Fundraising and Awareness Hike: 450km total

12th of October to 17th of October

My awesome friend, Shanny and I were meant to walk from Daisy’s Place into Landsborough on the 12th of October, but when we got there it started pouring rain accompanied by thunder and lightning. I decided it wasn’t safe so we called it off and Shanny’s husband, Adam ran me around all over the place to drop off some water to one of my campsites. While we were doing this I discovered that one of my campsites had been fenced off and there was no way for me to get into it. I just hoped that when I got there, I could find somewhere else safe to stay. Thankfully I hadn’t put any food drops inside the area.

Because we couldn’t walk that day, Shanny very kindly rescheduled an event I was meant to have at a cafe in Landsborough (I refuse to own an internet phone) and one of the people who had wanted to come to the cafe came into Mooloolaba instead to meet us later. She was a really cool lady and I was really glad she’d made time to come and talk to me. She’d done a lot of hiking too and it was good to talk to someone who wasn’t full of self-importance about the hikes they’d been on.

The next day I haven’t written anything in my hiking journal because I was too pissed off about what happened in the afternoon to write anything apart from swear words in big capital letters that start with the letters F and C (more about that in a minute), so I wrote most of it down the day after…It was a good day walking with Shanny from Daisy’s Place. We walked along the road for some of it and in the bush for some of it too. A lady came out from a fruit stall proffering mangoes, which neither of us really wanted, but it would have been impolite and disrespectful to refuse. All the same, it was a nice gesture. Shanny put them in her pack and told me she’d give them to her dad later on. I certainly had nowhere to put them, which was a shame because I really love mangoes. Quite a few cars beeped at us.

It’s hard for me to relax when I’m walking along the road with someone else. See, the road and I have an understanding that has grown in over weeks and weeks of trudging and I can kind of tell what sort of vehicle is coming up behind me or how fast someone is going just by paying close attention. I know exactly where to walk to stay the safest, not only from the traffic but from injuries arising from walking on uneven ground, a sloping road shoulder and slippery surfaces often littered with broken glass. Still, we got there in one piece and had a lovely morning tea with some of Shanny’s family who came to join us. I got to drive a big chocolate brownie into my face, so I was happy with that.

That afternoon, after everyone left I sent a text message to the lady who had offered for me to come and stay at her place via Facebook (the same way I’d come across Olivia and Peter – see the last post).  I told her that I’d arrived and that I was looking forward to meeting her and her husband. She responded by text message telling me that someone in her family was sick and as a result she had to fly to Sydney and that she’d forgotten to tell me that I could no longer stay with her. If she wasn’t home I could have still camped in her yard or she could have made alternative arrangements, which is exactly what happened in Rainbow Beach; my host’s mum got very sick and she had to fly out to Melbourne immediately. BUT, she knew I was coming and made arrangements for me to stay with her neighbour instead, which is probably what any NORMAL person would do. What I really think happened with this lady in Landsborough is that she didn’t want me to stay at her house and had just made up a lame excuse about it. I didn’t bother texting her back because that wouldn’t change anything and would only make me more pissed off. I didn’t hear from her again, not even to ask if I was alright. I guess that’s ok though because I didn’t bother asking her if she was alright either.

I asked a man in the cafe if he knew of anywhere to camp.

Me: (indicating pack) I’m doing a long distance charity hike and the people I was meant to be staying with have just piked on me. Do you know anywhere around here that I could camp for free?

Him: Well, if you were in Maleny, you could camp at the showgrounds.

Me: But I’m not in Maleny. (I really wanted to say, that statement is as useful as saying that if I was at home, then I could just stay in my own bed).

Him: (Looks at me in confusion) Well, the best thing to do when you’re upset is go for a walk and make sure you drink a lot of water.

Me: (In disbelief and indicating pack) Ok, good, thanks (said while restraining myself from screaming).

I left him and my pack in the cafe and went for an extremely fast walk to see if I could find somewhere else to camp. I didn’t come up with anything, so I went to the museum because I thought, they’re all volunteers, just like me, so they’ll help me. WRONG! They didn’t help and wouldn’t help and didn’t seem to particularly care even though I showed them my letter of authority from the PA Research Foundation, told them I’d walked several hundred kilometres and that I had a brain injury. “What am I meant to do then?” I asked. One of them told me to go to the Scout Camp, which was illogical for several reasons, but I realised there was no point getting into any kind of discussion with them, so I just left. I really, really wanted to yell at them, but I didn’t, which was one of the most difficult things of all time.

