Raftwalking in the South-West Part II

“There are only two types of weather in the South-West: good dry weather and good wet weather.”

Water droplets on buttongrass. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

On the second day of our trip, the Crossing River was at an ideal level to run the gorge for the first time in months, with the hydro gauge on the Davey River reading just a bit below 1000ML per day. (We were getting daily inreach messages from Gabe’s dad, thank you Maciej!) And while day two was warm and dry, the problem was, the forecast promised significant rain on day three and four and the earliest we could have put in above the gorge was the afternoon of day two. So if we didn’t get through the gorge in a single day, there was the very real possibility of getting stuck inside Crossing Gorge in a minor flood!

Memorable views from the Port Davey Track. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

In fact, we had already discussed this possibility with Gabe in the lead up to our departure and abandoned our original plan of paddling Crossing Gorge as we didn’t want to risk getting stuck in the gorge on a rising river. We opted for walking another day further before putting in on the Crossing, putting us below most of the serious white water and all the major portages. Making the decision not to run the Crossing Gorge was the first of a number of conservative decisions we made on this trip that ensured our eventual safe return.

So day two of our trip was about slogging it out on the Port Davey on a particularly warm and sunny spring day. Our packs felt progressively heavier as the day went on. (This was a common phenomenon during our entire trip in fact).

Gabe taking a well deserved break on the Port Davey Track. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

The Port Davey Track has some really nice sections to be fair, but also some pretty lousy ones: open walking on buttongrass ridges with tremendous views, mountains all around; and scrubby gullies with squelching mud that comes up to the knee at times. As we learnt, the Port Davey is a very well graded track, it was cut almost like a tramway would be cut, with minimal elevation change, contouring around on the hill sides. The track is marked with rusting star pickets which are unevenly spaced and not always present in the overgrown sections, which is most gully crossings. Mostly though, up till the Spring River at least, the Port Davey is a pretty good track, by South-West standards at least. Nevertheless, we were very happy with our decision to bring our big, heavy, leather bushwalking boots.

Spring flowers. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

The heaths were all in flower and I learnt a few new plant names from Gabe. We saw a ringtail possum right next to the track, with the white end of its tail sticking out of a tree. It didn’t seem too perturbed by us. We left it in peace. We also saw plenty of tracks in the mud, belonging mostly to wombats, but also a few devils.

It took us eleven hours to walk from Alpha Moraine to Watershed Camp. We took regular breaks and drank lots of water. My daily ration of chocolate melted in my pack in the afternoon.

Buttongrass and forest. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

Day three brought the rain, as per the forecast. It rained most of the day, with only a few short breaks in between. There was some really fantastic walking around the head of the Spring River where the track contoured around the hillsides with tremendous views. A personal highlight were the pools of water on the track, with hundreds of tadpoles in there. As we would walk past, the tadpoles would wriggle under the mud to get out of sight, the result being all these bubbles in the pond coming to the surface, reminding me of champagne.

We also saw some orange-brown coloured burrowing crayfish, or yabbies, about three or four inches long. They were most alarmed to see us and quickly reversed into their hole. My understanding is that they reverse into their hole so their pincers are ready to defend their burrow from the other, sometimes bigger yabbies.

Hills near the Crossing River. Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

We left the Port Davey track to ascend a large knoll from the summit of which we could descend to the Crossing River. There was plenty of slime on the soil among the buttongrass, making walking on the steeper sections quite treacherous. Our tea tree walking sticks came in handy with every step. The slime was an ongoing theme on our trip. We suspected it was a type of algae, not sure of the species though so if anyone knows more the slime in the South-West, I’d be keen to know!

We set up camp about 50m from the river among some old tea trees. It took us about seven hours of walking from Watershed Camp to the large pool below the Crossing Gorge where the river turns north. We had a look at the river and it was calm and smooth.

Then it rained all night and when we woke up we found a different river.

Rocky Outcrop, Pentax MX, Kodak Pro 100, Nov 2025.

-A.S. 9/12/2025, Brushy Creek, Nipaluna/Hobart.

Raftwalking in the South-West- Part I

An ode to the sun

Her vibrance shines above me,
As she casts her light below,
Her rays are bright and warming,
And the horizon is aglow.

