Posted on July 19, 2026 by freestateofjen

GO

The smart arse I’m married to took this photo as he played Go by Chemical Brothers on his phone. “Got the right shoes on?” He asked. “You’ll be fine.” He added, and dropped in a stupid bird noise. I was actually trying to get as far away as I could from him by the end of the song. Not because he was trying to murder me and make me into human jerky, but because I wanted to finally finish The Cooloola Great Walk. I’d tried to do it twice before. Once, I never even started it because it got shut down due to a massive bushfire, and the second time I got sick after the first day and had to walk back out to the road I wasn’t sure was there along a firebreak I wasn’t mean to be walking on (UMMMAAARR). Then, there were the other two times I’d tried to hike/bike in the Cooloola area: once along the Wilderness Trail, and once along Teewah beach. Both times were pretty horrendous. I almost froze solid on the banks of the Noosa River when I was on the Wildernss Trail because I didn’t bring a sleeping bag, and the road the smart arse was meant to drive on to pick me up was blocked by a gate that wasn’t on the map. Then, on the bike ride, I didn’t factor the wind into my plan. When I crossed over onto Teewah beach from Rainbow Beach I discovered I couldn’t pedal because the wind was so strong, so I pushed the bike for 17km before spending a miserable night in the dunes, then getting picked up by some randoms while still pushing my bike the next day. This time everything worked out and that bloody smart arse was actually correct when he said at the beginning that I’d be fine.

Cooloola Great walk:

Day1: Carlo – Kauri 15.2km

Day 2: Kauri – Littoria 20.5km (HARDEST)

Day 3: Littoria – Dutgee 14.8km

Day 4: Dutgeee – Brahminy 20.3km

Day 5: Brahminy – end 19.7km (EASIEST)

On day one, somewhere on the path to Kauri

I saw quite a few other people on the track. Some of them were doing the walk too, some in the same direction as me (N-S) and others going the other way (S-N) and others were doing side sections as day walks. Aside from a small number of people, mostly, everyone I came across wasn’t particularly friendly. They weren’t horrible, but trying to talk to them was like that feeling you get when you try to make the wrong sides of velcro stick together; it just doesn’t work, so I pretty much stuck to myself aside from when I met James at Kauri (he was just finishing), and then Craig on the track as I was approaching the end of the hike (he’d just started). Both dudes were really friendly and easy to get along with and we shared details and promised to stay in touch. Craig was closest in age to me and we both had a similar way of life in that we are both fulltime adventurers. I very quickly felt like he was my new best friend as we sat in the middle of the track sharing stories of hikes done and adventures to come. These guys made me feel the same way as when I met my tribe on the Great Ocean Walk in Victoria in April:

I think another lesson is about My Tribe. I’ve been looking for these people almost all my life and I could never find them. I think I finally found them: other hikers. Being with the eight other hikers I met on the GOW, even though we only gathered together at the end of each day, gave me sense of camerarderie I haven’t found elsewhwere. I very much felt that I belonged to these people, they to me and all of us to the trail. It was as though we shared a unspoken secret unavailable to everyday people.

The walk to Littoria was the hardest day. The map says it’s 20.5km, but it felt more like 24-25km,but it could have been all the hills. The whole entire thing was pretty uphill, and that’s really tiring walking, but I prefer it to going endlessly downhill with a pack on. It’s annoying walking downhill for kilometre after kilometre because you have to really think about what you’re doing and watch not just your next foot fall, but the track to come. On a steep climb, it’s ok to just look at your feet because your momentum is much slower and you’re leaning closer to the ground. That’s opposite for walking downhil. Walking downhill is far more dangerous for tripping, slipping and face-planting it.

