A while ago I decided to take a new direction in my life and not get another job after I finished up my last entomology contract. That approach sounds like fun, right? But, there are a couple of problems: I like money. I like doing something meaningful with my time. I like being around other people working towards an outcome and sharing in achievements. With this in mind I thought I could perhaps start a very small business. I live at the beach and love riding my fat bike on the beach and on the sand tracks. I’m sure other people would love this too, so the idea of starting up a fat bike hire business arose in my mind.
This is Chow. On an extremely hard ride through the sand to Bundaberg. The seven circles of pedalling hell.
I don’t have a massive amount of capital to invest, so I thought I’d probably start with two or three bikes. I reckon I can do this, I thought. I don’t know a great deal about how to do any of this, so like any other reasonable person I thought I’d start my market research to find out whatever I could. I put a post on the local community fakebook page. This is what I asked, “Do people think a fat bike (pushbike, not electric) hire would work here? They’re bikes for riding on the beach and on the sand tracks. The tyres are from 3.8″ to 5.5″ wide. You can still ride them like a normal bike on roads and gravel too. Thoughts?”
Holy shit balls! It went south pretty fast. The first six responses were level-headed responses with people giving honest and useful feedback about whether they thought it would work or not work, but it was all downhill after that. People started attacking each other’s characters, pasts and motivations. I didn’t get involved in any of the arguments because what’s the point? But I guess it was pretty entertaining if nothing else. It was also really amazing to see how total strangers could formulate opinions of me (and of each other) based on me asking about a bike hire business. Why do people even care about this stuff, I wondered outloud as I watched the comments roll in:
First it’s bikes then it’s scooters, then mini bikes dirt bikes [sic], quads and jeeps and full blown 4X4 The same contributor went on to write, Interpreting from your own words that you clearly don’t get enough of a high from just sitting and enjoying the beach you feel the need to add the “high” of riding a bike along it to make it a better experience for you and now you want to market that artificial high for others to also enjoy because you can make the experience “better” than what nature provides. This person seemed to think that somehow I was going to turn Woodgate into another Gold Coast. Man, I’d love to have that power (I probably would use it for something else other than making a second Gold Coast, maybe equality? Hmm?), but I just don’t, I really don’t have that power. I’m just one person who wants to live a meaningful life. Asking too much? Maybe in this town it is. I just don’t know.
See, the thing is, nature doesn’t belong to us, we belong to nature and we all like to experience our connection with the natural world in different ways. I don’t like to go fishing. Does that mean I’m a bad person or that I think people who fish are bad? No. It just means I don’t like to go fishing, so I don’t do it and then I get on with my life. Problem solved, if there even was a problem to begin with, which there wasn’t because I can’t see the point of catrastophising about unrealistic futures that will never eventuate, like theme parks in Woodgate. Although, I did wonder how the group might react if I put up a post asking their thoughts on a waterslide activity park. That was really tempting, but because I’m not an arsehole I didn’t do it.
There is an interesting peer reviewed article here about how tourism operators can create experiences that result in conservation outcomes. I have a Bachelor of Environmental Science majoring in Ecotourism and understand that if more people are given a way to interact with the natural world it improves outcomes for sustainability and conservation because the more people know about something, the more they can care about it.
I’m not a social researcher or anything, but it does seem to me that people who live here are in a constant state of fear. They all seem to hate anything new, any new business, any new building, any new people moving here. I think they don’t like this stuff because they’re worried that if stuff changes that means there will be less for them. It’s like the equality thing where people who are against equality freak out because they think it’s pie: more for other poeple means less for them, but the thing is, there is no pie. Having more equality and more non-destructive ways to experience nature will only ever mean we get to live better lives.
That is if we can get past this sort of shit:
Clearly nature is not enough for you. You have no foresight [sic] or business planning. Old pricks. Sad old people. Go to a nursing home. Get fixed wombat.
Adopting a more constructive way of seeing the world would help here. Getting out of the echo chambers would help because then everyone could embrace a larger life. Imagine a world where you aren’t held back by your beliefs or need to feel like you are the one who is right ALL the time. We live in reality, not inside fakebook and the internet. We only get one life and we should be living it, not worrying about stupid shit online.
