Australian Alps Walking Track - Taylors Crossing to Benambra-Corryong Rd

Day: 16
Date: Thursday, 02 May 2019
Start:  Taylors Crossing Hikers Campground
Finish:  Benambra-Corryong Rd Crossing
Daily Kilometres:  8.8
Total AAWT Kilometres:  331.3
Weather:  Mild and overcast with frequent showers
Accommodation:  Tent
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Muesli
  Lunch:  Trail Mix, chips and ANZAC biscuits
  Dinner:  Rehydrated Meal
Aches:  Nothing much
Highlight:  Finishing our hiking before noon and having a lazy afternoon in the tent, snacking and reading as the rain beat down outside.
Lowlight:  None really
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:

We slept in until just before 7am and packed up quickly in case it rained.  There had been quite a lot of rain until the early hours, but not much after that and the tent was quite dry.  We set out around 8am and walked along quiet (no vehicles at all) eucalypt-lined rural gravel roads for the first 6km.  It was a pleasant change from the forests, with just a few farm dwellings and sheds, and some cows and horses in the pastures.  We also saw quite a few kangaroos, the first of the hike so far, which seems incredible given how far we have travelled.  We have seen plenty of animal evidence (droppings), but no animals apart from a snake on the first day and plenty of birds.

Eventually, the AAWT left the roads and climbed to the top of a small mountain where we stopped for breakfast in the hope of getting some mobile phone reception to check mail and update the blog.  We rarely have reception at lower elevations, so try pick places for breaks near the tops of hills to get/make updates if we can.  From there we had a difficult descent along poor slippery trail to the ford of Morass Creek, still fresh in my mind from my last AAWT hike, but we made it across with out incident.  The water level was much lower than I had remembered.

After the ford, we only had a short uphill hike to reach the Benambra-Corryong Road, near which we had hidden our food cache, reaching there just before noon.  It felt a little surreal arriving here on foot after driving so far to drop the food drums off originally.  It had already rained intermittently during the morning's walk, so conscious that it could start raining again at any time, we cleared a spot and erected our tent before going off to find our food drums.  They were where we had left them and after having a wash and changing into our cleaner (it's all relative) camp clothes, we sorted out all of our food for the next five days.  I have over-catered our daily rations, so the first order of business was to remove a handful or two from each day's muesli and trail mix to lighten the load.  We will leave the surplus in the drums, along with our rubbish, for when we pick them up after the hike.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing inside the tent, while it showered outside, eating our treats and reading and snoozing.  As usual, Julie checked out all of the maps and guides, and in particular, the elevation profiles, to see what climbs we have in store for us.  We had an early dinner and went to bed hoping it woukd not be raining in the morning when we need to pack up.