I slept fine on the first night, but I found it almost impossible to sleep for the rest of the hike. It was because my entire body was killing me from the relentless slogging. Also, because there’s not much to do at the camp once you’ve set up and had your dinner, it’s bed time by around 6.30pm. That’s a lot of hours to lay on the ground. Thank god I bought a decent sleep mat after the GOW. I read in the tent for a few hours before trying to get to sleep, but then the need to pee strikes, which necessitates an extremely annoying extraction from the tent into the rain, then back into the tent to begin the unbelievably difficult process of getting everything unbunched, zipped up and settled in only to have to repeat the same thing twice more before the night is over. When I did manage to sleep for what felt like five minutes here and there, I had the most insane dreams. One night I dreamt I was really stoned from smoking too much marajuana (I don’t smoke this stuff. I hate the smell of it) and in the dream someone asked me what I was doing. I told them I had to smoke it because I was in so much pain. You know you’ve got next level pain when you dream about being in pain. Like dreaming about having headache to wake up and realise that you do actually have a headache.

Some campsites had cheeky possums and bushrats. I’m always wary of these buggers. A bushrat chewed through my hiking tent years ago on the Conondale Ranges Great Walk. I was not impressed. There are timber platforms and lockboxes on the Cooloola Great Walk, so wildlife can’t steal your stuff, but I left a water bottle next to my tent door incase I wanted a drink overnight. In the morning I got up to see that a bushrat had chewed into the lid. Why!! It’s not edible for crying out loud. I can’t whinge too much. It only cost $1.10 (I only use Coles brand mineral water bottles for hiking: they weigh almost nothing and I can keep reusing them, then just chuck them in the recycle bin when they get too old. I refuse to get caught up in the idea that I need to spend $25 on a fancy water bottle). I also saw sugar gliders, a huge red bellied black snake, bush turkeys, kingfishers and heard woompoo fruit doves calling.

Dutgee was the best spot of all, even though the walk into the campsite was pretty crappy. It’s through a swamp and some dickheads on trail bikes had come through the track and made it even harder to walk on. Man, if I could just get a hold of these wankers! I don’t fucking get them. They’ve got miles and miles of roads and sand tracks to ride on, but they’ve gotta go on a dedicated hiking track. I saw a sticker online today that kind of sums up how I felt about it:

Dutgee was right on the Noosa River, so I went for a swim as soon as I arrived, which was extremely cold, but felt great. I nabbed the best campsite too because in the lockbox someone had left four tins of chicken meat. Score! I’d never eaten tinned chicken before, but I cracked one straight open and ate the whole thing in one mouthful. It tasted exactly the same as tinned tuna, but a different texture: kind of disgusting, but I was starving hungry, so I was very grateful. It just meant I had to carry the empty tin out with me, but that’s the price you pay for being a garbage guts and I’m ok with that. I actually ate 3 of the tins, and left one in the lock box.

Dutgee campsite. Lockbox and wooden platform in foreground.

The walk out of Dutgee was really nice because some of it was along the Noosa River. I was a bit worried about it though, not just because it was another long day, but because I had to cross the Cooloola Sandpatch. I wasn’t sure how easy this would be because it’s a massive desert-like bowl of sand in the middle of nowhere and I’d heard it can be difficult to see where you’re meant to go to get across it. I’d brought my compass, like the map said you should do, but I didn’t end up needing it. The sandpatch was the highlight of the trip. I could’ve easily spent an entire day there clambering around, and I fantasised how I could come back and do just that at some point in the future. My mates on the trail bikes had done some work here too, even though QPWS had put in a gate and a cavaletti to keep them out.

This tree was likely part of the forest engulfed by the mobile sand many years ago.

The last day was the nicest part of the walk. There were some great views and the vegetation was really beautiful. It was also the easiest section of the whole hike.

At one point I walked past the track to the Teewah landing. When I was in my teens I was with my friends on this track when we’d come to Teewah for a family holiday. We were chatting and laughing away and all of a sudden a naked man appeared on the track some distance ahead of us, walking in our direction. All he was carrying was a small orange life jacket. We all immediately shut up and looked at each other wondering what the fuck he was doing and what was going to happen when we had to walk past him. It was truly weird, but I found it so hard to keep from laughing. I had to stare at the ground because I knew if I looked at anyone I’d start laughing and not be able to stop. As he approached us, he slid the life jacket over his privates, walked past and slid the life jacket over his backside, and kept walking, like nothing weird was going on at all. Where was he going! And what the hell was he doing with the life jacket! We all wondered what would happen when we saw him on our return trip, but who knows where he went because we didn’t see him again. It was a source of great hilarity for the rest of the trip and for many years afterwards. This happened like 30 years ago and I still wonder from time to time what the fuck he was doing with the life jacket, just carrying it like that for no reason, with no boat in sight. I mean, yeah, it was weird him being naked like that in the middle of nowhere, but the life jacket? What the hell!

