Heavy rain on Thursday morning put a damper on my planned early start. I sat under my tarp with everything else packed up for quite a while hoping for a respite. It wasn’t to be. So I shook out my tarp as best I could and stowed it in my day pack not wanting to open my main rucksack which was ready with wheels attached.
The rain was intermittent all morning, wind and moments of sunshine, a typical Tassie spring day. I enjoyed the walk through the farms and forests of Liffey, passing Bob Brown’s Oura Oura reserve on the way. Creeks were overflowing as they rushed down the banks to join the Liffey river which wound through the base of the valley. A mist covered Dry’s Bluff hovered over the region. By lunch I had emerged from the forests to the open plains underneath the Western Tiers and stopped out of the rain for a break in the porch of the old Liffey Schoolhouse, a documented trail stop.
I had contact with Merran there and she informed me of severe weather predicted for the next few days – wind, rain and snow. My planned rest day at the base of Caves track looked a little dubious. We made the decision for her to collect me at the end of the day and I would walk as far through to Blackwood Creek as I could.
Fascinating the little connections one makes on the way. As part of the pilgrimage, I had decided to stop and have a friendly chat with anyone open for a conversation where and whenever these opportunities presented themselves. A farmer stopped for a quick check out of who I was and where I was going, and we got talking about places in Tassie. Turned out he was born in Sheffield (by accident) in 1967 while his mother was enroute by car from Launceston to the West Coast. When I suggested the name of the doctor and the small maternity hospital, Sheffield’s well known Dr Leslie Sender, he jumped with surprise! He recalled his mother crediting his safe arrival to the quick hands-on skill of this Sheffield GP. There would not have been a family that did not know the care of this doctor right through the fifties, sixties and seventies in Sheffield. He delivered me in the same maternity hospital and patched me up on many an occasion through my childhood.
