Marooned in the Arthurs
When things go wrong, they can go really wrong, as Chris Newman tells the sorry tale of a gastro-hit traverse of Tasmania’s challenging Western Arthurs.
(This review originally featured in Wild #193, Spring 2024)
Could they helicopter us out sitting on the fly-out pod toilets?” I wondered. “That might be the cleanest option for both us and our rescuers.” We were stuck in Tasmania’s incredibly scenic—and unfortunately for us, spectacularly gut-wrenching—Western Arthurs, deep in the process of getting to know those 1-star fly-out toilets better than anyone in Arthurs’ history. We had, at that stage, already spent two full days marooned in 35°C heat, forced to drink muddy water out of a tiny soak. There had also been double-ended gastro action, fevers, and debate about activating the PLB. Toilet paper had, of necessity, been scrounged from other parties.
But that was in the past. Still to come was the ignominy of being overtaken by a 71-year-old hiker who told us we moved so slowly that, from a distance, we looked like high-altitude climbers battling up Everest. Still to come was a tent-flattening rainstorm, and our struggle back to the trailhead on only electrolytes and a muesli bar each. And still to come was my furious ditching of a half-cabbage that, despite my weakened state, I’d thought a good idea to lug around.
Cut back to a week earlier. In what perhaps should have been a warning of things to come, I take a group photo at Scotts Peak Dam trailhead before we set off. My digital ‘tough’ camera clicks … and goes blank. We haven’t even left the car park, and the flip-up screen is kaput. The camera still takes photos though; I just can’t see them, and so the images of the rest of the trip—including the ones you see here—will have to be taken film-style, in that I won’t know how (or if) they come out until after I get home.

Our plan is to do the classic Western Arthur Range traverse at a pleasurable pace, with two days’ spare as backup. Our trio consists of trip leader Sam, an experienced Tassie bushman now separated from his native state and living on the mainland; Jezza, my best mate with an Olympic physique from his work as a landscape gardener in Hobart; and myself, from Adelaide. We spent our teenage years hauling 25kg rucksacks loaded with soft drinks and cookies through the Flinders Ranges and Victorian Alps with a youth group. Having learned a thing or two (or nothing) since, we still, in our late twenties, take the same approach to trip catering. Somebody near the trailhead reminds us that the Arthurs are more fun with a lighter pack, but it’s too late; besides, I’ve already packed the half-cabbage, which is the usual treat for lunch.

The tall gums of Junction Creek get closer, and we stumble upon a park ranger straddling a log above the creek. It’s the only decent log within twenty metres, and we’ll need it to reach the campsite. The ranger is keen—and I mean poop-in-a-tube keen—to know every detail about our plan to cross the Arthurs, and won’t let us over the log until he’s satisfied we’ll make it out of the mountains alive. I feel babysat. Sam and Jezza tell me later that they found it informative.
It’s the middle of summer, and Junction Creek is near-full tent capacity, with some dudes bathing nude in the creek right next to the ranger’s log. Maybe that should have been another warning. We move on, fending off dragonfly-sized mossies to find a place to camp among the trees.

Over the next few days, we grunt up the 800 vertical metres of Alpha Morain, relax a night each at Lakes Cygnus and Oberon, and giggle when, at Square Lake, we too get caught skinny-dipping. The weather is great; cloudless blue skies—we’re lucky—and in the sun, it must be 30°C or more. Apart from #regrets about our heavy packs, the trip is going well indeed …
It goes rapidly downhill, however, when my energy starts to falter ascending Mt Capricorn. I assume my body is merely bargaining for a post-lunch siesta, so I continue pushing through the scrub to the campsite on High Moor.

Somebody warned us that water would be difficult to get here—their exact words were: “You’ll be drinking from a muddy puddle.” Sam and I go off searching for the puddle while Jezza prepares dinner: a fiery curry with rice, which is very inappropriate after a day of sweltering hiking.
“Now it’s really not looking good. I swear all night in a foetal bundle with fever dreams and hot flushes.”
I wolf down my portion of curry, but soon after dinner, something doesn’t feel right. Is that my stomach? I sprint the exact distance of ‘not-far-enough’ metres from camp before projectile vomiting the entire meal into a bush next to the boardwalk. “That’s not good,” I think. “Hopefully the curry was just too hot.” Returning to the others, I say, “Guys, I might have picked something up. Let’s see how it goes in the morning.” We then enjoy the sunset together. Suddenly, though, I need the amenities. Now it’s really not looking good. I sweat all night in a foetal bundle with fever dreams and hot flushes. The zipper on my sleeping bag glows molten-red as I vacate the tent at full speed, running desperately to the pod toilet again and again.