Close to the end the trail went out onto the beach, but I DID NOT want to walk on the beach because walking on the beach into the wind, with boots and a big pack on your back sucks, so I stayed on the road and kept going that way. I planned to get back on the trail when I saw where it cut back across the road from the beach, but I walked straight past it. Lucky, because otherwise I would never have found this hiking Lego man, who was waiting for me on the side of the road:

A gift from the hiking gods: a Lego hiker

GO GO GO
GO GO GO
Just do your best
This is not a test
This is your life
Send your body to flight

The Unexpected Outcomes of Basically Everything

Posted on August 9, 2025 by freestateofjen

At the end of July I decided to go on a trip to the Glasshouse Mountains with my bike to see what adventures would unfold. I thought I’d hike a bit, ride a bit and spend four days driving around looking for cool places to explore. I planned to end this trip with a stay at Noosa with one of my good friends. I never made it to Noosa because the trip didn’t go quite the way I thought it would, but then, isn’t that just the underlying principle of adventure? You just never know what is going to happen next.

Mount Coonowrin on the right and I think it’s Mount Tibrogargan on the left

Straight away I headed to Mt Coonowrin. I wasn’t sure if you could hike around it or if there was a way to ride in the forest surrounding it, but the best way to find out seemed to be to drive there and check it out, so that’s what I did, and I got the bike out and started riding.

After about two minutes of riding I came across two people in the bush just standing there. I said hi because there was no way to avoid them and they started talking. I couldn’t just ride on past because the track was really narrow and the man was standing right in my way, so I was stuck. If I’m honest, I felt a bit trapped because the woman had migrated to stand sort of behind me and the whole time he was talking, the man kept migrating incrementally closer to me until he was pretty much straddling my front wheel. I really, really wanted to get the fuck away from them because they had some “interesting” ideas about the way the world works, like how if you just completely focus on something you can have whatever you want, and if you keep focussing on it, you’ll be happy forever. Plus, the man kept going on and on about how intuitive he was and started asking me all these weird questions about stuff that strangers probably shouldn’t really care about. The Jesus talk started not long after that. My brain came up with a plan on its own for my defence if he got any weirder. It involved me picking the bike up and chucking it at him or using it as a weapon in the same way you might wield a chair in a bar fight, but fortunatley it didn’t come to that! It’s good to know I’ve got options though, right? Plus, I’m fitter than just about everyone, so I knew I could outrun them straight up the side of the mountain if I had to.

I have made a big effort in the last year or so not to be judgemental, but when I hear people talking this kind of batshit crazy stuff I wonder if I’ve gotten anywhere at all with my efforts to not think negatively of people! Later on, when I was writing about my day in an adventure journal I keep, I called them Track Freaks. I’ve rarely encountered freaks like this in the middle of nowhere, aside from one time in my teens, I was on a hike near Teewah with a group of mates and a totally naked man appeared on the track ahead of us. He walked straight past us as though we weren’t even there and just kept on walking. What the fuck was he doing! We couldn’t stop laughing, but it did kind of freak us out and we all wondered what would happen on our return hike (it was one track in and out), but we didn’t see him again. Where exactly did he go? Then, another time on the Cooloola Wilderness Trail another lone hiker appeared out of nowhere and as I passed right by him I said, “Hi, how’s it going? How far have you come today?” only for him to just stare straight ahead as though I wasn’t even there at all. Perhaps a clothed iteration of the naked Teewah hiker? Now, that proper freaked me out! As I hiked on I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following me.

