Freshwater to Kauri

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I LEFT Freshwater at about sunrise, having had breakfast and packed up. This was another sunny day but it will all be in the forest. I was tired from yesterday's hike but only had five kilometres to go today - a fifth of yesterday's hike.

Returning to the ampitheature, I followed the main track continuing to head inland as it crossed above the camping ground before following the bottom of the valley through the gnarly pale gum trees. The track gradually ascended through the forest eventually reaching Freshwater Road, a sand road heading along the top of the ridge heading towards Rainbow Beach.

Once across the road, the track descended moderately into the next valley above Freshwater Lake, which I had a few glimpses of. The track followed the valley to a junction where a side track headed around to the other side of the lake. I continued along the main track ascending over another low saddle and dropping to a large swampy forest area where the track ended at the junction of the main route of the great walk. I had now completed the longer section of the great walk heading around Double Island Point.

From the junction I turned left heading up a long hill climb towards Kauri following the main track southward. The climb was quite long under the sunny morning, but eventually I reached the top where the scrubby forest changed to rainforest and I reached the junction towards Kauri camp.

The side track decended to another dirt road crossing before rising a little to a small clearing where several platforms were scattered around. Each platform had a large steel box recently installed to allow campers to securely lock their food away to prevent possums and other animals from raiding the food at night. To the left a short path led to the toilet cabin with the water supply next to it.

In the other direction a track led to the campsites. It was still mid morning and I was the first to have arrived having only come up from Freshwater today. Anyone else coming here would be hiking in from Rainbow Beach, about 17 kilometres away, or from Litoria camping ground about 20 kilometres in the other direction. I set up my tent in the first camp spot and spent the rest of the morning relaxing in the camping ground.

Kauri is named after the kauri trees growing here. They are a close relative of the New Zealand kauri, but are a lot smaller and only grown in the Queensland tropics to subtropics. This is apparently the southernmost stand of these trees. Curiously they have adopted the Maori name here, but I'm sure the Aboriginal people living here would have had their own name for them, but this has been lost with a lot of their language over the past two centuries since colonisation.

The first hikers arrived at about 1:00, having come out from Litoria today, and having started at Tewantin 3 days earlier, making the most of the mid week public holiday tomorrow. Over the next two hours another three couples arrived from Litoria, all deciding today's 20 kilometres seemed a lot shorter than the 20 kilometre slog from Brahminy to Dugtee two days ago. That section would have been quite difficult with the hard parts climbing the sandmass from Brahminy in the early morning, and climbing the Cooloola Sandblow later in the day both being long uphill sections. I had done it the other way four years ago and it would have been a lot easier going that way.

Later in the day an older couple arrived having started from Rainbow Beach this morning. I settled in for an early night after a relatively restful day having largely recovered from the long coastal walk yesterday.