I read a book recently called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. He said in the book somewhere that people have used up over 200 000 human lifetimes by spending time on mindless internet bullshit. Arguing about stupid shit online on inconsequential fakebook community groups is a waste of your life. I just can’t understand why people do it. People really need to read Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
As for me, I’m still not sure about the bike hire business and my role as the Bike Hire Antichrist. I’m tossing up a few other ideas as well. I certainly won’t bother putting any more posts on the local community fakebook group, that’s for sure. So, I’ll keep doing my thing (the artificial high stuff) and it’ll look like some of this:
Chow and cows on a rail trail loop near Toowoomba somewhere.
My original fat bike at Woodgate boatramp. This one was called Fatty.
Sign post from when I walked the 30km round trip to the lighthouse at Double Island Point
Me at Cooloola Great Walk trail head. Yeah, as you can see, I’m a real nature hater.
Last bikepacking trip I did. This bike is called The Can’t Bike because everyone told me, you can’t!. But I did, so sux to be them. The more people tell me I can’t do something, the more likely it is that I will do it.
From the last ento job I had: Soldier fly pupae. I’m not doing this job anymore, but I still like flies, which occur in the natural world and are an important part of all ecosystems. This particular species is native to Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inopus
Halfway along Heidke Road, Woodgate: 1st day, just setting out
This year I decided I was going to start back on adventure. I kind of lost my mojo for it a while back after being diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and the last hike I tried to do felt like my back had snapped in seventeen places. I told myself that if I started bikepacking then the bike was carrying the weight not me, so everything would be solved. Easy. Well…
Just about to head out onto Woodgate Road. There was dead cow just next to this sign with crime scene tape on it. WTF!
I mapped a bikepacking trip from my home in Woodgate, Qld to Ballina in NSW, which would take me 17 days to complete, but after struggling to ride the 58km between the start point and the first campsite I began to question my ability to plan such a long ride. I hadn’t taken into account the difficulty of riding up hills. I’m sure it’ll be fine, I tried to convince myself as I kept riding. Afterall, I’d spent a lot of time mapping everything and organising stops and accomodation all the way down the coast to Byron Bay.
Things started to go sideways early. For a start, I went the wrong way at the end of a road and had to ride all the way back, then when I got back to where I veered off I didn’t know which one of the other two roads I was meant to go down. Luckily I picked the right road, but wasn’t sure until I’d gotten almost all the way to end of it. All of this because of my ridiculous aversion to technology. A small example of this is how I haven’t written a blog post in a few years because I didn’t want to have to face turning this new computer on. I bought it and it’s sat there doing nothing for several years, which means I’ve also done nothing in the way of writing. Another example of my aversion is this:
Paper maps I made from Google Earth images as a form of navigation for an 800Km solo bikepacking trip. It would be great if I could let go of the idea I have of myself of being a neo-luddite.
On the way from Woodgate I stopped in at the Isis River BP and got a cup of tea. I thought I only had a little way to go to get to the road that ran along the railway corridor off Buxton Road, but I totally underestimated how far down the Buxton Road the level crossing was and it felt like I would never get there. I got across the crossing ok, but I was a bit worried about riding through the water because the concrete surface is underwater and all slimy, but it was ok.
Isis River crossing underneath rail bridge. I only found this by looking at tracks as I drive along and going back later to investigate. This track takes you from Buxton Road up into Barretts Road area.
It got bad after this. The road up and out of the crossing is almost vertical and it was so fucking hard to push the bike. It was very close to me not actually being able to push the bike forward, but I couldn’t go back either, so I just had to go one step at time, put the brakes on, take another step, repeat X 100. It was horrible. This wouldn’t be the last time I’d wish for a Steerstopper. The track after the concrete road was all kinds of fucked up, but I was going ok and didn’t think to put the seat down and when I lost balance down a big washout I fell off because I couldn’t reach the ground with my feet. It didn’t really hurt, but I got some skin off my right knee and something jabbed the absolute shit out of my other leg. The worst thing was trying to move the bike out of the fuck up. That was hard. Pushing it all the way up to the road was very hard too and I started to get the shits with the whole thing. What the fuck? I yelled at the scrub repeatedly.
One voice in my head said, just camp anywhere, it’ll be fine, but the other voice said, no, it’s shit, let’s keep going. I started to worry about water, but I found the billabong I knew was in the bush, so it was fine.
First campsite at secret billabong off Barretts Road, Isis
The next day was 47km from the camp at the billabong to Wongi Waterholes campground. I was pretty complacent about this stretch. That would be part of my downfall, but I didn’t know it at the time.