After the Track Freaks I rode on up the hill, but it ended up going nowhere. I was excited about riding at speed all the way back down the massive hill, but most of the surface was too loose for that: loose piglet sized mini boulders, huge ruts, erosion and a general mess. I didn’t fancy washing out on that kind of jaggedy shit. I’m not really sure how anyone rides on this kind of surface. After I got back to the car I headed over to Mt Beerwah thinking I could climb it. Haha! Funny!

When I got there I decided I would do it. I’m not a huge fan of heights, but I am always worried about becoming a wuss, so after a minute or so, I decided that no, I should do it considering I’d come all this way, and besides, I thought it looked really similar to Mt Walsh and I’d climed that several times, once on my own. But then, the voice of reason rose up and said, yeah, but Mt Walsh isn’t as steep and it also has ropes and handholds. If you do this and fall off, how is that smart, especially given that the sign says that you’re not meant to do it on your own? I then decided that yes, it was probably a dumb idea to do this on my own at this point, so I went back down to the carpark not entirely happy that I’d “wussed out”, but 100% happy that I didn’t fall off a mountain and need rescuing. That’s my worst fear.

I’d met a lady earlier that day at a cafe in Glasshouse who had actually fallen off a mountain. She had a cast on her leg and I’d been sitting there for ages wrestling with myself about asking her if I could sign it. Eventually I went over her table, where she sat with a group of friends, laughing and chatting. I was worried they’d look at me like I’d wanted to look at the Track Freaks, but she didn’t yell at me or laugh at me, she was actually very excited about having me sign her leg. I asked her how she did it and then I wrote “she went wild” on her cast. She didn’t get resuced. She told me that she hobbled the 2km back to the carpark.

A massive python on the track. It was a thick as my forearm. It must’ve been more than 6ft long.

In the spirit of smooshing as much as possible into one day I continued onto Mt Tibrogargan and did the 4km hike around the base of it. I noticed on the trailhead map that there was a track for mountainbiking, which I got excited about. After I got back from the hike I was tempted to do the ride, but it was getting late in the afternoon and the voice of reason said, come back and do it tomorrow. You’ll have more time and it’ll be more fun that way.

I went instead to Ewen Maddock dam because I’d heard it was a cool place to ride, but I didn’t realise it was a loop and there was an actual trail head, so I only did a little bit of one section. The bike also got really muddy here, which I was less than impressed about seeing that I had to sleep next to it in the back of the van that night. I managed to wash most of the mud off with water from my water bottles, so it wasn’t really worth getting so ticked off about at all. It’s hard for me to know when to stop, so even though it was getting dark, I decided I’d go and check out some of the rest of the trail on foot, then get back in the car and continue onto a park that was meant to have a good swimming spot. When I couldn’t find the park, I was tempted to drop in and ask at the BMX track if I could have a go because there were heaps of people on mountain bikes riding there, but it was fully dark by this stage and I knew as much as I hated it, I should probably start thinking about winding things up for the day.

I had some very ordinary packet meals that I’d brought along for the trip, but the Landsborough pub was right there, so it seemed stupid in the extreme to sit alone in a cold, dark picnic area eating horrible packet pasta when I could go into a nice warm pub and get a yummy dinner. I had a great time at the pub, chatting to people and hoovering up a really nice Guiness beef pie. It was hard to leave, but I did eventually and spent the night in the van in the carpark of the Glasshouse tourist info centre, with a pedal right in my face. I never imagined I’d sleep with my bike! I love it, but really, is this too much? I don’t know.

The next day I was lucky to get the ride in at Mt Tibrogargan because my car decided it didn’t like the situation. I found a mechanic in Landsborough and he said the starter motor was effed, so I drove all the way back home without stopping (around 3.5 hours) because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to start it again if I stopped, although I had to drive it to the mechanic in Bundaberg the next day, and this is how the unexpected outcomes made their appearance.

