Trekking the Overland Track

Starting on January 30th we spent 8 days trekking 61 miles through Tasmania on the Overland Track. Google “top 10 treks in the world” and the Overland is likely to pop up on the list. It’s not the most extreme altitude trek in the world (the highest point, not counting side-trips is only about 1250 m/4100 ft), nor is it the longest trek – most people walk for 6 to 8 days covering a distance of 65 to 100 km (40 to 60 miles). What truly makes the Overland Spectacular is the scenery.

The island of Tasmania is about 35,000 square miles, roughly the size of Ireland, yet is home to over 300 plants, 12 species of birds and 5 species of mammals that are found nowhere else in the world. Even among the Tasmanian animals that are also found in the rest of Australia, half of the mammal species are recognized as distinct subspecies from their mainland counterparts.

The only animal that could be considered dangerous (aside from the snakes) would be the Tasmanian Devil, and you’d actually be lucky if you could spot one of those – they’re exceedingly rare these days. We unfortunatly didn’t see any during our time there. Instead what you have is a huge population of Brushtail Possums, Wallabies, Pademelons, Echidnas and Wombats – each of which are more cuddly than terrifying* (*all these animals can in fact be dangerous when cornered and should never be chased, poked, fed etc…. but they are terribly cute.). They are also everywhere. Hopping around the campsites at night. This guy below sat motionless in the bushes about 10 feet away from Anjel and I one morning while we ate breakfast. He seemed to have the same concept about visibility that our house rabbit Toki does: If I don’t move, you can’t see me.

As Anjel described them, it’s basically like walking through a forest of stoner animals – they not looking for trouble, they’re just looking for something to eat. One night in the tent, Anjel heard rustling around our bags in the vestibule outside our tent. She got out with the flashlight and walked around the tent only to find a gigantic possum rummaging around near the bags. As she shone the light on it, he slowly turned his face towards her, eyes half-lidded, with his outstretched paw still resting on the side of my pack, looking at Anjel as if to say “hey man… what’s going on? you got any snacks?” Anjel stamped her feet and shooed it away with a “go on” – but the possum simply turned away, took his hand off the bag and wandered back into the forest.

Aside from the animals, Tasmania is home to a huge range of vegetation regions including dry grassland, eucalypt forests, alpine regions and temperate rainforests. The trek through the Overland will take you through all of these. The scenery can change dramatically day to day and even hour to hour as you cover ground.

Hikers are cautioned that even in summer, it can rain or even snow with little warning, so packing a full range of cold weather gear is a must. The Overland has also historically been a very muddy trek – which it still can be. In recent years however, extensive work has been done to create wooden pathways along much of the trail.

It is apparently not uncommon for mud to become knee or thigh deep and of course as soon as a mud pit develops, people start to walk around it, widening the trail and destroying surrounding vegetation. The walkways are very well constructed and there are still plenty of “natural” stretches of trail – so it doesn’t feel at all like you’re being separated from your surroundings. Anjel and I actually began looking forward to the sections of constructed “highway” that we’d hit along the way as a welcome break from the rough ground.

Accommodation is provided by the tent you’re carrying with you. There are also several huts located along the trail that usually serve as good end-of-day markers. These huts provide shelter, space for cooking and eating, and the ability to sleep without having to pitch a tent (though the accommodations are quite spartan). It’s highly recommended that you bring your own tent on the trek as space inside the huts isn’t guaranteed, especially during high season.

If you notice in the photo above, the “sleeping areas” are flat plywood “bunks.” You still need to bring your own sleeping bag and pad, and those bunks are pretty wide… if the hut was really full you can actually fit 5 or 6 people on each level. That’s “cozy.” Below is another hut with slightly more private sleep areas.

I guess it could be nice to arrive at the hut and not have to go through the effort of pitching the tent, but that really only takes a few minutes and when you’re done you’ve got your own little private space to hunker down in for the night. We definitely prefer it.

Each hut has composting toilets and rainwater catch basins to provide drinking water, though it still requires purifying before drinking (its also very easy to find streams or lakes so with a little planning, access to water is pretty reliable). It is also possible to camp anywhere you’d like along the trail, though in the interest of preservation the standard suggestions apply: try to find an existing site, leave as minimal an impact as possible, cook only with stoves and never light a fire.

Hiking the Overland requires registration and the payment of a trail fee. It is also required to start on your specified day (to limit the number of people hiking the trail per day – over 8000 people hike the trail every year). However once you start, you can be out there for as long as you want. Though water is easily accessible all along the track, you’re on your own when it comes to food. And when it comes to hiking for a week or more, this is what really starts to become a limiting factor.

You don’t really realize how heavy 8 days of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and trail mix are until you cram it in on top of your tent, warm weather clothes, cold weather clothes, rain gear, stove, pots, sunblock, mosquito repellent and whatever else you’ve brought along and then try to throw it all on your back.

Anjel handled all of our food prep work and did an amazing job of it. Using several suggested food lists she found online, she put together a perfect combination of trail mix, freeze-dried meals, instant coffee, granola and other bits and pieces to keep us well fed and moving along as we hiked. The total weight worked out to around 20 pounds of food, which is a significant addition, even when split between two packs. The only good part is that your pack actually gets lighter as you near the end of your trek… though it never gets light.

The Overland is an amazing experience, but it isn’t really a solitary one. Though it can change from day to day, the people you see at the hut on the first night are probably going to be the people you see every night until you’re done. Some people get up and out super early to get a jump on the day, but you’re generally only walking 8 to 10 miles per day, so even a “late” start will get you in before dark. By day 3, Anjel and I started having leisurely mornings, which made us one of the last people to leave camp. The advantage to this was that we would often go most of the day before coming across any of the groups that left before us, giving us a lot of quiet time on the trail.

Of course as with all these trips, part of the fun is in meeting new people along the way. We ended up hiking the whole first day with a guy named Rob, from Germany, and had a good time getting to know several other couples and small groups in the evenings after dinner. Of course it wasn’t all good vibes and there was a group of 4 hikers from Israel with whom we had an almost ridiculously comic series of interactions. It would have been funny if they hadn’t been convinced that we seemed to be trying to sabotage their trip.

Regardless, it all ended well. We actually got extremely lucky with the weather. It was sunny for almost our entire trip, and the days that the weather wasn’t beautiful it was nothing more than overcast and a little damp. Some nearby brush fires led to some very smoky conditions on the third day. It killed visibility but led to some fantastically surreal sights

Ultimately it was a fantastic trip; the scenery was amazing, the trails were full of animals you can’t see anywhere else, and almost everyday gave us a different environment to walk through. Well worth it.

Tagged as: adventure, Australia, camping, tasmania, Trekking