Day 12 – Montezuma Falls     

It was nice waking up in a warm bed and heated cabin, and a hot morning shower.  Jo had toast for breakfast, which was a bit of a novelty, and I warmed my cereal in the microwave just because I could.  And just to be even more spoiled we turned the TV on to the morning cartoons which Jo couldn’t keep her eyes off.

 We drove off and realised I had left food in the fridge, so we went back to get it.  On the road again and we headed for the start of the Montezuma falls track, planning to take the easy track in and hard track out.  On the way in we saw a Tassie devil run off into the bushes.  The track followed along an old railway line which was carved into the side of the hill.  In areas we were towered on either side by steep side’s and tall trees where the track had been dug through the hill, which was pretty cool.  The walls were covered with moss and ferns and in some areas it was a tight squeeze with all the foliage on either side.  The track was fairly flat and easy going but the sides were steep, the track only became steep at the river crossings.  We went through heaps of puddles and pot holes from the recent rain and were glad when we saw the end of the track as by that time we were a bit sick of being bumped around. 

 The falls were nice just as we remembered, but seemed a little taller than last time for some reason.  We didn’t really spend much time looking at them, because they really had not changed that much and unlike last time we were not tired from the walk in.  We decided to go back to the car and have some lunch, ham cheese and tomato sandwiches as usual. 

A lot of the track looked very messy and not very scenic at all, which I found a bit disappointing.  The trees near the side of the track had been slashed and were lying down all over the place as if the cartoon version of the Tasmanian Devil had come through and massacred it although if you managed to look past the mess it was still quite pretty . The forest off to the side was thick and very lush.  The track became nicer as we got closer to the river, which also had a steep rocky decent which was really slippery.  Jo quickly discovered the slipperiness when she slipped on her bum when we got out for a walk to check the track condition.  The river itself was not flowing very fast, it was shallow and lined with smooth pebbles.  We drove 50 metres up the river to reach the track on the other side. 

The rest of the track was pretty, with little 4wd challenges around every bend.  We did it easily enough in the Landcruiser with the mud tyres, but may have had difficulty with less aggressive tyres and clearance.

 After blowing another fuse reinflating the tyres with the compressor, we headed off for Queenstown.  We drove out passed the desolated looking hills to Lake Burbury in search of a campsite.  We decided not to stop at the first site we looked at, and kept looking, but after what seemed like forever, we drove back to the first one, which now seemed a lot nicer. 

After setting up camp a currawong decided to hassle us for food, so he got some bits of bread left over from lunch.  After cooking up our sausages and veggies, some little pademelon wallabies bounced up nearby to munch on the grass.  When it started to get dark, swarms of mosquitoes seemed to come out from nowhere.  We decided this was a good time to go to bed, especially after the experience with the other horrible bugs, that are still blinkn itchy.