Australian Alps Walking Track - Benambra-Corryong Road to Buenba Hut Site

Day: 17
Date: Friday, 03 May 2019
Start:  Benambra-Corryong Road Crossing
Finish:  Buenba Hut Site
Daily Kilometres:  26.5
Total AAWT Kilometres:  357.8
Weather:  Cool and mostly sunny
Accommodation:  Tent
Nutrition:
  Breakfast:  Muesli
  Lunch:  Trail Mix
  Dinner:  Rehydrated Meal
Aches:  Both very tired
Highlight:  It would have been nice to reach our campsite a little earlier, but we still had a lovely last few kilometres through the open grassy flats of the Buenba valley as the sun set and kangaroos grazed all around us.
Lowlight:  Perhaps encountering a dead brumby on the track near the day's end.  Very aromatic!
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:

It was a wild night with thunderstorms passing overhead and almost continual rain, torrential at times.  Our tent kept us cosy and dry and we woke to clearing skies and very wet undergrowth.  Our tent fly was saturated and our groundsheet and tent were also a bit wet, so I got to carry an extra kilo or two of water until we had the opportunity to dry them out at lunchtime.

Essentially, it was a day of two halves.  The morning was spent climbing to Johnnies Top (1565m) and the afternoon was spent descending to the Buenba valley.  The climbing was quite wet early on, especially on a section of overgrown old firetrail where the vegetation was sodden.  I was in the lead and would not have been much wetter if I had been swimming, as each overhanging branch dropped litres of icy water on me.  However, when we reached the Beloka Range Track, the trail was wide and easier, and we both dried out and enjoyed the sun and forest.

At Johnnies Top, we stopped for lunch in sunny and breezy clearing and spread out all of our wet to dry, which it did in about 30 minutes.  Sadly, there were no views from Johnnies Top, or on the following descent along a long spur, but it was lovely trail through peaceful eucalypt forest which we savoured.  The final part of the descent was quite steep and my knees were crying out for relief by the time we reached Corner Creek at the base of the spur.  Crossing the creek itself didn't present too many problems, but finding our way out into the Buenba valley did.  There were indistinct trails everywhere, courtesy of the brumbies, and it was impossible to know which was supposed to be the AAWT.  Instead, we resorted to the GPS to find out way through the somewhat marshy and forested landscape, disturbing a small herd of brumbies along the way.  We lost quite a lot of time navigating through this section and didn't reach the Old Buenba Hut Site, our target for the day, until around 5:20pm, just before dark.

We collected some unattractive water from the near-flooding (after last night's rain) Buenba Creek and set up camp on the beautiful grassy flats.  It is a very cold night and stars carpet the sky.  Nearby, we can hear a brumby neighing.  Perfect!