Author Archives: freestateofjen

Three Year Anniversary

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I walked 375km from Mt Perry to Toowomba in 2016 and my awesome friend just reminded me that today is the three year anniversary of my arrival. I did that hike to raise money for a brain cancer research program run by the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane. I’ve written a book about the hike called One Foot After the Other. Hopefully it’ll be available for purchase in the first half of 2020.

Me arriving in Toowoomba in 2016

I learnt some pretty cool shit on that hike. Mostly that it’s ok for stuff to be hard, and there’s no reason to be worried about being scared because although fear might feel like crap, fear itself can’t actually hurt you.

Another interesting thing I learnt is that everything in the bush sounds about a thousand times bigger than it actually is and a thousand times closer than it actually is, especially at night. So, you might hear this giant crashing right next to your tent, but if you were to go outside and investigate you might see a baby echidna making its way through the undergrowth about ten mentres away. Ohhh, cute, you might say, but right before that you imagined that a team of velociraptors were closing in because that’s what it sounded like. This happened to me here:

Campsite at Bum Bum creek in 2016.

Here I imagined all kinds of scenarios including a dairy-turned-drug lab-turned-people smuggling racket, an Aussie Fargo and killer ants. All of this because the driveway to a dairy was nearby, but not as close as I imagined it to be. All of this because I heard a chainsaw start up right near my tent, but it was actually probably more than a kilometre away (I certainly couldn’t see it from where I was camped) and all of this because about six big ants got on my tent.

Other campsites have their own stories, like having to sleep between two “murder dungeons” and at another place, braving an infestation of mice and the associated shit, then at a hotel, having to put my sleeping bag on top of the covers of the bed because it looked like the sheets had NEVER been changed, and not being able to say anything about it because I’d been given the room for free.

It was all pretty interesting because I had no way to know what to expect at the next campsite, especially if it was a spot where I knew I’d come across other people. For example, I met the self-proclaimed Messiah, who was also an alien and on the run from the cops at one location, the World’s Biggest Whinger at another and was kidnapped in a friendly way from the side of the highway at yet another. I ate homemade pizza with a family I’d never met before and at another family’s home, played with their five children when they arrived home from school.

Rural view in 2016. I’m pretty sure this was from the rail trail on the way to Kingaroy

I don’t know why, but I thought that the 450km hike I’m about to set off on would be much the same as the 2016 hike, at least in terms of logistics, but it’s not. I’ve had to change everything around about sixteen billion times and am still trying to find places to stay at a couple of the locations. Not only that, I have to keep coming off the trail for various reasons, which isn’t something I did at all in 2016, which makes me feel like I’m cheating, even though I’m not because I get dropped off right back where I was picked up.

The closures of the Fraser Island Great Walk and the Cooloola Great Walk have presented the biggest challenges because that’s how I was meant to get to the Sunshine Coast to avoid the hiway. I’ve worked a way around it, but it’s not as interesting as doing the two walks along the coast. It’s a 90km loop from my house. Ooooh, exciting:

You: What did you see?

Me: The same sand I see every day of the week.

You: Then what?

Me: The same road I drive on twice a week to get into Bundaberg

You: And then?

Me: Well, that’s it because I was back home after 90km of boring-ass crap!

I should have been seeing perched lakes, like Lake McKenzie and sand blows like Carlo Sand Blow. Ohhh, poor me.

It’s less than a week until I leave: the 17th of September. It’s come around so fast because it’s been so much work to organise. The walking part is the easy part, it’s the other stuff that seems to be neverending. I can’t imagine what it must be like to work out the logistics of a long hike in a country that you’ve never been to where you don’t have friends to help out.

Viva Activa

 

 

 

Me and the Food

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Today I spent eight hours getting the food packed up and organised for my brain injury hike. 

This is a typical ration for one day:

Some of the meals have dried vegetables in them and then there’s the dried fruit. The fruit and veggies went from this:

To this:

Then it all ended up looking like this:

Packing up the food isn’t my favourite thing. I get quite anxious over it. I’m not running around with my arms flailing about, knocking into walls while crying and screaming or anything, but I do worry about getting it exactly right (I can’t handle the thought of having to go without my dinner!) That’s not at all helped by the high fire danger in just about all the areas I’ve planned to walk in. I’ve had to remap the route twice due to national parks getting closed to walkers due to the high fire danger. It was kind of annoying, well, a lot annoying, but at least I had enough time to plan alternatives and I haven’t lost my shit at all yet, which is pretty damn awesome! I did almost start crying the other day when three people in a row, who were your basic big ol’ meanies, were really mean to me when I asked for their help about camping, but then I met someone nice, who was happy to help me, so I got over being upset about the three big ol’ meanies. My idea of a big ol’ meanie is probably not your idea of a big ol’ meanie, but if you read this post, you might get where I’m coming from.

From adventure it begins

 

 

Bik pla bagarup

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Tok pisin for a major bugger-up.