Oh my fucking god!! What a horrendous nightmare! I had a lot of trouble sleeping because it was so cold. My sleeping bag and liner that had always worked a treat in the past didn’t keep me warm at all and I had to get up after a few hours and put extra clothes on. It made no difference though and I was freezing all night long. This is a result of another aversion I had: washing and drying my good Mont down sleeping bag. My Grayl Geopress water filter also wouldn’t work properly to filter the billabong water and I was pissed off I didn’t bring the Sawyer filter as a backup, so I started out with only about 1 litre of water. It’ll be fine. I’ll be at Wongi in no time, I thought.
I rode out to the highway and along the inside of the treeline in the direction of where I thought I had to cross to get onto Broadhurst Homestead Road, but I got scared I’d go too far down the hill then not be able to push the bike up the side of the highway to get across it. I couldn’t see the highway from where I was, but I knew I was only around 80 metres away from it, so to avoid the disaster of getting stuck down the bottom of the hill and having to push the bike all the way back up I pushed it through the trees towards the highway, which was really bloody difficult because it was full of kneehigh grasstrees and fallen logs and jabby sticks. I made it in the end and wasn’t too far from where I had to cross over.
Now the easy stuff will start, I thought because I knew where I was going and the road ahead was nowhere near as difficult as the roads I’d already ridden on after leaving my house. I’m golden, I told myself, but I was pretty wrong, actually I was totally wrong.
It was pretty hard to get through the first gate onto the powerline easment, but I knew that gate was difficult and got through eventually. Things weren’t as easy on the powerline easment as I’d fantasised they would be and I had to get off the bike every 50 or 100 metres to push it up really short, steep hills, which was just as bad as the day before when I almost couldn’t push the bike up the road leading out of the river crossing, but probably worse because there were what seemed like hundreds of these hills and they kept coming and coming. I couldn’t remember it being this hard when I’d done it in the past, but told myself I must’ve glorified the last trips I’d done.
What actually happened was at some point I’d migrated onto the wrong easment. There are two that run parrallel to each other, but due to my neo-luddite tendancies, had no way to know if this is what I’d done. It’s fine because although they diverge, they converge again at where the powerlines meet the forestry, so no big deal, I reminded myself and started to relax a bit. Except they didn’t because I ended up at a gate that I hadn’t seen before, which opened onto a big paddock with a house and shed on it. I stood there staring at the house, which looked like a total murder house, and wondering what I should do. I had to go forward (I could see pine trees in the distance), but to do that I had to ride through the paddock and right past the house. Ok, I’m not in America, they’re not going to shoot me, so the worst thing that can really happen is that they’ll yell at me, I told myself, so I opened the gate and started riding only to see that access to the top of the property was cut off by a massive eroded gully that I had no way of traversing. I rode along all sides of it and couldn’t see a way across and small flutters of panic began in my chest. But somehow, in a little corner behind some trees I spotted a tiny gap, which I was able to slosh through and heave the bike up to get up onto the paddock. I rode towards the house thinking, please don’t let there be dogs, please no dogs, please, please, please. But there was nobody home and there were no dogs, but as I passed right by I could see that it was most definitely a murder house and I was so glad that nobody was home. I could imagine bodies hanging from the rafters and all kinds of maligned shit going down right here. Yep, I probably would have been shot.
After forcing my way through the longest, seediest grass of all time (I had to throw my socks out the next day) I made it out onto a forestry road. This is when I started to feel a little bit scared because I had absolutely no idea where I was in the 11 000 hectares of forestry that surrounded me. Plus, it was mid to late afternoon and I had only around 600ml of water left in my hydration belt and I was totally exhausted. I tried to use Google maps to navigate my way to Wongi campground, but after riding 750m in the direction it told me to go, it wanted me to turn left into a gate that lead back into the property I’d just come out of, so I called it a fucking idiot, put the phone back on flight mode to conserve battery and rode back to where the 750m had started. I’ll just ride straight and generally to the left, I told myself because it seemed to me that I was meant to go in that direction, but I kept saying very loudly to the trees, I don’t know what to do! which is not a common headspace for me because I am usually very decisive. After a while I saw I was approaching a t-intersection and I wished silently for someone to help me, but I knew that was unlikely, so I stopped thinking about it and almost started to cry, but I yelled outloud, “No! Stop that, you dickhead. It’s going to be fine!” Almost straight away, two white vans drove around a corner and I waved them down to help me. The two drivers got out and showed me where to go on their phones (this is when I realised it wasn’t google maps that was the fucking idiot, it was me for not knowing how to use it properly).