Eventually I found a campsite beside the church, but I had to wait until after dark to put my tent up so that nobody would see what I was doing and potentially tell me that I couldn’t do it.

I went back to get my pack, so I could take it to the pub for my Facebook event I’d scheduled for that afternoon. My “friend” from earlier was still there. I got him good because when he asked if I’d gotten myself sorted as though it would have been as easy as one-two-three,  I responded gruffly, “No. No, I did not.” and just kept walking.

The pub was pretty cool in the end. I sat there like a Nigel-No-Friends for a fair while, but got talking to some nice people after a couple of hours. I pretended that I was waiting to meet the people who had piked on me earlier and asked everyone if they knew where they lived. No one did, no one had even heard of them. I wanted to go around to their house to see if they were home, so I could legitimately call them liars later on, but I had to let it go, which wasn’t easy.

I met a nice man about my age whose leg was all mangled. He told me that he’d had a motorbike accident. “I came around a corner and ran into a truck,” he said. Later I met his mum who told me that he was a postie when it happened. “He got run over by a truck. It was my fault. I got him the job,” she said. It was awful to hear her talk like this, so I said to her, “No, it’s not your fault. It’s just something that happened.” She gave me a big hug when she left and wrote her phone number down on a beer coaster incase I needed help with anything. I’d told her the story of the pikers.

That night I got really cold in the tent. It was hard to sleep; probably because I was still pissed off, but also because I was freezing cold. Cars kept pulling up in the little carpark right in front of my tent (they couldn’t see me because I was hidden by the garden). They’d sit there for a while, then drive off. All night this went on. Only a couple of times did people get out of the cars. I couldn’t think what it could possibly be other than some kind of drug rendezvous.

I was lucky to find this nice patch of ground to camp. I took this photo after I’d quickly packed everything up to leave at 5.30am. I had to get moving early so that no one would come along and tell me off. You can only just see the drug rendezvous carpark.

The next day I walked to Glasshouse, which wasn’t too far. A man stopped in a big 4WD and put his orange rooftop lights on. I thought he might be going to get up me about walking along the road. He didn’t. He gave me a donation and told me how great I was. He stopped when he saw me because his son also had a brain injury from a car accident. His son was at one point doing charity ride on a recumbent trike around Tasmania, but couldn’t stay focused on what he was doing due to his brain injury and as a result never ended up completing the ride. He was a really nice man and I was glad that he stopped to talk to me. “I hope your son will be ok,” I said as he left.

There wasn’t anywhere to pee in secret in the last half of the walk, so when I got to Glasshouse I was busting. I went straight up to the public toilets at the top of the hill. I wanted to cook my lunch in the park, but I just couldn’t face dragging everything out of the pack and repacking it again afterwards. A lady came past and started talking to me about donating, so I asked her where to get a good milkshake. She sent me to Glasshouse Country Kitchen. Man, oh man, it was THE best thickshake I’ve literally ever had in my life and it only cost $5.50. When the man behind the counter brought my thickshake over, he refunded my money and also gave me a donation. What a nice guy!

At Glasshouse I’d arranged to stay with Gayle and Bob. I’d met Gayle at the tourist information centre when I first mapped the hike. She very kindly offered for me to stay at her place when I was asking about campsites in the area. On the way to Gayle and Bob’s a man called out from his yard, “Hey bloke! You got enough water?” I didn’t look around because I’m not a bloke. I thought he was talking to someone else, but he wasn’t because he yelled it again and by then I knew I was the only person on the street, so I went over to him to say hello and also to let him know that I was in fact a woman. I wasn’t offended that he called me a man. People do it all the time. The last time was about two weeks before I left on the hike and it had happened plenty of times before that as well. Little did I know that it would happen not too far into the future also.

This was the first time I’d ever had the opportunity to ask someone why they thought I was a man. He was too embarassed to give me a proper answer even though I assured him I really didn’t care about him thinking I was a man. In the end I felt bad for him, so I said goodbye with him calling out apologies as I walked off.

