Note
None of us was in a hurry to leave Lochmara (mmm french toast for breakfast, after I had found 11-armed starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and hermit crabs in the rock pools, and seen the sow & her 6 piglets being fed) and first we had to climb to the ridge. Our deadline was the 4pm boat at Anakiwa, probably about 18km distant, but we all ended up independently doing so many side trips (up to the lookout, down through the beech forest into Mistletoe bay, back up the track to where I had left my pack, down into Te Mahia to buy a cold drink because I was getting hot), that we had to hurry the last 11km and didn't have time to stop and swim at the beautiful bluegreen Davies Bay campsite. We got to the end of the Queen Charlotte Track at Anakiwa and posed for photos at 3:35pm, then I turned around to see the boat coming already! Luckily the wharf was only 200m away...
Back in Picton I spent some time watching the Interislander and Bluebridge ferries loading and unloading and was delighted to see that the Interislander even has train trucks on it. This explains why the little shunting engine keeps going back & forth past our hostel which is right on the trainline - it keeps unloading about 6 train trucks at a time, then joining them all up to make a train!
Verdict on the track: It was pretty special and made even more so by being able to stay in nice hotels each night and not having to carry all our gear (thanks heaps to Zara for organising), but I kind of missed being entirely self-sufficient and so I am thinking I'd like to hike the Overland track again some time. Might have to wait till next summer, though. In the meantime, I reckon I will run it in Feb, if nurturing Geoffrey the Broken doesn't take up too much of my time. (I will be quite pleased to see him and Meatloaf the Buckethead - it's okay, only a grass seed in his paw -tomorrow night but by the time we get into Adelaide it will be the equivalent of 1am NZ time so I won't be real communicative at that time!)