I tried not to think about how weird it was for the timing of the vans and me to be in same place at the same time in the middle of a massive forestry. I reckon if it wasn’t for them, I’d probably be out there still, lost like a dickhead in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. This is where believing in god would come in handy to explain how the vans and me crossed paths, but I don’t believe in that, so I just have to accept it as something that happened. It still feels wierd though.
Old wooden bridge in Wongi on the way to the campground.
I didn’t get to the campsite until almost 8pm and was totally dead by that stage. It was hard to put the tent up and get my dinner. I just wanted to go to sleep, which I couldn’t do again because I was even colder than the night before. It really felt like it was the worst day of my life!
Packed up and ready to leave Wongi Waterholes campground
The next day my destination was Maryborough, which was only 23km, but given how difficult the terrain had been so far I was worried about getting there in time to meet my mates at Canegrowers at lunchtime, but I made it by 10am, so I had plenty of time to faff around, buying another sleeping bag and trying to find chain lube, which I’d left at home. I went out for lunch with my buddies and then headed off to the motel I’d booked for the night. The bed was amazing, so was the hot shower. The bike loved it too.
Bike inside the motel room in Maryborough. I didn’t think they’d let me put it in the room, but it was the first thing the dude on reception said, “put your bike in your room.”
I was worried about the next day, which was a 73km stretch to Kia Ora, the increasing distances following that and the unmapped sections I had to get through from Brisbane to Byron. In the comfort of the motel room, while reflecting on what I believed was the worst day of my life, I got talking to the Cool Guy I’m Married to about it and I decided that even though I really wanted to keep going, the wisest thing would be for me to loop back towards home and he could pick me up in a couple of days. I really should have at least driven the section from Maryborough to Tewantin to get an understanding of the landscape and leave water drops for myself, and I definitely should have learnt how to use technology properly before I set off. I wonder how I imagined I’d get through the zig zaggy streets of the Gold Coast to the campsite in Pottsville after that? And what about Byron? How would I find my way there? I had this attitude that boldly claimed, don’t worry, it’ll be fine, but would it? I had started to doubt that approach very much after my experience of getting lost in Wongi and I DID NOT want to get lost on my way to Kia Ora because unlike Wongi, I’d never even been to Kia Ora before.
So, I made my way the next day to Susan River Homestead, which wasn’t very far, but I managed to ride 25km overall because after checking in and unloading my bike I found a secret track, which was really fun to ride on.
Secret track near Susan River Homestead.
On the last day I rode back up the highway towards Maryborough and down Churchill Mine Road. Google maps said it was 17km and a 54min ride from Susan River Homestead to Torbanlea, which is where the Cool Guy was meeting me that afternoon. Piss easy, I thought. Wrong again. I was still riding after 2.5 hours and the actual distance was just over 26km. What pushy can travel that far over that terrain in 54 minutes? Google maps was back to being the fuckhead again.
In total the ride was just over 200km, which isn’t bad, but not the 788km I’d originally imagined I would be riding. Still, who cares. At least I did something. It’s better than sitting around whinging about stuff and waiting for something to happen.
I got a lot of advice and information during this ride from people who have zero adventure experience. This is some of it:
Just put it in highest gear and keep pedalling (in relation to riding up steep hills). Oh gee, thanks, you dickhead, I never though of that.
Get an ebike. Yeah, that would’ve been real helpful when I was trying to push the bike up steep hills because they’re peddle-assited, not throttle-assisted.
It’s only a five minute drive up the road. Go away.
Just pull up and camp anywhere. Not safe or possible if you don’t have a caravan.
My friends just ate tomatoes and they rode 200km a day on their remote bikepacking trip. What a load of codswallop. How did they keep the tomatoes from being squished? Where did they buy them from in the middle of nowhere. Who likes tomoatoes that much?!
Generally, people have no understanding of what it’s like to do something like bikepacking or hiking and give out advice about how to do these things based on their experience of driving a car and/or car-based camping. Also, I don’t think many people do shit like this on their own, so they don’t really get that you have to do everything for yourself by yourself and there’s no one to help you out.