Bik pla bagarup on Fraser Island: ACCESS DENIED due to fire hazard until the 5th of October. I was so, so, so excited when I got this message from QPWS today. I was jumping for joy because it wasn’t like my entire charity hike was depending on me being able to complete this section of the route or anything. POO BUM WEE X 100.

Now I really do have to go the long way around through Maryborough and on to Rainbow Beach. It’s around an extra 15km, so not too bad I guess if the distance matters, which it doesn’t, it’s the other things that mattered, well, to me anyway. I imagined swimming in lakes, relaxing at a nice campsite and having access to endless water. I’ll have to drive ahead now and waypoint campsites along the road and leave water ahead of myself. At least much of the road to Rainbow from Maryborough is forestry.

I am really hoping they don’t close the Cooloola Great Walk too because how will I get water if I have to walk along the beach? I can’t carry enough for water for five days. The walkers campsites have watertanks and there are a couple of perched lakes along the way, but there’s nothing like that on the beach. I’m not going to worry about it and when I do, I think of this:

My Nootie on the beach this morning. Nootie also known as March. Nootie is her stealth name, so when she’s in covert operations, she’s invisible because that’s what nooties are; invisible.

Hopefully no more bik pla bagarups are on the cards. This is the kind of shit you just can’t plan for. Ugh 😦

Adventure teaches equanimity

 

 

I tricked it AGAIN!

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I just tricked fakebook again! Am I awesome or what!. I set up a personal fundraiser in response to the request of a few people who said they’d like to help out with my brain injury charity hike expenses:

Camping permits on Great Walks $56
Barge and ferry transfers $50
Train back home $60
Food $200
Fuel for mapping route (2700km – 3 trips) $200
Printed marketing material $150
Plus other bits and pieces
TOTAL: $716

Fakebook won’t allow you to mention certain words when you’ve got a personal fundraiser. There’s no way to know what these words are, you just have to guess or work it out from multiple failed attempts, which is an excellent way to waste half your life. I’d wasted a fair bit of my life by trying to set up a personal fundraiser before, so I thought I could get around the word-based restrictions, but the damn thing picked up on the word ‘charity’, which was on a sign in a photo. WTF!!!!

Anyway, so I tricked it by posting the exact same fundraiser, but I scrubbed out the word charity from the photo. See below.

 

   What’s the difference?

 

Innovation comes by way of adventure

Me and the Road

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I wanted to do something cool today, but couldn’t come up with anything, so I decided to walk to Childers. It was a good opportunity to try out the sign I had made for the back of my pack for the charity hike I’m about to do. I also thought I should re-familiarise myself with hiking along the road.

It was cheating a bit because I got dropped off 16km out from Childers AND the pack only weighed around 10kg. I imagine it’ll weigh at least twice that when I get going on the actual hike. PLUS, I had a chocolate thickshake when I arrived in Childers after only 3.5 hours of walking. .

It’s been three years since I did my last charity hike along the road and man, I’d forgotten how damn terrible walking along the road is! There’s two reasons why it sucks: one is the traffic and the other is the shoulders. The shoulders are nearly always sloping and that makes the going very difficult because even though the slope is only really slight it’s enough to put extra pressure on one side of your body. I don’t have bad knees, even so, this does get to my knees after a bit. There’s nothing I can do about it though, so I just have to suck it up. I can’t do anything about the traffic either. After all, that’s what the road is there for. It’s hard to describe what it’s like until you’ve hiked along the road. It gives you a totally new perspective of being a motorist. Some of the stuff people do on the road is pretty unbelievable. The overtaking is the craziest. It’s for that reason that I try to walk only on the left. I nearly got hit by this crazy overtaking mofo on my last charity hike. You just get to see stuff when you’re walking that you don’t see when you’re driving. Some of it is a real eye-opener!

I didn’t really see anything particularly interesting on the 16km other than a dead bearded dragon. Poor thing 😦 I picked him up and put him in the bush near the road so he wouldn’t get all smooshed up. He’d only just been hit.

I snuck into an avocado farm and walked along the edge of the plantation for a fair way to avoid a section of road with almost no shoulder. I always get scared when I do these cheeky maneuvers  because I don’t want to get into trouble, but no one came out ranting and raving. At least  I’ve got the sign this time. I didn’t have that on the last charity hike I did.

I took this photo because it’s quintessentially Childers; cane bales set to go to fibre production with canefields in background.

While I was walking I got to wondering what it is about hiking that I like. I think the main thing that gets me is that it allows me to rise above all else because when I’m hiking, there is only hiking. I can’t go and do just one more thing (something I do to get past feeling unmotivated), I can’t tell myself that in ten minutes I will go get the washing off the line, send one more email, write 100 more words, and I can’t go and have a little lay down. I just have to keep hiking because that’s all there is. It basically absolves me of all of my responsibilities, which means I don’t worry about anything at all while I’m hiking because what would be the point? Ultimatley, it’s a way to free my mind.

Free your mind by way of adventure