I don’t know why people think I’m a man! Have they seen my legs for crying out loud!? What man has legs like mine? I’ve certainly never seen any. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m 6ft tall (closer to 6′ 2” in my hiking boots). I don’t have a horse face, a square jaw or a particularly huge frame, my boobs are a good size, so the only other thing I can really put it down to is that I’m pretty skinny compared to a lot of women my age, but at the end of the day, I really don’t know what it is.

View across the road from Gayle and Bob’s

On the road I asked a boy of about 10 or 11 if he knew where the street was that I was  looking for. He didn’t, but he asked me to come back to his house so that he could give me a drink. What a nice kid: “If you you come with me, you can have a drink at my house and we can ask my mum. She’ll know where it is.” I told him that he was thoughtful and it was nice of him to offer, but I’d just ring the people up instead of bothering his mum. He rode off on his scooter.

I slept really good at Gayle and Bob’s and got off to a good start the next day for my walk into Caboolture, where I’d arranged to stay at the showgrounds. It was a nice walk because most of it was along the side of the road under the trees. Later I found a tick on the top of my head. Yuck! At least it wasn’t a leech. They are far more DIS-GUS-TING!

Mt Tibrogargan. There’s an Aboriginal legend that tells the story of the all the Glasshouse Mountains. I always thought this one looked like a gorilla, but in the legend he’s actually the father of all the mountains in the area aside from Mt Beerwah. The lines are the electric lines for the train (I was on the other side of the rail fence, so couldn’t get an unobstructed view).

I knew I had to turn off the road to head through to Caboolture via Elimbah, but I somehow ended up in Beerwah without seeing the sign for the turn off. I got a bit worried that I’d gone the wrong way, so I asked a man in a shop and then the lady in the post office to make absolutely sure I was going in the right direction; I was.

At Elimbah I decided to get a Bundaberg Sars from the servo. It’s really the only softdrink I can handle and even then only very occassionally. I’d started telling myself stories about the sars before I got to the shop. When I got there, they didn’t have any in the fridge, only several boxes of it on the shelf waiting to be put into the fridge. I tried to talk myself into one of the other types of softdrink, but couldn’t do it, so I went and sat outside for a while; mainly because I was pissed off about not getting what I wanted. I guess you’d say that I had the shits! I started talking to some guys from SEQ Water and they really did have to deal with actual shit, so I forgot about the sars and started laughing when they told me what it’s like dealing with shit everyday. They gave me a donation and I started walking again.

Today I walked into the Moreton Bay Region:

Because of what had happened in Landsborough I was a bit worried about the showgrounds changing their mind about letting me stay (they don’t normally allow tent-based camping). It was lucky that I’d written down the name of the guy I spoke to who had initially given me permission because the lady in the office began telling me how they don’t allow tents. I showed her the piece of paper he’d given me and she said in a vague kind of way, “I think I remember something about this.” It was ok though because the guy who said I could stay in the first place showed up in a little golf cart and took me to my spot with my own power and a big light if I needed it.

As I was setting up my tent a scruffy guy came over and started talking about how there’s no tents allowed and that I should watch out because the security guard was driving around. I couldn’t really understand what he was talking about. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to help me or if he was trying to get rid of me or what, so I just kept setting everything up while telling him about my hike. I wasn’t sure that he got it, but he went away eventually. Not long after, he came back and when I saw him coming I started to worry that he was going to be a nuisance and I decided that I’d have to tell him to leave me alone. He wasn’t being a pain though, he was bringing me a donation! He waved to me the next day as he was leaving. I felt bad for thinking he was going to be a problem.

Campsite at Caboolture Showgrounds. Check out the tent. Notice anything? The dickhead who put it up (me) put the fly on upside down. The stupid thing was; it was the second time I’d done it and both times I couldn’t work out what was wrong. I looked at it and thought, this doesn’t seem right. Why is this bit of stuff sticking out like this? I thought the zippers went the other way. Duh! Stupid much?

I got zero sleep here. The train line is just across the road and the goods trains thundered past all night long. It really sounded like they were right next to my head. Still, I was too lazy to dig out the earplugs. It was kind of satisfying to know that I wasn’t the only one who would have been kept awake all night. There were heaps of caravans and camper-trailers in the section across from me and they wouldn’t have been able to escape the noise either.