The forecast for our first day was for a warm morning, followed by a possible thunderstorm with plenty of rain in the afternoon. With afternoon flights now impossible, the Par Avion guys cancelled their usual day-trippers trip into Melaluca, which allowed us and 5 other hikers to fly from Cambridge at 9:30am - a much better time for us than our original 2:30 booking. As we gathered in the waiting lounge on the blustery morning we noticed two hikers with tiny packs weighing 10 & 12kg respectively, and wearing running shoes and muscly legs (hereafter to be known as the LightPackers). We assumed they were going to run the track (they wouldn't be the first, in fact they wouldn't even be the tenth to try it), but they claimed they were planning on taking 7 or 8 days, they had just packed light. We would have felt bad about our packs ranging from 14 (Paul) to 20 kilos (Jon & Rob), except that the packs of the other 3 hikers weighed 66kg total, so they each had at least 20kg. From that point we decided that we were The MediumPackers, and they were The HeavyPackers.
The others flew off in two smaller planes while we got to go in the 'big' plane all together - with Jon up front with the pilot (with strict instructions to keep his feet away from the pedals), and Jett and I were the back-seat kids. As the wind seemed quite strong by takeoff time I was afraid we'd have a washing machine of a trip, and Jett and I would be wearing Paul's breakfast by the end of it, but as it turned out it couldn't have been smoother.
We flew right over our house:
and right past Federation Peak:
and had a perfect landing at Melaleuca
After visiting the toilet and the small museum, we took a team photo (from left - Jon, brother-in-law Rob, brother Paul, Jett, me):
and set off towards Cox's Bight.
As we expected the going was very easy. We had a 12km walk to the campsite, so with a stop for lunch, both us, and that storm, hit the coast at about 2:30pm. Unfortunately we still had a half an hour to go while the rain wasn't going anywhere.
We arrived at the delightful but sodden campsite at around 3pm and tried to set our tents up in the pouring rain.
Unfortunately none of us had ever set up our own tents under pressure before - both Jett and Paul had new 1-person tents which were unfortunately a bit tricky and slow to put up, while Jon and I had a new tent and although I had tested it briefly Clare's back yard before giving it back to Santa to give to me for being a very good girl, I hadn't done it quickly before and issuing understandable instructions to Jon in the pouring rain was hard. Rob had my old trusty Macpac Minaret which is actually a breeze to put up, but he had no idea how to do it - so five minutes later we were in a state. By the time we had the three brand new tents up they all had significant puddles on the inside. I then raced over to Rob's pile of tent material and got it up in a flash - sure enough his was the only one which was properly dry by the end of all that. Paul and I both had towels so we dried the inside of the tents and from then on they stayed pretty watertight which was a relief. We pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon sheltering inside our tents before deciding to take our lead from many of the other campers and use our lightweight sitting-on tarp, for a rain shelter. I didn't have any rope for it so we used the tents' surplus guyropes and pretty soon we had a workable shelter we could at least make dinner under without becoming completely soaked.
After a disappointing dinner of rehydrated curry (since voted Worst Meal of the trip) Jon and Jett went off to get more water while the rest of us returned to our tents to try to stay dryish.
The waterbottles formed a gang and attempted to escape together, but they were foiled by the stream
By about 8pm we were all in bed surrounded by our damp clothes and packs. What a start!