Her light dances on the water,
I feel her warm embrace,
I hear the forest waking,
And the spirit of this place.

As she sweeps across the land,
She will calm and she will soothe,
She brings us strength to pack our wet shit,
And forwards we will move.

-A.H. 6/12/2025

The mighty Arthurs Range rising up from Arthur Plains. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.

The South-West welcomed us with open arms. It was the first day of November, 2025 and the previous three days were the driest, most stable weather we had in over a month. According to our forecast, we would have two more days of dry weather, and then it would pack it in for us.

It had been a wet and windy spring, so the forecast came without much of a surprise on our part. There had also been a number of deaths in the Tasmanian bush in the months prior, and some members of the paddling community expressed their concern about our packrafting trip intentions. A big thanks goes to Vicky Bonwick from the Derwent Canoe Club for providing us with her meticulous notes on the Crossing and Davey Rivers and helping us prepare for our trip in general. Vicky probably knew she couldn’t talk us out of doing the trip, so she helped to make sure we wouldn’t die out there at least. But she did tell us she thought that ‘paddling alone is suicide, paddling with two is suicide with a witness’. I asked Gabe before the trip if he thought we could run the Crossing, just the two of us. He said it should be okay as long as we are sensible. That sounded pretty sensible to me, so the trip was on.

Gabriel Matuszak, and yours truly, on day one of our ‘raftwalking’ trip through the South-West. Looking fresh! Photo by Amy Hamilton. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.

Our plan? Simple in theory. Gabe and I would start at Scotts Peak dam, walk in on the Port Davey Track, then raft the Crossing and Davey Rivers, cross Port Davey in our rafts, then rendezvous with Grant Dixon near Melaleuca who had prior commitments in the first week of November and couldn’t join us for the first leg of our trip. We would then continue together as a trio, paddling across Bathurst Harbour and up the Old River to the base of Federation Peak, from where we would ascend Gorilla Ridge, then drop off the Eastern Arthurs to paddle the Cracroft and Huon Rivers out to Tahune Airwalk.

We allowed 8 days for the first leg of the trip, 11 days for the second leg, so 19 days in total. Grant was to bring us 11 days of supplies when he flew into Melaleuca, so we only had to carry eight days of food in on the Port Davey with Gabe. Nevertheless, our packs weighed close to half our body weight on day one.

Gabe doing the slog on the Port Davey. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.

It was a noble, if somewhat silly premise for a trip. Climb Gorilla Ridge with full bushwalking and whitewater kit and a week’s worth of food? I really thought I was done with carrying forty kilo packs up Federation Peak. I thought I had left that part of me behind with Winter on the Blade.

But when Grant proposed the idea for that second leg of the trip neither Gabe nor I could resist. The promise of seeing a particularly remote corner of the South-West lured us on. And the threat of the Gorilla would loom ahead of us for the entirety of our trip.

Some more sunshine on day two of our trip. It would be some time before we saw the sun again. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Nov 2025.

-A.S. Sandy Bay, Nipaluna/Hobart. 6/12/2025

Maladies and Remedies

“Our painful experiences aren’t a liability—they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.”

― Edith Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Burnt Tree on the Thumbs. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

Newton’s third law: for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. This is a law because it holds true every time. When we push on a wall, the wall pushes back on us. Unless of course the wall falls down.

Taking it a metaphorical step further, we could say that putting ourselves through an ordeal will bring about intense relief at the end. Or we could say that every malady comes with a a remedy, and that every remedy comes with a malady. The ups and downs of life are inseparable; the good times are given meaning by the bad times.

On our recent ‘raftwalking’ * trip to the South West I remarked to my companion Gabriel that expeditions bring about the best of times and also the worst of times; often with a sharp transition from one to the other. One moment we may be wondering about whether our toes are getting frostbite in the blizzard, and later that afternoon we are happily walking through a sunny buttongrass plain. In the space of a few hours our circumstances can change from what appears to be imminent doom to transcendental bliss. And this doesn’t just happen during a trip, it can also happen upon our return.