The next morning, it’s clear we won’t be going anywhere with me in this state. Jezza and Sam indulge themselves exploring nearby peaks, while I lay all day inside the tent to avoid the sun. Fire sporadically shoots from both ends, until my insides feel like I’ve been ab-crunching at the gym on a gutful of Fireball whisky. Going for a chunder, one of my lowest points comes when I’m struck by the impossibility of multitasking on a pod toilet. I’m forced to holler across the Moor: “Jezza! Get me a fresh pair of undies.”
In the early evening, just as I’m perking up, Jezza dashes off down the boardwalk. Sam and I find him half an hour later, hunched over in a gully, alternating between chucking his guts and gazing forlornly into the mountains. As we approach, he looks up through watering eyes. “Sorry fellas, it got me too.” He’s soon probably wishing we hadn’t had such a blazing curry the night before. Now we are two squatting, one standing, at High Moor—arguably the most difficult-to-access camp on the Arthurs’ traverse, with a decent few days’ scrambling to get out in either direction.

It’s the morning of Day Six. Other walkers depart early to avoid the heat, and High Moor becomes our deserted tent shanty for a second day. Jezza has had a rough night and is completely knackered. I regain some energy, and try to walk with Sam to reconnoitre the Tilted Chasm; I retreat almost immediately, cheeks-a-clenchin’. Time passes slowly, and our trio enters full marooned mode in the alpine sun, laying prostrate under tarps rigged up for shade.
It may sound strange, but hopefully Jezza and I have gastro; I say hopefully, because we don’t want it to be anything more sinister. We spend the day brainstorming the cause. The High Moor drinking puddle? No, too soon after we arrived. Pollution in one of the lakes on the range? We were filtering and tabletting everything. The curry dinner? Unlikely. And that wouldn’t explain why only me and Jezza have been struck down, but not Sam.

Through the fog of my fever, a memory emerges of the park ranger lamenting to us about all the toilet paper he’d been picking up near Junction Creek. Jezza and I hadn’t treated our drinking water there; we’d filled our bottles from a spot we judged as sufficiently upstream of the campsite. Sam had tabletted all his water from the start. That must be it! But while it’s our fault, and we should have taken more precautions, we suddenly feel much less amicable towards overcrowding on Tassie’s walking trails in general, and at Junction Creek in particular.
Now the question is whether to stay put and wait to recover, or to bail as soon as possible. Jezza and I are struggling to stand, let alone scramble over the infamously steep Beggary Bumps. But Sam could catch whatever bug we’ve got from us, given our limited ability to hand wash properly with soap; alcohol sanitiser, as we found out later, isn’t too effective against gastro. (Ed: I didn’t know this either! But I’ve researched it, and it’s true.) And if we stay, while we’ve brought extra back-up days of food—in any case, Jezza and I won’t be eating much—the poor water source at High Moor isn’t ideal, especially with the hot weather. And, at our new rate of usage, supplies of toilet paper and electrolytes are running uncomfortably low.

“Tassie residents get the chopper ride for free,” Jezza declares. I don’t know if this is true, but pressing the PLB’s rescue button plays on our minds as we lay baking in the sun. Then Sam finds a mobile signal. It’s an odd feeling, being stuck in a remote place but able to contact family and friends. I can’t decide if I like the connection or not: It’s a chance to find sanctuary in the digital realm, but eventually we have to face the reality of being sick and stuck.
“Jezza and I curse every crushing kilogram in our rucksacks, clench our sphincters, and buckle in for a sufferfest.”
Our parched, desert-island brains start to dream up some fantastic ideas. Sam comes close to patenting a method of dehydrating beer for hiking, a kind of beer-Berocca tablet which you drop into a cup of icy mountain water. This sounds like the best thing I’ve ever heard.

In the late afternoon, a big university group arrives, closely followed by two hardy Victorians, Tess and Sally, who squeeze in next to us on the tent platforms. We alert them to our predicament; they graciously offer gastro-stop tablets and toilet paper. With all these new people around, rushing to the amenities feels more embarrassing than before; I preferred solitary shanty camp.
As we greet a third night at High Moor, I’m surprised how quickly my mental resolve has deteriorated. A disconcerting mixture of fear and boredom grips me, and I feel the need to get hiking again as soon as possible, if only to regain some control. The constant uncertainty—bail, or stay and wait to recover—is exhausting. We make a final decision, based on when Jezza and I got sick, that tomorrow is our best chance to get off the range before we almost inevitably infect Sam.

