Mount rufus circuit

It’s the big long hike day . We met at 7 am in Larry and Jai’s room for breakfast, then met again at 8am for the Mount Rufus circuit at lake St Clair which the sign post said took 7 hours. Jai expected it to take 9 hours and we rocked up at the visitor centre after 8.5 hours! The elevation was 2500ft and the distance 12.7 miles. What a day! The ascent was 4 hours with parts of it steep climbing over roots and boulders. Parts of it had wooden walkways over water and bog. The scenery changed from gigantic native pines and beeches to above the treeline. To wonderful mosses and lichens and endemic alpine flowers(single daisies) , and pink flowers on a stalk called trigger flowers, and many other wonderful species of plants. We saw a black tiger snake. Larry snd Jai took turns to lead with the other going last with Adrian and I in the middle. Much of it was in pairs as I was a bit slow, rather than the four of us together, which was fine, and we had interesting conversations about their knowledge about Tasmania snd their personal lives… Larry is from Zimbabwe and left when he was age 10. Jai is from a very large family and has a very loving brother. Jai told me a good rhyme.. sedges have edges, grasses have arses and reeds are round. And a good joke. The fungi had to move house as there wasn’t mushroom!