Melanie Ball doesn’t mind having her head in the clouds and her feet in the mud as she heads down Tasmania’s Overland Track.

Mud, mud, glorious mud. There's nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. Or for clogging shoelaces and spattering people behind you. For me it evokes memories of childhood mud pies - fond memories for which I give thanks as I slosh through bogs on the Overland Track.

Snaking 76 kilometres south from glaciated Cradle Valley to Lake St Clair in Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area, Australia's most popular long-distance walk passes through wild and fragile country where misplaced steps leave lasting impressions.

It is not a technically difficult walk demanding triathlete fitness, but the weather is unpredictable and day walks between public sleeping huts can be long for those carrying a week's food and camping equipment. The alternative is to carry just 12 kilograms on an accommodated group walk with Launceston-based Cradle Huts.

It is cold and grey when our guides Dave and Jenni lead us away from a warm minivan in Cradle Valley. Beanies and gloves on, jackets zipped against the wind, we wonder what we've let ourselves in for. Standing on Lake Dove's high rim an hour later, watching Cradle Mountain shed its cloud cover, we realise we are in for something special.

Beyond that jagged, axe-head of a mountain, we tramp along a boarded path into a moody world of metre-tall pencil pines, neon-green cushion plants and summer's last paper daisies. After a chocolate break in 40C and 30-knot wind, we push on into worsening weather that paints the snow gums pink, red and grey. Finally, from thewarmth of Barn Bluff Hut, we watch the scenery disappear completely.

Designed for minimal impact on the environment with maximum comfort, Cradle Huts' five private lodges have drying rooms, hot showers and bunk bedrooms with mattresses (walkers bring sleeping bags). Wood stoves warm the lounges and kitchen and pantry shelves yield the makings of three-course dinners with wine. Our first day on the Track ends with a candle-lit game of Scrabble.

The Overland Track is a crazy pavement. Roots and rocks form natural stairs up forested hills strewn with confetti-like beech leaves. Narrow-gauge boards carry you across exposed button-grass moors into headwinds. We tread firm new duckboards and older ones that rock like rafts on the mud beneath. Only when we have trailed mud into our second hut does the sun pull back the misty curtain and reveal rough-hewn Mount Pelion West (1554m) and Mount Oakleigh (1280m) standing on Pine Forest Moor.

Trees festooned with shaggy yellow banksias act as guards of honour next morning for our descent into the Forth River Valley to Frog Flats. Here we eat lunch under shady beech trees (and mosquitoes eat us) before climbing again up the valley's far side.

Where the thick forest opens onto Pelion Plains, we come to a boardwalk that meanders through a stand of alpine yellow gums. A rustle in the grass stills my feet and I watch a common wombat waddle up to the boardwalk. He sniffs right, left and right again, and crosses two metres ahead.

The boardwalk continues through shrubbery thick with orange, maroon, purple and cerise berries. "Mountain berries and pepper berries are both edible," warns Dave, "but neither are palatable." He is right.

Within minutes of leaving Pelion Hut's shelter on day four, I feel as though I have neither rested the night before nor refuelled - and definitely had one glass of Tasmanian wine too many. The only sounds are heavy breathing and boots striking rocks as we climb up to Pelion Gap.

Pelion Gap is the watershed between the Mersey and Forth rivers. It is also the departure point for people climbing Tasmania's tallest mountain. An optional side trip, the strenuous ascent of 1617-metre Mt Ossa is the highlight of my journey along the Overland Track.

When George Frankland in 1835 gave mythological names to several landmarks around Lake St Clair, he started a trend that other cartographers continued. Apparently, the Titans piled Mount Pelion on Mount Ossa to ease their access to heaven during their war against the gods.

I would welcome a giant's helping hand up Ossa's steep western face. The track climbs 500 almost vertical metres. Or so it appears from below. And so it feels as we start upwards. Scree, then boulders underfoot, jagged peaks and dolerite columns at our fingertips, we lift right foot after left, working thigh and back muscles, knees and lungs.

The spectacle awaiting us on the summit would take my breath away if I had any left. Variegated cushion plants carpet the plateau. Coarser grasses look like pulled threads and mountain gentians like hand-stitched embroidery. Liquid sky fills a small tarn, beyond which stand huge stoney-faced massifs.

Visible from up there are Mount Oakleigh, which we passed the day before and the silver crescent of Hartness Falls drawn through the rainforest where we will bathe in sunshine and battle against sleet tomorrow. And Lake St Clair, on which we will boat two days hence.

The past, the present and the future lie at our feet.

Fact File Cradle Mountain Huts operates 6-day guided walks from November to end of May. Trips cost $1695 per person, inclusive of GST, all meals and chocolate, wine with dinner, lodge accommodation, guides and minibus transfer to/from Launceston. Information/bookings Cradle Huts on ph 03-63312006, fax 03-63315525. For park information ring Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service at Cradle Mountain, 03-64921133, or Lake St Clair, 03-62891172 or visit the website on www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au. Melanie Ball walked the Overland Track as a guest of Cradle Huts.

These articles and many more, are in the current
(14^th edition) of Your Retirement, Your Life.

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