Dark and Bruny

Day: 287

Towns / Cities Visited: 190

Countries Visited: 31

Steps Taken Today: 5,724

Steps Taken Around the World: 4,551,043

Another chilly morning was right there to greet us as we packed up our things and tumbled into the car early to get on with another day of adventure. First stop for the morning was Mount Wellington, or Kunyani in the local Aboriginal dialect. Weaving through traffic, we were soon winding our way up the narrow mountain road: the kind of road that makes passing a minibus full of tourists feel like a precision art. Reaching the top without incident, and parking in the large array of spaces at the summit, we wrapped our jackets around us and ventured out. The last time I had been up here, on a holiday to Hobart with my mum almost a decade earlier, it had been utterly freezing and so windy I had to plant my feet purposefully to prevent myself blowing away. As I opened the car door, I realised today was going to be no different. Sometimes I don’t think we really give wind chill factor enough credit for our perception of temperature, and as I looked up at the trig point which marks the summit, it was through squinted, watering eyes. I mean, the fact this place catches the wind is unsurprising, the peak reaches up more than 1200 metres, and its frosty temperature is only reiterated by the fact that there were patches of snow in and around the rocks driving up.