Wow into my fifth week and still a long way to go. It wasn't the best nights sleep as the fire in the pot belly didn't quite work out. It wasn't drawing up the flue well so a lot of smoke went into the hut and subsequently the fire alarm would randomly go off. In the end I had to let the fire go out and sleep in the cold.
Woke up fairly early ie in the dark and packed up. I had read the logbook at the hut and people coming north had mentioned the lovely walk through the Never Never Creek. So with the head torch on I started down the track out of the Forestry area. I hit the start to the creek just on sun up and its not a bad walk following a road through farmland with the creek on the left. Then you walk down the driveway of a farm and I kept looking back to make sure I had read the sign correctly as it appeared to go straight to the farmhouse.
You pass within 20 metres of the front door before dropping down through the creek and out another paddock. Feels funny at 7am passing someones door on a farm no less. Two lambs came racing out to see if I had their morning breakfast I suppose. They abandoned me pretty quickly when they saw I had nothing. The trail then continues to wander down through sheep paddocks following the Never Never Creek which is now just a cleared erosion gully. 
Now this is a fairly uninspiring walk all the way to Bundaleer Weir. There is a campsite here but I was moving onto Spalding. Johnathon and Justin (Two blokes I met at Murray Town) talked about two cows that wander into this campsite and drink from the water tank that has the tap handle on it. They watched as the cow would use its tongue to turn the tap and then slurp the water. Smart enough to turn it on but not that smart to turn it off. The tap was on and the tank was empty. There is another tank with a push tap that slowly turns itself back off automatically. I tried to remove the handle but in this day and age of ultra light hiking who carries a multitool. When I left the camp you cross a bit of a swamp and then hit the road to the Weir. Along the road were these plastic thingies which I worked out were the plastic protection on top of the guide posts along the road. The cows had pulled them off gave them a bit of a chew and spat them on the ground. I picked them up and put them back on the guideposts as I walked past to give them something else to do next time they pass.
I then walked past the Weir proper and onto the bank beside the Bundaleer channel. Another feat of engineering that I haven't been able to find to much about yet but it looks like when the Weir got to a certain level water was released into the channel to take it further east. I was going to follow this channel all the way to Spalding. Whilst the inspiration disappears quickly at least the channel was contoured and the walk whilst long and boring with the wind blowing constantly it was not overly taxing except in length. I walked into Spalding about 3pm and had a Pepsi Max then onto the hotel for a shower, beer and feed. I had a resupply box here and redid the pack for the next leg.
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