Arm River Track Hike - Day 3
Sunday, 4 February 2018
The previous night the ranger had advised us of a total fire ban for the last day of our hike. I didn’t ask him to clarify what that meant so in the morning I wasn’t sure if I was still allowed to boil water on my stove for porriage. In the end I figured that if I did it nice and quickly, nobody would mind. Ha. First I managed to tip over the pot of boiling water (a la the kids camping expedition but not onto anyone’s feet), then I couldn’t light it again so I had to use matches (I’m almost certain they were forbidden), then I ran out of gas so I had to muck around changing over canisters, then using more matches I was finally ready to pour the water over my oats. At this point I spilt most of my breakfast onto the grass. With this level of incompatence it was a miracle i didn’t actually burn down the entire park. Our only plan for day 3 was to walk back to the car so after breakfast (kindly donated me by Clare), we packed up and headed off.  It was already hot and as we walked out we noticed creeks had dried up just in the few days since we had walked in. We stopped for lunch at the little lake at the top of the last descent and we couldn’t resist a swim there. It was amazing how pleasant the water was - normally it would be freezing! An hour later we were back at the car, changing into clean clothes and preparing for the 4 hour drive home. It was a fantastic weekend - hopefully next time more of my family will accompany us!
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