Glastonbury Road Trip

Posted on February 28, 2023 by freestateofjen

A while back I bought myself a 4WD van so I could go on adventures and take my fat bike with me. I wanted a van because I thought it would be easier to just pull up and sleep in the back of it instead of sorting out accommodation and putting up tents. I’d also heard a lot of stories about bikes getting stolen from bike racks, which I was keen to avoid, so a van seemed like a really great option, and it is.

I love it! It’s a Mitsubishi Delica. I never really saw myself as a van person, but I love this van and I get the feeling that it loves me back. I went on my first van-bike adventure last weekend, and it was heaps of fun, but not without it’s moments, especially early in the trip when I nearly flipped the van over in a big old mudhole:

My artistic interpretation of entering the mudhole

Going through the mudholes (there was a big one and two small ones), wasn’t the problem. It was coming back five minutes after I’d gotten through. There was a bulldozer-sized hole in the road around a bend, so I had to turn around and come back and there was mud and crap everywhere, which made the sides of the bog super slippery. I tried to straddle the deepest part of the big hole, but the wheels slipped off the edge and the whole van seemed to be just hanging there on a ridiculously scary angle with the wheels spinning. Somehow, I managed to get out. I shit myself!

The stupid thing was that I didn’t even need to go down that road to get to where I wanted to go: Point Pure Lookout.

After climbing around the bottom of the cliffs at the lookout I came back up to find some people setting up to go abseiling: RJ and Andy. I talked to them about a bunch of stuff and asked them if they ever got scared. Andy responded without hestitation, “of course, all the time.” I was really surprised. I was fully expecting them to say that they never get scared anymore. Andy went on to tell me that all climbers get scared and if you have a break from climbing, it can take months and months to get rid of the debilitating level of fear that can potentially hold climbers back from taking on new climbing challenges. This was news to me, and it made me feel good because there’s heaps of stuff I get scared about all the time, like riding my horse, like swimming long distance in the ocean, like riding downhill through obstacles on my fat bike, like jumping off a pier, etc etc. Both Andy and RJ said that when they’re afraid, they just do stuff anyway, even though it makes them feel crappy. “You’re right, fear is just feeling, and fear itself never actually hurt anyone, did it?” I said.

Abseiling point on a cliff in the Glastonbury area

I didn’t really have a plan for where I would go, or what I would do, so I drove around a fair bit in Brooyar State Forest and ended up heading towards Kilkivan because I thought I could do some of the rail trail, but no, it was padlocked shut. I saw a sign for Mudlo National Park, so I followed that to check it out. It was really cool! I did a hike up a massive hill and stopped at picnic area for the night.

I got woken up early when another car pulled in next to me. It was really annoying because in the dream I was having, I was just about to tell a very annoying person what I actually thought of them. D’oh!

After here I headed towards Goomeri and got a croissant from the Goomeri bakery. I love that place. It’s one of the nicest bakeries I’ve ever seen. As I was driving off, I recognised the name Kimbombi from some research I’d done ages ago, so swung into the road heading to Kimbombi Falls. The falls were pretty cool, and the gorge is amazing, but the RV camp at the top wasn’t that great. There were a lot of rules that basically just boiled down to DON’T. There was also a couple of whingers that really crushed my soul into the dust. Ugh, I wish I’d never talked to them. They had some really racist things to say about Aboriginal People, but I didn’t bother arguing when them like I usually do, although I did say, “there are a lot more white people who do the wrong thing.” Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so polite and could just say to people, “shut the fuck up, you racist/bigoted/xenophobic cockhead.”

The falls: the entire water course looked a bit eutrophic, but it must’ve still be habitable because I saw fish and a turtle swimming around in. I wouldn’t have personally swum in it though – yuck!

After here I drove to Maidenwell because I knew there was a nice swimming hole there: Coomba Falls. It was packed with people! I had to tell a couple of loafers off for sitting on my towel, “Hoy, do yous wanna get your arses off my towel?” The poor towel, it was all muddy and gross. Off they went, didn’t say sorry or in fact, even look at me. The swim was great. I stayed in the water for about an hour. I would have stayed longer, but it got too cold and I had to get out.

After here I drove to the Bunya Mountains. It was awesome! I stayed there one night and did a bunch of hikes. I met some cool people, and some not so cool at the various locations I visited here. Mostly people were really happy and friendly, but there were some that had a permanent scowl on their faces, which is hard to understand when you’re in such a nice place.

Bunya cone for sale at roadside stall in Bunya Mountains: Bunya nuts are inside this

I met a cool dude, who had a tiny drone that could fly up to 8km away. He and his wife invited me to watch the sunset with them:

The drone dude put an app on my phone called maps.me. It’s meant to show you where trails are without needing phone service. I used it the next day to find the Gordonbrook mountain bike trails, but not before it took me almost all the way to Chinchilla, which was nowhere near Gordonbrook. Aaargh!! Not sure it’s as great as what he made out when he put it on my phone, but probably ok for getting a general idea.

I stayed the last night at Wooroolin free camp. I went to see Shane and Robyn at the pub. These lovely people gave me a free meal and organised fundraising for me when I came through the area in 2016 on a solo 375km charity hike. It was the friendliest and most generous place on the entire hike.

I thought I could do some more riding the next day because there are two mountain bike loops our of Wooroolin, but I decided to just go home and come back another time for the rides.

On the way home I decided I was going to check out Barretts road. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, mainly to see if it was possible to get down to the Isis River. Yes! It is. Check it out:

Rail bridge over the Isis River off Barretts Road

I had a freakin’ awesome time.It was a different approach to going on an adventure for me: first time in the van, first time not having a plan. It’s hard to let go of needing to plan everything to the Nth degree, which is unavoidable if you’re on foot or on the bike remotely, but in the car, it’s really amazing how freeing it is to JUST GO. I can now see why so many people choose this nomadic type of lifestyle.