Overnight, the fine weather that’s blessed us so far is chased away by a furious wind. When daylight comes, I poke my head outside the tent to find the campsite completely fogged in. A rain squall blasts through. The stronger gusts must be 150km/h, and are blowing the neighbouring tents flat. I look over to see the shape of Sam, still inside his tent, holding the collapsed frame and fabric off his face. It’s tempting to stay in the warmth of the sleeping bags, but we have to leave High Moor today. Morale is low. We don’t want to spend another two days marooned here if Sam gets sick. So we pack up the tents with freezing hands and bail.
Sustenance for the day involves trying to hold down a soggy Cadbury Favourite, plus a sip of electrolytes. Jezza and I curse every crushing kilogram in our rucksacks, clench our sphincters, and buckle in for a sufferfest. Thankfully the rain eases, and with temps in the low 20s, there’s less risk of dehydration. Not far from High Moor, we descend into the Tilted Chasm, where someone shouts up at us, “Are you the Gastro Brothers?” Word of our plight has spread across the range.

Reaching the Beggary Bumps, Jezza is imbued with a rush of energy (probably from the chocolate-only diet) and powers away in front. Sam stays with me. We succumb to a leisurely pace, and are overtaken by—as he proudly tells us—a 71-year-old walker, who says that from a distance we looked like climbers battling up Everest. To justify our speed, we introduce ourselves as the Gastro Brothers and he replies, “I never take a bottle to drink from when I’m in Tassie. Just dip my mug in and off I go.” My insides grumble; surely that’s not true. And by “mug”, does he mean an enamel cup, or like, his head? I picture him in a TV commercial: ol’ Guts of Steel, a twinkle in his eye as he sips the water straight out of Junction Creek—“Mmm, that’s the good stuff”.
We reach Haven Lake, tonight’s camp, and I realise the entire half-cabbage is still in my pack. Earlier in the trip we’d drawn on a face with a sharpie, and Carl the Cabbage had become the honorary fourth member of our group. But Carl weighs at least a kilo; we’ve barely eaten any of him, and I’ve carried him for six days. I throw him onto the track in disgust. “You can’t leave Carl there,” says Sam, and puts the cabbage in his pack. Later on, Jezza visits the dunny and returns laughing but slightly shaken. “I looked down and Carl was looking right back up at me!” Sam had jettisoned our beloved brassica into the pod toilet.

In the morning, we hold down a muesli bar each for breakfast, and continue the slog. The walk out almost breaks me and Jezza, and ultimately gives us chronic-fatigue symptoms for most of the year to follow. At the saddle, Sam receives a text from a local friend: “Need help or will you get out OK?”
“He could bring us a pub dinner!” I say. I’m only half joking. We could wait a night on the plains, and Sam’s mate could walk in with good food and more electrolytes. “But do we genuinely need help?” asks Sam. Jezza looks towards the horizon and says stoically, “Let’s just go as far as we can today. I’ll be alright.” Tess and Sally, who we shared a tent platform with during our darkest hours at High Moor, overtake us and offer a multi-course dinner with wine if we make it out to the trailhead tonight. The decision is made: march/struggle onwards, and reassess at Junction Creek.

The adventure gods bless us with blue skies and light winds. Jezza digs up energy out of nowhere and roars away again. I finally arrive at Junction Creek, slightly ahead of Sam, and find Jezza relaxing with his boots off, strapping a blister. I ditch my pack, dig out some scroggin, hear a rumbling, and watch as Sam powers straight past us, leaving a cloud of dust and mosquitoes in his wake. He flies over the log creek-crossing, and vanishes into the undergrowth with a muffled “Meet you at the car, boys.”
“We’re stopping here!” shouts Jezza, and turns to me. “We’re in this together, he has to consult the group.”
“Doesn’t think he’ll make it out unless he keeps going now,” I answer. The thought of another night sick in the tent without any appetising food, trapped here at Junction Creek—the origin of our woe—isn’t appealing to me, either. We push on. The final, brutally long hours are a blur. I stumble on tree roots and chicken wire lifting from the well-worn boardwalk over the buttongrass plains. My singular focus is making it to our Camry parked at the trailhead. How much further?

Emerging from the forest at the trailhead car park is glorious. We drive around to nearby Edgar Dam campground, and meet up with Tess and Sally who have wine and mi-goreng noodles as promised; decadence compared to what we’ve been forcing down over the past four days. And just like that, our unexpected marooning on the Arthurs is over. Sam never ends up coming down with the bug, but a few weeks later catches gastro anyway from the smaller folk in his family. For Jezza and me, it takes twelve months before we truly return to full health. Tassie water now seems a little less friendly than in the past, but we’re already planning a redemption trip. Next time, though, we’ll use that water filter.

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