Distance: 35kmElevation: +400m -500mTime: 9 hoursTotal Distance: 48.5km Let’s just keep walking? What a beautiful place to wake up. Magpies and kookaburras ring in the dawn chorus along with some less musical but no less joyous ducks. Any morning chill is tempered by how warm it is compared to Canberra. In the light of morning we can see that we’ve camped twenty metres from an idea site with a...
Distance: 13.5kmElevation: +300m -450mTime: 3:00Total Distance: 13.5km Perfectly edible. Not a disappointment. -Robyn’s review of the fish and chips at Lake’s Entrance. [This hike is being done for depression and anxiety. Some awesome people do big walks to raise awareness or funding for organisations combatting mental illness. I’m taking matters into my own hands and cutting out the middle man.]...
Distance: 13kmElevation: +300mTime: 3:40Total Distance: 78km We’re slated for an early 7:30am start, not wanting to be getting home to Canberra too late in the evening and risk kangaroos on the Monaro highway. We’re all packed and standing around ready to go fifteen minutes before that! The cafe at Mallacoota closes early and we’re all keen for some decent food. The track immediately cuts inland...
Distance: 11kmElevation: +150mTime: 4:30Total Distance: 65km Soon after leaving camp we hit a section of flooded track. Monika charges straight in with the confidence of somebody whose shoes will be dry in an hour. I follow, the chilly water coming up to my knees and flowing into my boots, cold wrapping around my toes. I immediately wish I’d taken up her offer of stopping to change footwear for...
Distance: 13kmElevation: +200mTime: 5:40Total Distance: 54km A leisurely 8:30am start to the day’s walking. The condensation was still significant, but not as bad as the previous night. We walk along the beach for a few km under threatening grey skies. Some of the rocky headlands we have to negotiate on this walk are quite challenging, especially with full packs. When we stop for morning tea at...
Distance: 12kmElevation: +200mTime: 6:15Total Distance: 41km Six degrees overnight and the humidity was extreme; even with the hammock’s superior airflow I wake to a tarp wet on both sides and my underquilt damp. A superlative sunrise gives way to clear skies and a docile ocean. More beach walking, which should come as no surprise by this point. After a few km, we leave the beach and attempt to...
Distance: 16kmElevation: +100m The rain came in sheets and waves and gusts through the night, wrenching the trees and blatting on the tarp, petering out to a grey dawn. We head north up the long beach, the incessant wind mercifully at our backs, occasionally sprinkling us with a wind blown shower. After several kilometres of beach we reach Point Hicks. Greg muses that it might be Australia’s...
Distance: 200mElevation: +20m?Time: all bloody day I need a hike. I need a decent hike like a junkie needs a fix. It’s been over two months since Tasmania, and in that time I’ve done one easy overnight hike purely to give a fellow hiker a taste of the hammock life. Luckily I already had a spot secured on Monika’s Croajingalong walk; six days of coastal wilderness in Victoria’s eastern extremity...
Distance: 700kmElevation: +/-30,291m (Coros) +/-17,927m (GaiaGPS)Walking days: 33Average distance/day: 21.2kmAbels: 9Blisters: 0Wet feet: 0Nights on the ground: 0Music: You Belong to Me – Reina Del Cid When you go out there, you don’t get away from it all. You get back to it all. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself. Peter Dombrovskis Why do you go away? So that you...
Distance: 23kmTime: 8:40Total Distance: 700kmMusic: Bic Runga – It’s Over The road goes ever on and onDown from the door where it began.Now far ahead the road has goneAnd I must follow if I can;Pursuing it with weary feetUntil it meets some larger wayWhere many paths and errands meet;And whither then I cannot say. JRR Tolkien Each night I filter four litres of water. Two for dinner and...
Distance: 20kmElevation: +900mTime: 8:15Total Distance: 677km Music: Tom Waits – Long Way Home (again) When you go out there, you don’t get away from it all. You get back to it all. You come home to what’s important. You come home to yourself. Peter Dombrovskis The group that came in late are up an hour before sunrise, their bright headlamps strafing the campsite and forest as they break...
Distance: 17kmTime: 7:30Total Distance: 657km Music: America – Don’t Cross the River I love the fact that we are surrounded by this spectacular natural beauty that routinely strikes us dead. Hikers walk off into the woods and are never seen again. And still we tug on our fleece and skip off into the wilderness, not a care in the world. Chelsea Cain I was woken many times by scurrying...