On this trip I had someone ask me why I would do this sort of thing. I couldn’t think of a good answer at the time, but now I know why. It’s because I want to see what I’m made of. Each time I do an adventurous thing I get to see more of what I’m made of, which gives me leverage to keep finding out more about myself. Yeah, shit went sideways a fair bit on this trip, but I handled it and now I get to do more adventures with more knowledge and an even greater understanding of how completely awesome I am.
I got a new bike: Pivot Les Fat. According to the the dudes who sold it to me, it’s the only one of its kind in Australia. It’s a nice bike, that’s for sure, but it’s heaps different to ride compared to Fatty, my Icon Fat Albert, so it’s going to take a bit of getting used to. For example, it almost got away on me down a massive hill last night! It didn’t help that it was dark and I could only see as far as the headlight beam spread: not far at all. Normally down that hill, I don’t have any problems with Fatty taking off on me because Fatty is slow, heavy, chunky and cheap! The Pivot is none of these things at all, especially the cheap part.
The cool guy I’m married to decided he needed to get himself a new bike X 2 so he could join in on bike adventures. While I waited for the Pivot to arrive from America, Fatty broke (I bent the derailleur and the brakes stopped working. I don’t think these cheap bikes are designed to cope with being ridden the way I’ve been riding poor Fatty), so I rode the Cool Guy’s new Norco Bigfoot 3, which he got upgraded with hydraulic brakes, Renthal bars, and Bluetooth seat dropper. I was able to swap out the shitty brakes on Fatty with the original Norco brakes. I feel a weird attachment to Fatty and feel kind of guilty that I’ve gotten a new bike and have been riding a Norco in the interim. Sorry Fatty, I still love you!
I took the BF on some adventures recently. I’d always wanted to ride along the side of the highway down to the Isis River, which was just a couple of puddles when I was there. This is just south of Childers.
BF at the Isis River, just under the bridge (Bruce Highway)
The same day I found a cool track in the bush and came across this hippy lady living out of her van. She was set up on a bush track in the middle of nowhere. There were plants growing out of the van and her tow vehicle. She was really happy and friendly and gave me permission to take a photo of her rig.
Hippy lady’s van in the middle of nowhere.
The BF and I went on a little trip to Toowoomba together a couple of weekends ago and we rode the trails at Gordonbrook just outside of Kingaroy and Russell Park at the Bunya Mountains.
BF on one of the trails at Russell Park.
I had a good buster at the Bunya Mountains. I didn’t get a corner right at the bottom of a hill and somehow fell off and got trapped in the bike frame because the handle bars had flipped around the wrong way. So, I sat there for about a minute trapped in the frame, trying to work my way out. I wasn’t particularly impressed, but got some awesome bruises that I was able to show off the following week at work. I was very glad that no one else was there to see how ridiculous I must’ve looked!
On the same trip I was able to go exploring and found this secret rail trail:
Secret rail trail. It’s not open to the public and I only found it because the little voice inside my head kept telling me to “just” go have a look around the corner, and another corner and another, until I found it. I was on foot, which was difficult enough. I’m not sure how you’d even get a bike on the trail. I love finding secrets in the bush. That’s what being adventurous is really all about.
In a little country town outside of Toowoomba I saw this awesome bike:
Part of an art exhibition
The BF and I also rode a fair bit at the local tracks at Cordalba. This guy didn’t make it:
I found this busted-arse car when I bush bashed my way through a secret track that caught my eye.
So, we have quite a bike family now:
Pivot Les Fat, Norco BF3, Specialised something or other (it’s got skinny wheels, so it’s not a real bike), Icon Fat Albert (Fatty). In the background is my awesome 4WD van, The Nonce.
I recently got a fat bike themed number plate for The Nonce. This is the caption:
I felt like was extremely clever coming up with this! No one else is likely to understand it, but I reckon it’s hilarious!
I really love being a fat chick because fat is where it’s at
I took Fatty out for a ride yesterday to a spot I found a while ago. It was awesome: I rode through a muddy creek and muddy water flicked up everywhere. I love it when this happens because for some weird reason it feels like I’m really doing something, really getting right into being in nature, and because I’m getting dirty, I’m doing it properly. I know this is ridiculous, but who cares!
I rode over a river crossing, up a massive hill and took off into the bush. I can’t tell anyone where this is because I’m not really meant to be riding there. It’s not private property, but still I’m not meant to be there, no one is, but I actually don’t care because I’m not doing anything antisocial, like illegal dumping, I’m just riding my bike. It’s a great spot. I really like it.
