I am new to bushwalking in the Baw Baw National Park but loving it. After four BTAC/Friends of Baw Baw track maintenance events on the AAWT over the last two years, I decided to do a trial run of 6 days and 5 nights from Walhalla to Stronachs (Food drop) and back to Baw Baw for pickup carrying my pack instead of a brushcutter or hedgetrimmer, which had become my norm. The weather was glorious late autumn, with only a little rain on one night, though the nights were long and cold. The tracks are so easy to walk along given all the work done by the volunteer groups. I had been warned about the leeches coming out of O’Sheas Mill camp, and managed to remove most of them, but a few got me good, one behind my ear and one on my upper thigh. I had a Garmin Inreach for keeping in contact with family and in case of any emergencies. I didn’t see anyone else on the track, from Sun afternoon (day walkers at Mushroom rocks) to my exit at Baw Baw on Thursday afternoon.
I had one incident that those who have done track maintenance near Whitelaw Hut Ruins around April this year can relate to: At Whitelaw’s there is a number of nice flat spots to pitch your tent around the ruins, with easy access to Mount Whitelaw Creek, which we put in in April. This is a beautiful stream for water. So, I chose the nicest one and setup there.
The night was windy but not overly so, around about midnight I awoke to a horrible CRACK of a tree breaking and thought that is …. close, no time to do anything other than let out a guttural scream and think that if this falls on me I am a goner. I reached for my headlamp that I keep in a small pocket on the roof of the tent, but couldn’t find it. With a bit more searching I realised that the side of the tent had collapsed. Not wanting to get out of the tent to investigate, I thought that it could wait till the morning. Rising the next morning I surveyed the destruction. While I was about 15m from the trees, thanks to the domino effect, I had a very lucky escape.  I assume one tree fell and took the other with it, as they are very close together up there. The top skinny part got the tent, ripped a hole in the fly, severely bent a pole and sheared off one of the metallic triangular pole joiners. I don’t think the size of the tree was big enough to be life threatening but in the middle of the night it was a very scary experience.
The moral of this tale is to carefully chose your camp site taking into account the possible risks. Which I did do. How many people, as part of their risk assessment, consider the domino effect of one tree onto another?
Mike Grimes