The long held dream of tackling Australia's best and one of the world's most renowned wilderness treks was finally to become reality. A small group, seven of us in total, met a couple of times over the summer to plan the trek which we wanted to fit in just before the weather got too cold down in the southern extremes of Australia. The group was made up of four 16 year old guys, our guides Jim & Jedda in their early 30's who'd walked the track in 2004, and me...ancient at almost 50. The plan was to fly from Port Macquarie to Sydney, change to a Virgin flight to Melbourne the change to another short Virgin flight to Launceston. So far so good with not a single delay, drama or hassle. We arrived pretty late and by the time we found the shuttle and got to the Hostel it was close to midnight, which would be OK if we didn't need to be up and packed by 6am! We made our way down to the bus terminal, got a pretty good coffee for the road then at 7am picked up the coach that would take us to Cradle Mountain....the real journey had begun. As it turned out, today would be a very long and tiring one.