River CrossingThe area is all Wallum Scrub
I rode a fair way, but the track ended at a creek, which I couldn’t get across, so turned around to come back. About half way back I noticed a track off to my right. I’d already gone down a track like this on my way to the creek I couldn’t cross, so I kept riding, telling myself that it probably wouldn’t go anywhere and I’d get disappointed like I had when I’d taken the last side track to nowhere.
See, I love finding relics in the bush. The ultimate relic for me is a dead body. I want to find one before I die. I know it’s weird and I don’t care. A skeleton is what I’m really aiming for. This isn’t likely to happen, but it doesn’t stop me from getting excited everytime I come across a remote area. The next best relics are old abandoned buildings and weird stuff that is hard to explain, like how a car got to the bottom of a massive cliff that is nowhere near a road, or why a house in the middle of nowhere, still full of books, clothes and personal items was abondoned and left to rot, or how did this old Zippo lighter and leather tobacco pouch end up here in the middle of the bush, just for me to find twenty years after it was lost?
I got some way down the main track and decided that in the spirit of adventure and exploration I really should go back and check out the side track, so I turned around and followed it. It went for much further than the earlier side track had gone and I started to worry about where I’d end up because it was getting late. I won’t turn any corners I told myself, I’ll just keep going straight. I have a problem with knowing when to stop and didn’t want to end up in the middle of nowhere, fighting my way through spiders to find the car in the dark. God, I hate spiders! They always build their webs at face height across tracks.
My breath caught in my throat when I looked up to see the edge of a building come into view.” Holy shit” I said out loud. It was hard not to get too excited, but I made myself slow down, lean my bike against a tree in the direction of escape, and approach with caution. I left my helmet on so I wasn’t trying dick around with it incase a gunman came at me, even though I knew that wasn’t likely given the condition of the track I’d ridden in on – nobody had driven on it for a long, long time.
A drawing of the building I found in the absolute guts of nowhere. Wolf Creek much?
I thought I might find some bodies hanging from the beams in the theme of the Violent Femmes Country Death Song, but there was nothing in there. I’d done a pretty good job of creeping myself out by this stage, so it was just as well really. Here’s a link to that song. It’s my favourite Femmes song: Country Death Song
I swear, the Cooloola region is out to get me! The last time I planned an adventure here, The relentless wind blew me sideways on a bike trip on Teewah beach, which caused me to push my bike for 33km before jagging a lift to Tewantin with some beautiful people. Before that, I’d booked the Great Walk twice before only to have it cancelled by QPWS due to fires in the area. The Cooloola Wilderness Trail got me a couple of years back when I almost froze solid on the banks of the Noosa river. When I first got my fat bike, I drove all the way to Rainbow to ride for a day in the forestry, only to have the seat break in the first five minutes. Oh yes, and of course there was the bed incident at Teewah village in 2007, which is a long story without a happy ending in which I got to see someone I’d always loved for who they truly were: a horrible, horrible arsehole.
It’s not all bad though. I did find a $50 note on the side of Rainbow Beach Road in 2019 on my way there on a charity hike for brain injury. Plus, the community at Rainbow is really cool. Rainbow Beach is where my dad taught me how to swim safely in the surf when I was a little kid. I also had my first go at catching sandworms with Dad on the surf beach. I have always loved seeing the brumbies roaming wild in the pine forests on the way into Rainbow. It’s a really nice place and when I was a kid I used to say that when I grew up I would either live at Rainbow or on Fraser Island.
The hike started out fine:
At the trailhead: Cooloola Great walk
The first day from Carlo sandblow to Kauri campsite wasn’t too bad because it was only 15.2km. The worst part was getting up onto the trail from the sandblow. I was mindful of my hiking boots because the right one has a massive hole in it, which I’d only noticed the day before. I didn’t want my boot to fill up with sand, but after a while I decided to just forget about it because worrying about it wasn’t going to reduce the sand intrusion. In the end, it didn’t matter because no extra sand made its way into my right boot anyway.
I was hopeful I’d see some lightning sand (fulgurite), but I was too intent on getting across the sandblow to have a proper look. This desire to do everything at speed would become a problem as time wore on.