(*Raftwalking is the apt term for a packrafting trip where the amount of time spent walking with one’s raft outweighs the time spent paddling one’s raft. )

View towards the Gordon River. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

 Undertaking a difficult expedition where all of our energy, resourcefulness, skills, knowledge, courage and perseverance is called upon means that when we get back into the land of safety, back to our every day life in civilization; we not only feel accomplishment and satisfaction; but we are also faced with the repercussions of our extraordinary experience. I have talked in previous posts, about the difficulty of the ‘return’, where we have to return to our routine existence and figure out a way of incorporating the lessons of our trip. But this time I’d like to dig a bit deeper.

Every experience we strive for in life has a metaphorical ‘price’ associated with it. The most obvious price that adventurers ‘pay’ upon their return are ailments or injuries. When we went out to the Gordon Splits last year, the ‘price’ was a large lump on my left shin. A bone bruise the doctor called it. Upon returning from our trip to Southwest Tasmania most recently, I really thought I returned without any injuries except for some numb toes from the cold. My body felt tired and stiff but I was in good physical health overall. My mental state upon our return was also harmonious. We had an amazing, if somewhat difficult trip and the initial return felt glorious.

Towards Mt Wedge, Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

One day after our safe return, on the 20th of November, I was doing my usual morning yoga routine, a sequence of poses I have been doing for years on a daily basis. After a backward bend called the camel pose, something went wrong in my lower back and I could no longer stand up without agony. One moment to the next I had gone from fully capable to fully incapacitated. Lying on my side in bed was fine. Doing everything else hurt like hell. I could wipe my own ass, but only barely. Clearly, this was the ‘price’ I had to pay for carrying a pack that weighed nearly half my body weight through the challenging terrain we traveled through!

In a way, the trip was the remedy: it revitalized me with the primeval energy of the wild country of western Tasmania; calmed my mind and gave me confidence that difficulties in life can be overcome given the right mindset and perseverance.

On the other hand, the trip also created a malady: my lower back hurt like hell! My osteopath I went to see for treatment explained to me that I have suffered a disc injury; likely L4 or L5, and that these discs that act as the shock absorber sponges between the vertebrae have memory; and that it wasn’t just the backward bend that did the injury. It has been years of accumulation, carrying heavy packs, and in particular, the previous three weeks of severe load carrying through rough country that brought my back to breaking point. And as the saying goes, it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. In this case it was the camel that broke the camel’s back.

Clear Hill. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

As for the remedy… Meloxicam, panadol, codeine and valium. I have now been taking the drugs for over a week and minimising movement that has caused pain; which is most movement in fairness. Luckily, modern drugs are fairly effective, and the worst of the pain has passed, meaning the healing has started taking place. I can start thinking about re-introducing basic movements. I can now stand up and walk without pain. I even managed to go to work for three hours today. Little steps. Slowly slowly.

Already, the injury has come a long way. But the healing process for a disc injury is a long and winding road. My osteopath advised me that it will likely take about 18 months before my back returns to the state it was before my injury. This is not to say I won’t be able to do anything; with careful progress I should be able to ride a bike and go paddling again in a month or two. But I won’t be doing the camel pose any time soon. Better not put another last straw on the camel’s back.

The Thumbs. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

But let’s return to our original premise.

Every malady comes with a remedy…

I no longer feel upset about my back telling me I must stop. In fact even when the injury happened, part of me was relieved. Thank god I don’t have to go to work for a week. Extended holidays! :) For the last few years I have felt my life to be way too busy. I have been wanting to slow down but I haven’t been able to make that happen. There has always been so much to do, I simply haven’t given myself the time to slow or stop. And now my body has told me in no uncertain terms that it is time to slow down. And part of me is actually relieved that this has happened. All the self-prescribed ‘to do tasks’ suddenly have waned in importance.

Over the last week I have had time to play guitar, and catch up with friends and family (even if this was mostly electronically). Another immediate outcome has been my walking pace has reduced dramatically. And walking slower I must admit has its benefits. I take so much more of the world in! I see more, hear more and also observe at how fast a pace everyone else seems to be zooming around town. Where I felt myself to be in a rush to get to the next task, I now take my time and don’t care if I don’t get everything done on my to do list.

