Too late now to sweat the petty things…
The train pulls out of Kingston station in Canberra. Blackberry bushes, graffiti, and saplings pushing up between the rusting rails of a disused line. I’ve chosen it over flying for a number of reasons. Partly a distaste for the pseudo-fascist theatre of airport security, party a distrust of baggage handlers, and partly the unlikely romance of diesel and steel. I can’t remember the last time I took an interstate train. Maybe right after high school when I spent a couple of months travelling between friends’ houses around the country.
The long anticipation of this walk has resurrected the ghosts of a number of old memories. It will take me over Mount Kosciusko, which at the age of ten was the first hike I recall ever doing. When I was about seventeen, I accompanied my dad and a handful of his friends for four days through the Razor-Viking wilderness, across such memorably named peaks as Crosscut Saw, Mount Desperation and Mount Buggery. They were raising money for a local hospital and cursed through every minute of it. I was a bright-eyed Explorer Scout tagging along on just another hike. I don’t remember being particularly struck by the area’s natural beauty at the time, having at that age little context for appreciation.
I think I was aware then that the 100km stretch we walked was part of a longer track. How much longer, I would not find out until much later. The Australian Alps Walking Track is a six-hundred-and-mumble kilometre macaroni necklace of footpads, trails, tracks, fire trails, bitumen, overgrown memories and tractless wilderness that weave their way along the highest parts of the continent, starting in the outdoor heritage museum crammed into a narrow valley that is Walhalla, and pathologically avoiding civilisation as much as possible (excepting Hotham and Thredbo) as it makes its way to the southern outskirts of Canberra. It gains and loses somewhere in the vicinity of 30,700 metres, a number so mind-bogglingly meaningless that I am bound by tradition to point out that this would be the equivalent of going from sea level to the top of Everest and back three and a half times. I have it in good authority that this is a lot. Snow and below freezing conditions are possible at any time of year. In late spring and early summer (the most popular time to go) it’s possible to have days nearing 40°.
I pulled everything out of my pack this morning, then put it back in. I ditched some food as a last minute concession to spinal fortitude. Final pack weight (with six days of food, and without water) was 13.85kg. Could be worse. Could be better. Most of the others I’ve met lately have lighter packs. But then, none of them will be spending each night softly cocooned in the warm embrace of a hammock.
I resisted the urge to run, panicked, into a camping store at the last minute and buy new gloves and other crap I don’t need. We pack our fears, as they say. I’m hoping to jettison some of mine by the time I get to my first accommodation at Hotham, and the one third mark.