On the sandblow looking out towards Double Island PointOn the trail side of the sandblow looking towards the Great Sandy StraightsTrail marker at the start of the trail
I got to Kauri much quicker than I expected. There was a lot of “track clag”, by which I mean big tree falls blocking the trail. Some of the trees were massive and I wondered if they were infected with cinnamon fungus.I could tell that one of the big trees had fallen in the last 24 hours because I could still smell the chlorophyll. At this point I started to pay more attention to the extremely windy conditions. Would a tree fall on me? As the the day wore on, branches crashed through the canopy and onto the trail in front of me and behind me, but somehow I didn’t get taken out.
There were a lot of cool fig trees..
Fig tree: it looks like an alien has splattered itself onto the host tree
I’m not sure what species of fig these are, but they have massive fruit:
At the campsite there were two other solo hikers already set up. I was not expecting this and I wasn’t particularly excited about it, but nature doesn’t belong to me, so I have to stop thinking that I’m the only person who likes doing stuff outdoors. It was really windy setting up the tent and it had been raining on and off all day, which was really annoying for setting the tent up, but I managed to get it done before there was a major downpour. Argh! It pissed down rain all night long and I was less than impressed when water started dripping on my head. I have a $750 Wilderness Equipment tent: Water is not meant to drip on my head!
I was also a little bit worried about the wind. I kept thinking about all the fallen trees I’d seen on the trail that day. In the end I had to say to myself, I doesn’t matter if a tree falls on you because you’ll be dead, so you won’t know anything about it. All night I swear I could hear music. It sounded like a distant concert.
Campsite at Kauri. I was grateful for the lockbox. It meant I didn’t have to put all my crap in the tent.
The next day was a 20.5km walk to Littoria campsite. This was really hard because I walked too fast and as a result got royally fucked up by my need for speed. I also got bitten by a spider or a little snake somewhere along the trail, which didn’t help. About half way I started to think that I wanted to go home.
By the time I got to the campsite I could hardly move because my hip flexors were killing me. After I set the tent up and had stopped moving I realised I was in a bit of trouble because I felt like absolute shit (maybe from a combination of the snake/spider bite and the reality that I’m not invincible?). At this point I decided that it would be pretty stupid to keep going because if I did get sick combined with the obvious reality that my hip flexors would only get worse as the kilometres wore on, I would be in a bit of trouble. Someone was coming to pick me up at the end of the hike, so it was no big deal to get them to come and pick me up the next day instead.
Littoria is pretty much right on Kings Bore Road, which I knew was a way out to Cooloola Way, although I wasn’t sure if it was open to vehicles. There was phone service here, so I phoned the Qld government to find out if the road was open to vehicles. What a complete waste of time that was. They had no idea what I was even asking and would not forward my call to QPWS so I could get some local information. In the end I just winged it and it ended up being ok.
I walked about 10km out along Kings Bore Road to the intersection with Cooloola Way. It was a really nice walk and even though everything was killing me, and I had a massive headache, it didn’t get to me too much. I got to see this awesome creek, which I would not have even known existed had I not left the hike…
Teewah Creek. This is a really nice spot. Luckily it wasn’t too deep. It would’ve been good for swim.
The entire great walk is around 100km. I ended up doing about 50km. I can always come back to where I got picked up to do the remainder of the hike even though a ranger I saw didn’t seem too impressed that I’d been walking on Kings Bore Road. “I’m pretty sure I’m not a vehicle,” I said to him because there were signs that vehicles weren’t allowed, but none to say that pedestrians couldn’t use the road. It’s a real shame that these old road aren’t accessible by cyclists (bikes are considered vehicles by QPWS in some locations) because they’d be great for bikepacking. It’s a low impact activity, so who knows why you can’t take bikes on roads. A utopia of rules.
A valuable thing I learnt via this experience is that I need to treat hiking as recreation and not as a race because it’s not a race: I have to slow the fuck down. Also, just because you’re extremely fit from training on a bike and on a HIIT machine, it doesn’t mean you can just head off on a 100km hike if you don’t even go on short walks. Durr! I also learnt that it’s ok to call it quits, that it’s smart to call it quits, that it’s not weak to call it quits, that it’s the responsible thing to call it quits, that calling it quits in a situation like this means you are not a danger to yourself or to others, which demonstrates good decision-making. Being a good decision-maker is an essential quality for living an adventurous life, in fact, for living any kind of meaningful life.
…of all strategies, knowing when to quit may be the best…
Free State of Jen 