Date: 8-11/11/2025
Trip leader: Adam H
Party: Liam K, Ngiak, Rohit, Tim, Terry
Day 0 – Lake King William Campsite
The trip began in Hobart as I picked up a 2WD rental Corolla with 5km on the odometer ready to take it on Tasmania’s finest dirt roads. After an encounter with some methed up Hobartians and the obligatory procurement of a bagnum, we were on our way to Lake King William campsite.
Tents were put up with Durstonville taking the ideal spot right beside the lake and not-so-Durstonville taking its footing beside the cars. Populations of these 2 segregated villages were even, 3 Durston tents and 3 non-Durston tents.
Accompanying us at the campsite was the obligatory bagnum and a giant pretzel from Schwarz bakery in Wentworth Falls that did not fare the 1000km+ journey particularly well. Both were shared before sunset signalled our bedtime in preparation for an early start.
Day 1 – Carpark to Tahune Hut
With a long blast of the horn at 5:54AM waking up the troop (rest assured, there were no other campers in earshot), we were up and off to start our walk to Frenchmans Cap.
We set off from the carpark at approximately 8:00AM, all in agreeance that we would smash out the 20km distance in no time. There was even discussion of sidetrips and completing the additional 4km up to the summit on our first day if the weather was fine.
Having heard of multi-millionaire Dick Smith’s $1M donation to the track, I was anticipating a nice and easy stroll right through, but the mud of the “Sodden Loddons” was certainly out. Of course, it would be unwise to expect dry feet on any Tasmanian walk, but I wasn’t expecting that a track with so much work done to it could be so muddy.
If anything, it leaves it only up to our imagination and the glimpses of the old track, just how sodden traversing the Loddon plains once was.
The amount of mud on the track necessitated Terry to develop the new SUBW social credit point system. Social credit points could be gained by walking through the mud and deducted if anyone dared to skirt it. For those who don’t know, walking around the muddy sections just contributes to the erosion of the track and best practice is to just send it straight through. Your feet will eventually end up muddy regardless.
Much of the track on day 1 was through forest with bouts of buttongrass plains in between. The weather was excellent by Tasmanian standards too and I was able to avoid putting on my rain gear until Barron Pass at about 4pm.
In total, my watch recorded 23.18km and 1,600m of elevation gain from the carpark up to Tahune Hut. With all the mud across the plains, tree roots, prolonged lunch breaks, and one of us taking an 18kg pack complete with 1.5L of ginger beer, this took us just over 9 hrs to complete.
The hut had a replica of the first logbook from the first iteration of Tahune Hut with entries dating back to 1951. Sure enough, there were entries from SUBW with the earliest being from 11 January 1951. While we’re under the same banner of the club and we press on regardless, I hate to think how many hours it took them to reach Hobart, how little Dyneema was in their packs, and how few USB ports were in the hut they stayed in (we had only 4!). It’s a double-edged sword I suppose, on one hand the ease of which we can just visit these remote places (cheap flights, cars, and high tech ultralight gear) is awesome, but it simultaneously detracts from the adventure and accomplishment of it. While Frenchmans Cap is a straightforward walk for us (we get on a plane, rent a car, walk on the duckboards), it would’ve been an epic adventure even just getting down to Tasmania for them.
Day 2 – Tahune Hut to Frenchmans Cap to Vera Hut
Day 2 began nice and early as we all awoke to bleak Tasmanian weather meaning our view from Frenchmans Cap would be nothing. It was a bit of a shame but it would be silly to come this far for a peak and to not at the very least bag the peak (a couple from NZ in the hut with us made the 3 day walk just to not attempt a summit at all!).
Thus, at ~8:00 our summit up to the Cap began.
The visibility & the rain came and went, we had views one minute and nothing the next. Naturally, in spells of low visibility it was rather easy to lose the track but thankfully it is all very well cairned, so long as you don’t miss the cairns.
Once we were nearly at the top, chants of “blue skies!” echoed down to our compatriots below, in hopes that we could send it up with haste and enjoy a view from the summit.
Of course, that was short lived and we were back to no visibility, the above and below photos being taken just 6 minutes apart.
By 10:00 AM, we had officially bagged Frenchmans Cap. Out came the summit Toblerone & Tim Tams. It is not well known but rumours that the mountain on the Toblerone packaging is the Matterhorn are actually incorrect and it is instead Frenchmans Cap that is pictured. Opportunities to fact check in the wilderness are limited. Emailers contesting this fact retroactively will be met with no Toblerone on their walks in the future.
We’d enjoyed our goodies and the blistering wind up there before heading back down to the hut.
Once we were a fair way down from the summit, the views of this stunning part of Tassie wilderness finally opened up, and how lucky we were.
We had an early lunch back down at the hut before continuing on for Vera Hut where we would spend the night. Once again, we were incredibly lucky to have pretty great weather for much of this part of the walk too.
We reached Vera Hut by about 4:00 PM and with the nice weather, 4 of us decided to pitch tents while the other 2 took the comfort of the hut.
Once again, by coincidence or perhaps subconciously, the Durstons and non-Durstons were segregated to their own tent platforms.
We all had dinner in the hut itself and passed time with the cryptic spoon orientation game that you will be familiar with if you’ve camped with me.
Day 3 – Vera Hut to Carpark
Day 3 began with Southwest Tas doing Southwest Tas things and dropping a bit of snow on our tents on this mid-November morning that followed 2 days of relatively warm weather.
We had breakfast in the hut and set off back for the cars, with some snow still falling but not settling as we began our walk for the day.
The weather could not decide what it wanted to do and constantly changed between hail, sun, sleet, and rain. Characteristic of this area.
We’d all reached the cars and off we went destined for Hobart. We stopped in the Derwent Bridge Lodge to enjoy a pub feed and more snow was falling.
Both Tim and I drove and rented cars from the same place, he was lucky enough to get a free upgrade to an AWD but I was stuck whipping around the icy roads in the good old 2WD Corolla. No rental agreements were violated in the making of this trip.
Click here to enjoy an hour long video of our walk! 🙂
