and glorious day, and I remembered his walking of the Milford Track in New Zealand.

Lake St Clair is now a commercial concern run by idiots. It’s pretty galling to pay exorbitant rates for a site, have a fight about which one you can use, then have to pay for an amenities key, BBQs, showers.  Nuff said.

Had to have a fight about which walks we would do. A fine and glorious day and the boys wanted to hit the heights for a view. Isabel was at Lake St Clair, and so couldn’t get over the fact that she was there to see a lake, not climb a mountain. Inertia being in Izzy’s nature, there is no way we could have carried her to the top in the time allowed. That left little choice but for the day to be divided along gender lines. The girls kept in the shadows of the lake while the boys attended to more lofty pursuits.

Mt Rufus is a steady climb of around 700m from lake level to the summit in 7km. This is Tasmania and it has been raining so the track was quite wet and boggy in places. However, the scenery and landscape was ever-changing. Generally from rainforest and eucalypts around the lake to alpine bogs and eventually bare rock. However, even within that general trend there were patches of myrtle, pandanus, fern gardens, mossy gorges, swamps, streams, lakes and gorges.

Being the highest point around we could see a long way on such a clear day. The summit has no information, but based on memories we believe we could see perhaps Mt Wellington outside Hobart, Frenchman’s Cap to the West, and Mt Ossa and Cradle Mountain to the north. Of course we also had views back to Lake St Clair and could catch glimpses of the track mostly in places where it was a boardwalk. Our walking buddies were a pair of teachers from State High in Brisbane, so there are plenty of Queenslanders around.

The pick of the walk for me was the two hours coming down from the summit continuing on the loop track. There were areas that resembled a manicured Japanese garden with plants bonsaied by the harsh conditions, lawns immaculately manicured by the wombat and wallaby greenkeepers, streams hidden under the rolling green mounds and only occasionally breaking through, and a neat boardwalk snaking through. There were also patches of a fairly common shrub in these parts that comes in all shades from red, through orange, peachy and yellow, often next to each other.

As I write this it has just gone 9pm and the sun has now set, but there is still plenty of light. The walk had taken us a good 9 hours, but that included plenty of time for photography and a paddle in the lake to soothe tired feet. The only issue with getting back so late was that in parts when the track was dark and boggy it was difficult to pick the best way through, especially if you had just been in a relatively open and bright patch, which often happened. Watersmeet was a welcome sight, coming as it does at the point where you join the smoothly graded and gravelled path back to the visitor centre.

Don’t imagine we’ll have any trouble getting them to bed tonight.