What’s important is that I make time for all my interactions to play out naturally, without a sense of urgency. And while my housemate joked that I have turned into an old man, it is kind of true, I have been moving exactly like an old man with arthritic back pain would; and it’s put me in that old man’s shoes. I now have so much more sympathy for the suffering that chronic injuries bring with age!

The sharp ridge of the Thumbs. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

The real risk will come when my back starts feeling better and the temptation will be to think my back is healed and I am good to start doing silly adventures again. But the reality will be that my lower back will be in a susceptible state for months, if not years. So this particular malady will bring with it the remedy of having to adapt my mindset, one that is less goal oriented and more focused on living simply, without a severe desire to perform and achieve. After the tribulations of our trip, I am so content to simply be able to go to the shops and be able to buy some fruit mince pies if that is my wish. To have my toes constantly warm, and to have access to unlimited snacks.

The first week of my injury has been tough; but now my mindset is shifting. I no longer see my inability to do the usual things a set back. It is an opportunity to remedy the state of busyness that my life before my trip entailed. It is time to slow down and focus on the simple gifts that every day brings with it.

-A.S. 29/11/25, Brushy Creek.

Effects of fire on ridge. Pentax MX, Kodak Image Pro 100, Sep 2025.

PS: I’m hoping to start sharing photos and stories from our recent trip to the South-West from next week onward. My film has been processed and I have received some, if not all of my scans. Stay tuned.

The South-West of Tasmania

“Those who drink from the buttongrass water, always return.”

-Deny King

Thwaites Plateau, Eastern Arthurs, Olympus Em-1, 2016.

Dear Melting Billy Readers,

My humble apologies for my absence and the lack of posts for the last two weeks. Since I started sending out the weekly posts about five years ago, I really haven’t missed that many. It is a weekly commitment which I take seriously, so you all know you can wake up on a Sunday and find the Melting Billy post there in your inbox at six am.

When I go on trips I usually schedule my posts in advance to make sure the posts still go out. This time I did go on a trip but life just got a little bit too busy in the lead-up for me to write two extra posts. Hence the interrupted service. But now I have returned, the schedule will resume as per usual.

A famous tree. Olympus Em-1, 2017

Dan Haley, Quartzite cliff in mist, Olympus Em-1, 2016.

One of my favourite places in the world is the South-West of Tasmania, and it was here that I was fortunate enough to visit over the last three weeks. Please note that the photos in this post I have taken years ago; my film from my trip I have just sent off to get developed; with some luck I will have some photos ready for you starting from next week.

The South-West seems to me to be a land of its own. On some of the first maps, the large blank spot was simply marked as ‘Transylvania’. It is a place that is unforgiving and also infinitely generous. It is a place that is not to be taken lightly, yet it gets under your skin and draws you back once you have been there, time and time again. It is a vast and open landscape, with countless mountains, buttongrass plains, and ancient forests sheltering along its waterways.

The details of our packrafting trip I will save for future posts; enough to say it was a difficult but highly rewarding trip, which took me across the South-West from one end to the other and allowed me to visit a whole array of places I have never been to before.

That is all I have for you for now, but more will come.

I hope you are all keeping well.

Yours Truly,
Andy Szöllősi

22/11/2025, Brushy Creek

Pandani Grove, NE Ridge, Mt Anne. Olympus Em-1, 2016.

Then the rain came

The wind blew
Then the wind stopped.
Rain came, a silent blanket
The birds sang, rejoiced.

Clacking currawongs
gather in the trees
bring back memories
of the highlands.

Big round boulders
Crusted in lichen,
Spindly snowgums
Bowing down with snow.

The cold harsh winter
Fades to memory
As the flowers bloom,
And the young are born
… to be raised.

-A.S. 22/10.2025, Brushy Creek

Snow peppermints, cutting grass. Hasselblad 500C/M, Ektar 100, Sep 2025.

Snow Peppermints, Hasselblad 500C/M, Ektar 100, Sep 2025.

Snow peppermint starting life. Hasselblad 500C/M, Ektar 100, Sep 2025.

The good life

“…freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.”

-Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.175

View from Trestle Mt, Hasselblad 500C/M, Ektar 100, May 2025.

