Pawenyapeena (Spring); Lake Belton, Tasmania

And winter only just turned over on that man-made bureaucracy known as a calendar as we set off walking for two nights and three days of sanity saving spring sunshine - finally, a three day forecast of no rain; clear skies. It is spring; technically, and, I’ll come back to that later.

The aim of this trip is to introduce two new awildland team members to the world of wild places. Blue and Yella are secondhand packrafts purchased months earlier. They have been waiting patiently in the garage as winter cold fronts have swept, one after the other, over the Tasmanian mountains. They’ve heard rumours of snow camping and frozen boots. They’ve seen the awildland team returning wet to the bones. They’ve glimpsed photos of white-capped mountains and ice-covered tarns. Now it’s spring. This is to be their maiden voyage. We choose something simple for this first adventure, and, it turns out something totally sublime.