This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Written by Margaret Craigie
One sunny Friday in September, a group of fine young lassies (and two honorary ones) caught the ferry with the intention of a wander in the woods.
We got to know each other over a few drinks at the bar...
Feeling quite merry by the time we got to Picton, we exchanged one honorary lassie for another and caught the water taxi to Resolution Bay on the Queen Charlotte Walkway.
Labouring for the 20 minutes or so to the campsite, and noting the lack of colour co-ordination between the flies and our sleeping bags, we spent a comfortable (ie dry) night outside.
Saturday morning promised sunshine for the day ahead, and we dropped our packs back at the jetty for the taxi, took our day-packs and had a rather pleasant stroll through to Furneaux Lodge.
We stopped for lunch and a few beers...
The water was still, the bush was beautiful and the track undulated gently toward Punga Cove. Photos were taken of spring lambs and an old boar that seemed to really enjoy the scratch behind the ear that I gave it. (Almost worryingly so — after drooling, it fell to its knees and then collapsed on it’s side).
Arriving at the campsite, we collected our packs (this time a minute's walk) from the jetty, and cooked up a feed. One brave member of the group volunteered to fend off any possums or other scary monsters that might attack our campsite, and the rest of us took off to Punga Cove Resort and had a few wines to complement our dinner.
Sunday was bright and hot. We left one of our party with the packs at the jetty, and started the final day. There was actually a reasonable distance to cover within a specified time-frame and (albeit small) an amount of uphill included.
Lunchtime arrived — the good news was that our mother hen had discovered that the wekas hadn't stolen his lunch after all,
BUT...
I admit to nearly having a heart attack when I discovered that there was NO PUBLIC HOUSE!!! It is evidently not normal practice within the tramping club to go to the pub at lunchtime! The organiser had failed to have any alcohol helicoptered in, and it just wasn't going to happen! This was an emergency, and there wasn’t even a whisky in the first aid kit.
Lunch finished, toxin levels in Kenepuru Sound were quite high, changing the colour of the water to spectacular greens. Queen Charlotte Sound in comparison was an incredible blue. The sun continued to shine and we walked (still packless) to our end point.
At this stage we faced a dilemma — we were on a saddle with the water taxi down the hill on one side, and the Portage Resort Hotel down the hill on the other. Therefore, whoever was going to get the crates of beer was going to have to carry the stuff back up the hill. Gin-ny and I offered to do so, and we were all in a cheerful mood by the time the water taxi arrived.
Catching the ferry on the way home, we were re-united with our packs and injured party, so we said our farewells over a few beers at the bar...