On the Soldiers Settler Trail from Mt Tibrogargan to Beerburrum

After I dropped the car at the mechanic I had to ride all the way back home because I had no one to pick me up. This was definitely an unexpected outcome, but a good one because I do like a challenge: 67km, 5.5 hours. It meant that I didn’t make it to Noosa to hang out with my friend. I probably could’ve made it if I really pushed myself, but given how exhausted I was from all the riding, pedal-face-sleeping, hiking, driving and problem-solving I’d done in the last couple of days, it seemd wise to calm the fuck down and just stay at home because who knows when the next unexpected outcome would crop up.

On the way home from Bundaberg to Woodgate

In the spirit of the unexpected, I took off yesterday and discovered a cool place by total accident: Mt Doongul. I had no idea this place existed. I didn’t realise until I’d gotten to the top that I’d gone up the “wrong” road. I had to push the bike almost all the way up the near vertical hill because the road was washed out and impossible to ride on. At the top I saw another road heading in the opposite direction. It was obviously the “right” road becasue it was easy to ride on and it was awesome floating down it at great speed. I managed to get back in the car just as it started to piss down with rain and it hasn’t stopped raining since.

At the top of Mt Doongul with a view to the east

I was really surprised to find a visitors book in a GoPro case at the top. Obviously someone must care about this spot enough to have gone to this effort. There was a fire extinguisher here as well, which seemed to be unused and ready for action. Very forward thinking!

I know this unexpected stuff doesn’t just happen to me, but sometimes it feels like it does! I think it often feels so wild because I’m pretty much always doing adventure on my own, so it’s just me dealing with stuff, by myself, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, and nothing ever goes sideways in isolation. One thing ALWAYS leads to another and that’s how there are unexpected outcomes of basically everything. I like that about life though because that’s what makes it amazing and that’s how you get to discover how resourceful you are. I wrote this mantra a while ago. This isn’t just about me, but about anyone who chooses to embrace the unexpected outcomes of basically everything…

**HOW WILL YOU EMBRACE THE UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES THAT BLOW IN ON THE NEXT BREEZE?**

Cooloola Great Walk… well, kind of…

Posted on April 21, 2023 by freestateofjen

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:

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 Point

On the trail side of the sandblow looking towards the Great Sandy Straights

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:

Huge fig. According to Gardening Australia, all native figs are edible. These smelled pretty good.

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…

How much will I suck in 2020?

Posted on December 31, 2019 by freestateofjen

2019 wasn’t bad. It wasn’t all easy though. Some shit went sideways and I said goodbye to a few relationships and also some beliefs that I’d been hanging onto for too long. I also extricated myself from a toxic workplace. None of this was easy because it’s hard to see people for what they really are. I don’t want to believe that people are intentional arseholes, but the truth is that sometimes they just are, and contrary to what said arseholes probably think, that’s not actually my fault. It would have been easy to blame myself and say that I should have done this, I should have done that, I should have learned how to breath underwater, defy gravity, turn water into wine, tame dragons, control the weather, and I should have kept my mouth shut about the shady shit that was going on, but I didn’t because it’s not right to do bad shit to people and it’s not right to accept that from anyone, be it your boss, your brother, your neighbour, your best mate or a government department. If I kept accepting that kind of treatment then I’m just as crappy a person as the ones who are treating me like shit because I’m teaching them that I deserve that kind of treatment. I’m also teaching them that they can treat other people the same way, and that’s not OK with me.

I did some pretty amazing stuff in 2019: I hiked 450 km on my own to Brisbane and got to meet some really cool people, and I raised over $6000 for brain injury while doing it. I read close to 100 books, exercised for 377 hours, ran more than 180 km, learnt some wicked skipping drills, went to some great gigs, grew out of my clothes because I built new muscle, got my first reading glasses, survived a bushfire, and made some freakin’ awesome plans for 2020.

In 2020 I’m going to see how much I can learn. Can a skill in one sphere emerge in another sphere, giving rise to an ability where none previously existed? Basically, will a lifestyle of breadth, rather than depth facilitate emergent abilities? I believe it will. It’s going to be tricky to measure this, but I’ll do my best. I’ll be recording everything I do and putting it on YouTube so everyone can see how much I suck when I first start out, and how that’s actually OK, because everyone sucks to begin with!