A good traveller has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving – Lao Tzu

Hi. I’m Jen. I’m an everyday person who loves adventure. Check out how you can become adventurous too. It’s not as hard as you think!

Featured

Posted on January 23, 2021 by freestateofjen

Adventure can be anything you like. It doesn’t have to be a massive feat of physical strength and death defying endurance where you freeze your butt off on mountainsides or get chased down by a gang of rabid koalas looking to make even all the wrongs of their past. I mean, if that’s what floats your boat then by all means go for it, but I’m guessing that for most people (me included) the koalas are out and so is the mountain…for the time being that is. Once I build my skills and my self belief and maybe even my own crew I’ll be able to get Zen with that mountain and perhaps convince the koalas that revenge isn’t the best tactic for a peaceful revolution nor for their image. I used to think they were so damn cute before I wrote this. Now I’m not so sure.

Adventure is for all of us. It’s inclusive and is something you can pursue in your everyday life. All it takes is the first tiny step outside of your comfort zone.

Step onto the path and courage will find you.

Throwing knives and a YouTube doco

Posted on January 4, 2020 by freestateofjen

In my last post I wrote about sucking at stuff in 2020. I started by using my throwing knives and the GoPro (for separate things) and I wasn’t disappointed at my expectations of sucking.

On the 1st and 2nd of January I set out in my kayak with the GoPro attached to my head to film what I thought would be an awesome documentary on the Burrum River. I paddled around for ages giving a running commentary of the goings on, while imagining how great it would all be look once I was able to edit and post it on YouTube.

When I got home I was excited about watching it and making it look really cool so my fantastic footage could go immediately viral. Rubbing my hands together in anticipation of critical acclaim and vast fortunes, I set about attempting to view what I’d recorded. I could see it on the tiny screen on the GoPro itself, but none of the media players I have on my computer would let me see the visual. I could only hear the audio. I downloaded it this way, then that way, then yet another way, but none of it made any difference. After around five hours of dicking around and being close to tears of frustration, I decided I’d better pack it in for the day.

The next day I went out and took some more footage with different settings on the GoPro. I was certain this would be the answer. It wasn’t. I dicked around with it a bit more, but after a couple of hours I still felt like crying, so I had to leave it, and googling the problem wasn’t any help.

On the third day I posted my problem on a hiking facebook group that went something like this: Help me, I’m too stupid to work a GoPro, and lots of lovely people, who were once stupid, just like me, responded with helpful advice. In the interim, I’d decided that I’d just upload it to YouTube as it was because I had an inkling that YouTube might be running under a better system than my Asus laptop, which I’ve had since 2009. Guess what? I was right, YouTube’s system is better than Windows10. Who would’ve thought! This is the video here:

So, what I learnt here is that I made a buttload of assumptions about how this whole exercise would pan out, which is probably something I do all the time. I also learnt – quite sadly – my laptop is too old to edit stuff from the GoPro and that no amount of dicking around with it is going to help. Now I forge on with the advice provided by the hiking group to see if I can download some of their suggested software to bridge the gap between my geriatric laptop and the already superceded GoPro Hero 7. I almost cried a few times while learning this stuff and it made me feel really annoyed, but I made it through the challenge and came to no ill fortune.

Then it was time to throw some knives. This is one of the activities I highlighted in my most recent post: I’d never thrown knives before and I thought it would be interesting to see how I progress at learning something totally new. I knew I’d suck at it to begin with and yep, I was right:

As you can see in the vid I miss every single one! At least some of them are actually hitting the target. I managed to get one knife into the target out of about forty throws, but it was right on the very edge. I lost one knife in the leaves on the ground and the cool guy I’m married to had to go and buy a rake so we could find it the next day.

It’s hard not to be good at something. It makes me feel stupid and useless. I know that’s normal, but it’s still a difficult feeling to embrace. I guess this is what stops most people when they discover they aren’t an expert straight away when they try something new, and probably prevents them from even trying in the first place.

The start and finish are irrelevant because

GREATNESS COMES ON THE PATH

Me and the Road

Posted on September 1, 2019 by freestateofjen

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

The $40 000 Fundraising Project

Posted on January 30, 2018 by freestateofjen

On the 17th of September 2019 I set off on a 450km solo and unsupported hike from my home in Woodgate to the Brisbane CBD (itinerary). I did this to raise funds and awareness for Brain Injury and also because I wanted to have an adventure. During the hike I raised in excess of $5000. My target is $40 000, so I still have a ways to go and the best part of the year to get it done. All that money will go to The PA Research Foundation and STEPS, which are collaborators in providing rehabilitation for those struck down with a traumatic brain injury. Please contact me if you are interested in collaborating with me. I’d love to hear from you!

Having a brain injury myself, I am a member of my local STEPS support group who meet in Bundaberg every month. Brain injury is known as the invisible disability and I got to talk to a lot of people, including the Minister of Health (Hon. Dr Steven Miles) about what it means to live with such a disability. “Gees, you look fine.” “There’s no way I’d ever think that you had a disability.” “Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with you though.” Were some of the responses I got from people I met along the way.

This was the second big hike I’ve done. In 2016 I walked almost 400km to raise money for brain cancer. Since I completed that first hike I’ve been training pretty hard, which made my hike to Brisbane much easier than the 2016 hike. My attitude has probably shifted a fair bit too because on that first hike I came to learn that I am an amazing person who can achieve unbelievable things, but that I’m not special. I’m just like everyone else; the only difference being that I’m someone who had an idea and I made the idea happen. All of us can do that; you have my permission to be awesome too!

me, damien and Minister