So I ended up where I had planned. That was about the only non-surprise for the day.
The day started gloomy, similar to yesterday, then enough rain so that I ate my porridge in the tent.
After walking about 200 m I find a significantly better campsite, right next to the creek junction, smoother, and even more sheltered, then in a similar distance a major rock dam complete with big metal pipe overflow. Then I was on a tram line, kind of like the Dun Mountain Tram Line back when I was 15, not exactly overgrown, in fact as I progressed it became apparent that it had been trimmed in the last few years. There were plenty of old sleepers, and even a few rails, this was built about 1912 and must’ve been redundant by the time it was completed.
So suddenly I was scooting along quite a different experience from the bush bash of the first 15 minutes, eventually you drop off that tram line and descend to a second one further down the slope, but heading in the same direction. Okay, this one is even better, on a tram style gradient, easy walking for the first time since Kaipipi Road just out of Halfmoon Bay, on Day 1.
Then you find a few branches across the tram line with indications you should turn off onto the old surveyor’s track to get to North Arm directly. I kinda knew there were two parallel tracks from an old map. I decide to head to North Arm then bush bash around to Diprose, or maybe there’s a track, (there wasn’t). This track had a few historic artefacts along the way, remnants of an old hut at the top, sheets of corrugated iron scattered about, an unbroken piece of window glass, some bottles, etc.
This track, I’m now in actual forest, is also well marked and cut. Down near the water at North Arm of Port Pegasus there’s an old chimney base in brick and some more old bottles, all that remains of the old hotel/store/post office from the 1890 tin rush when maybe 400 tin miners descended on the area for a few months before realising there was actually limited, err, no quantities of tin to be found.
Despite the rising tide I manage to grab sufficient oysters and mussels for a decent feed, protein for once, then scooted around through the forest to Diprose Bay, a close encounter with an old seal up high on a ridge startled us both. Another old chimney stack in the forest over here, it’s hard to imagine how it must have been to live so isolated down here on the futile quest for riches in an almost non-existent tin frenzy.
I wonder what trace I will leave on the world 100 years from now.
Clear answer: nothing.
A guide to the night’s accommodation: Diprose Bay