Watch me as I suck at these things:

playing video games*
knife throwing
tap dancing
learning a new language
skateboarding*
graffiti
juggling*
rubix cube*
macrame
physics
wood carving
singing*
kiteboarding
navigation*
chess
playing the banjo*

* These things I’ve tried at least once before, but was never any good at and/or it’s been over twenty years since I’ve done them.

Here’s what I’ve been doing in the last couple of days:

Snorkelling around the snags in the river. It’s a hard life.

Kayaking up the river and down a creek. This is where I suck. I made this ridiculously stupid and hilarious documentary about the Burrum River on a GoPro, but can’t get the damn thing to transfer to the computer so I can upload it to YouTube. Waaaahhhh!

See, it’s ok to suck, because that’s what pretty much everyone does the first time they try something, and this was the first time I’ve used the GoPro.

Learn by way of failure

Because

No one ever started off being an expert

Brain Injury Hike Last Lap

Posted on November 21, 2019 by freestateofjen

Fundraising and Awareness Hike: 450km total

22nd of October to 25th of October 2019

The cool guy I’m married to dropped me off in Dayboro, which meant I skipped the long walk from D’Aguilar to Dayboro. That suited me because I was a bit worried about the road into Dayboro. I had decided to get there by a back road and I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that the map I had would be accurate when I actually got out in the middle of nowhere. I had to make up the lost kilometres and I did this by going on a walk when I got home that afternoon and by walking around in Brisbane when I came back for a function after the walk had ended.

As I was about to start walking in Dayboro, a nice lady came up and wanted to give me a donation, but had to go to the IGA to get cash out. As we waited for her I spotted a group of people on the footpath with a little stand. “I think it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I said to the cool guy. After the nice lady had given me the donation I said goodbye to the cool guy and started walking. I wanted to see what the JWs would say to me when I walked past. They said nothing! They just stared at me. I was disappointed. I wanted to have a lovely chat with them about my existential beliefs. Oh well, too bad for them.

I only got about 100 metres down the road before I stopped chatting to three guys having a coffee: Rick, Gavin and Farmer Jim. I ended up sitting down with them and getting a coffee myself. The cool guy drove past and beeped. I waved at him and Rick said, “Do you know that fella?” “Yeah, he’s my husband,” I said. The cool guy told me later that he’d already driven past the cafe once and Rick had waved at him, so it probably looked a bit weird that he was driving past AGAIN and beeping this time. I sat with them for ages and had a really good chat about lots of stuff. I really wish I could just wander up to random people in non-hiking life and start talking to them as though we’d always been friends just like I did with the three dudes in Dayboro.

At the top of the hill I couldn’t remember if I was meant to turn left or right, so I called into the cop shop to ask which way to go. The copper was an older guy, but man-oh-man did he look good in that uniform! [It’s a pity about this. If I saw this guy again now, I’d not think the same thing. I had some very negative experiences with the Qld Police Force in the recent State of Emergency in my town and it has changed the way I see them].

The road to Mount Samford was really good. A beautiful lady stopped in a ute and I talked to her for ages. Her name was Sonya and she was the CMC for Pine Rivers. She gave me a huge pile of coins from her car ashtray, which I tried to deposit later at Samford, only to be told that the post office isn’t allowed to accept coins. Funny, I’d deposited about $100 more coins in Glasshouse without a problem. I wonder what she would have done if I wanted to pay for something with coins.

It didn’t take that long to get to the campsite. I set everything up and went and had a look in the bush. I thought that this might be the spot that I find a dead body. It wasn’t. I’ve been looking for one since I was a kid. I don’t want to find a gross, rotten, maggoty thing, but probably a skeleton or one that’s almost a skeleton. I was going on and on about his one day on a field trip bus at uni and the dude in front of me said that he’d actually found a dead body in a cave once. It wasn’t fair, why is he so lucky, I thought. Sounds twisted, right? That’s because it is and I’m OK with that.

The bush around the campsite was pretty cool. I found a washout with steps cut into the side of it, so I climbed up and followed a winding track. At the top of a hill there was an old blue tarp tepee. Further along there was another structure that had fallen down. It was probably a tepe once too.