There are two ways to make money last. You can earn more or spend less. Some people take pride in earning more and being able to spend more. Some people take pride in earning little and spending even less. Both ways are viable modes of existence. But which way leaves one with more freedom to do as one pleases?

I guess the answer to that question could be debated at length.

Rainforest Detail, Mt Snowy North, Hasselblad 500CM, Ektar 100, July 2025.

The more we want, the busier we get. The older I get, the more I appreciate the quiet days, without anything particular to do. Perhaps this is partially because I experience those days less and less. When did life get so busy? Responsibilities, roles, obligations, they all kind of build as we go through life. And I don’t even have children!

When I was younger my idols were always strong men who were able to do seemingly supernatural feats. Rock climbers, performers, talented people with an extraordinary ability. These days, my role models are my friends who are raising kids and living a balanced life. Honestly, in this day and age, just to be part of society and live a ‘normal’ life without going mad is quite the accomplishment! The pressures of the modern age are mounting and things are going to get tougher before they get easier.

As for the young, the children and the next generation… I am excited to see who they become, and what they will bring into the world. We need a change of mindset when it comes to the powers that govern and the young are the future.

Let’s see what it brings.

-A.S, Sandy Bay, 18/10/2025

Rainforest Trees, Mt Snowy North, Hasselblad 500CM, Ektar 100, July 2025.

Dry's Bluff

“I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.”

- Plutarch, Cato the Younger

Scree Slope. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, Aug 2025.

Chockstone. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, Aug 2025.

Hovering Branch. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, Aug 2025.

Over the midlands. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, Aug 2025.

A memo for the future...

I awoke before dawn
To ask the moon about the night
Hear the winds whisper?
Water ripples, and I write.

I sit here in an empty room,
Clear of all foreboding forces of nature
No wind, no rain, no cold
I am comfortable and totally alone.

My screen stares back at me
Another blank face,
My furniture stands
Unwilling to share seats.

I catch the train
One million headphones
Play one billion songs,
To me one voice whispers, yours.

We create an environment
To protect what we value
We lock it up so tight
If it cannot breathe,
If it cannot see,
If it cannot feel
it will waste away;
Misery.

Mystery we seek
On faraway hidden hills,
Far above the roads and ruins
Civilizations may crumble.

But oh the mountains will stand
Tall with precipitous slopes
Forbidden hopes
Knots tied in ropes
Hope is all but lost.

Remind, remember
Do not forget!
Within you lies
The universe and
Consciousness.

-A.S., 20th of February, 2016.

Early Morning. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, August 2025.

Clearing Fog. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, August 2025.

Icing on the cake. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, August 2025.

Flares. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, August 2025.

'The Secret'

“Love is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love.…the essence of love is to ‘labour’ for something and to ‘make something grow’; love and labour are inseparable. One loves that for which one labours, and one labours for that which one loves.”

-Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Frozen Pineapple Grass. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, July 2025.

‘To be responsible means to be able and ready to ‘respond’… The loving person responds… Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation… To respect a person is not possible without knowing him: care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge… There are many layers of knowledge: the knowledge which is an aspect of love is one which does not stay at the periphery, but penetrates to the core.”

-Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Snowy Snowy North. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, July 2025.

“The basic need to fuse with another person so as to transcend the prison of one’s separateness is closely related to another specifically human desire, that to know the ‘secret of man’… There is one way, a desperate one, to know the secret: it is that of complete power over another person: the power which makes him do what we want, feel what we want, think what we want; which transforms him into a thing, our thing, our possession. The ultimate degree of this attempt to know lies in the extremes of sadism, the desire and ability to make a human being suffer; to torture him, to force him to betray his secret in his suffering…

The other path to knowing the ‘secret’ is love. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I ‘know’ nothing… Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest. In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both. I discover man.”

-Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Then there are other secrets… such as the secrets of the South-West… Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, July 2025.

The Big Plan

“We are part and parcel of the big plan of things. We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular notion of the infinite. And what we absorb of it makes for character and what we give forth, for [our art].”

-Rockwell Kent

Crooked stump, Mt Snowy North. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, July 2025.

Lichen detail. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, July 2025.

Twisted limbs. Pentax MX, Cinestill 50D, July 2025.