I was so hungry that I ended up eating my dinner at 4.30pm. I packed everything up, so the only thing visible at the campsite was my tent. I was secure in the idea that no one would come along, but I was wrong. I was so glad I’d packed all my crap up because a lady came running down the hill with her staffy. I quickly darted behind the tent because all of a sudden it seemed really important that nobody see me. I thought that would be it; she’d turn around an just run away, but no; she kept running down, turning around and doing the same thing over and over again. I was pretty sure she hadn’t seen me, but then for her last lap she got another dog from somewhere and it tried to run over to where I was, so she then saw my camp. I was really annoyed! I hate the idea that people know where I’m camping, especially when it’s in the middle of nowhere like this was. At least she didn’t see me, so she had no way to know that I was a lone female and I know from experience that she would have assumed I was a man. Not that she would be a threat to me necessarily, but if she had a big mouth and went telling people that she’d seen me down there, then that could be a problem. Everything was fine though.

Campsite at Mount Samson

The next day I walked to Samford. The road had a lot of treasures on it. There were lots of number plates, but most of them were twisted and broken, so I didn’t pick them up. I also found half a cloven hoof, a colourful fingernail, a five cent piece, then a tent cent piece and a parcel that must have fallen off a delivery truck. I was hopeful I could deliver it, but the numbers were going the wrong way, so I rang the phone number on the delivery docket and told the guy that I’d leave it under the Welcome to Samford sign. He came along a bit later and said thankyou. He talked a lot about the building that the thing I found was for and how it was a drama to build it because of the huge roof angle.

I got quite a few donations off the road on my way to Samford, actually it was probably the most generous road that I walked along on the entire hike.

Myles from Mt Mee stopped and said hi. It felt really good to see him again for some reason, like he was an old friend or something. Another man stopped to ask what I was doing. He was interested because he and his husband were carers for disabled people and they were on the way to a picnic they’d organised for some of the people they cared for. He later gave me a donation via the PA fundraising platform. A bit further along a man pulled up in a ute ahead of me. He got out and started walking in my direction saying, “I’ve got a donation: $100.” He looked so much like Samuel Johnson (who I’ve always really liked) that I thought it was actually him – it wasn’t – but he was still a nice guy. His name was Aaron and he told me that he had a brain injury from an aneurysm. He said he was just sitting on the couch watching TV and all of a sudden it felt like someone hit him over the head with a baseball bat.

I really wanted to get a sars when I arrived in Samford, but I couldn’t find any. I walked past some people having lunch at a cafe and asked them about sars and if they knew where I might find some. They couldn’t help me, but I ended up sitting down and talking to them for a while. They were on holidays from America and Canada. Once again, it would be great if I could push forward with the idea that I can just wander up to random people and start chatting to them while they’re having a meal or a coffee in non-hiking life. After I left them I went over to the Injinji shop to see what their stuff was like. I really should have come back to Samford and bought my trailrunning shoes here, rather than Athletes Foot. The Saucony shoes I bought cost me $220 and a big hole ripped in the upper in the first twenty minutes of my using them. I’ve had to sew them up myself because the store and Saucony said I misused them. Aaaaaaarrrrrrghhhhhh. OK, whatever…now moving on (hopefully).

I went to meet the lady I had arranged to stay with; my friend Tiiu. I’d met Tiiu previously when I’d come through Samford asking about places to camp. She was volunteering at the tourist information centre that day, so it was great that our paths crossed. She had a brain injury too and I felt very strongly that we had forged a meaningful connection when we first met.

I left my pack with Tiiu, and armed with directions for the supermarket, headed off in search of sars. When I got there I got into a good discussion with a lady in her seventies who had been protesting against the Adani mine. She was wearing a Stop Adani t-shirt. Peter Garrett wore one of these (amongst others) when I saw Midnight Oil in concert a while back. The Stop Adani lady and I talked about activism and I told her how I’ve never really been a frontline activist for the environment, even though I’ve always cared very much about environmental issues (afterall, I have an environmental science degree). I see my role in activism as providing a lived example of how to become liberated from fear and apathy, which I believe hold us back from living meaningful lives and also hold us back as a society from achieving both the small and large goals that will allow us to overcome the big problems that we are now facing and will continue to face into the future.

After the D&M I got the sars: YAY!! and headed back to Tiiu at the tourist information centre, so we could go to her house in a neighbouring suburb. I had no idea where I was in terms of geography, so it was good to have her driving me around.

I had a great time at Tiiu’s place. Her two kids, Toby and Ava were really cool. Ava gave up her bed for me and Toby kept me on my toes with hilarious puns all night. He came in from the bus, walked straight to the fridge, got an egg out, and holding it aloft, said, “I hope its going to be “eggseptional evening.” It was total crack up. (get it).

The next day Tiiu decided to walk with me. We had to head back into Samford to start from there again:

Me organising my crap and looking at the map in Samford. Photo: Tiiu

Tiiu and I ready to go in front of the tourist information centre. Photo: some random person.

I had a great time walking with Tiiu. I felt like I’d been best friends with her my whole life. At one point we even said the same thing at exactly the same time. We “got” each other in a way that only comes from shared adversity. Tiiu stopped walking at a shopping centre to catch a bus back to Samford and I continued on to The Gap.

I’d originally planned to catch a bus some of the way into The Gap because I wasn’t happy about the narrow shoulder on the big hill. After walking up Mt Mee I felt like I should just do it because I knew that nothing could beat the Mt Mee road for harem-scarem.

At The Gap I walked past a group of school children being led along by their teachers. I smiled at the teachers and did small waves to the children. The teachers looked at and looked away again as quickly as they could. The kids did the same, but I could tell it was hard for them not stare at me. At the end of the long line of kids I said hello and smiled to the person I thought was probably a teacher’s aide, but she totally ignored me and looked straight ahead as though she had no idea I even existed. Nice.

I’d arranged to stay with a lady (Deanne) I’d never met through one of my neighbours. She’d told me to meet her at Coles, but I had no idea where it was, so at the servo I asked a lady fueling up if she knew. She said she’d just take me straight to Deanne’s house, which was really nice of her.

That night we all went out for dinner because I’d arranged another Facebook event at The Gap Tavern, which no one came to aside from a lady whom my friend Shanny sent along. Still, it was a good night and I ate lots of food, which was very kindly bought for me by Deanne and her husband, Simon. As I was leaving the table to go to the bathroom, I heard someone say, “I couldn’t even eat that much!” I was so totally sick of damn muesli bars by this stage. It was good to eat real food again and I felt it necessary to eat as much as physically possible while it was available!

The next day as I was walking, I felt like the biggest weirdo of all time because everyone kept looking at me like I was a freak. Some young women, all of whom we wearing too much makeup laughed at me as I passed by and said hello.

I got a good laugh at one point though. I’m still getting mileage out of it. I walked past a school and the bell hadn’t gone yet, so all the kids were playing on the oval. One little boy (about seven or eight) was running along the fence with his friends and his hat had his name on it: Cooper Jones. He ran right up to the fence where I was walking and I said, “hello, Cooper,” and just kept walking. It freaked him right out! It was awesome!

Down the road a bit, a nice man stopped mid-jog and gave me a donation and even further down the road a lovely elderly man gave me a rather large donation because he was utterly gobsmacked by what I was doing. He kept patting me on the shoulder and telling me that he just couldn’t believe it. It kind of felt like he was patting me that way because he was testing to see if I was actually real and not just an apparition.

Next, a nice lady called Felicity stopped her car to come and talk to me about her son, Hayden, who’d been brain injured and how hard things had gotten for them since. She’d actually done several u-turns to get to where I was. I gave her a card so she could donate online later.

As I closed in on the city it fell on me that the whole thing was almost over:

At the CBD I wanted to tell everyone how great I was, and even though the city was full of people, I didn’t think I could. I got some tourists to take this photo of me:

I wandered around in the Queen Street Mall for a fair while because I had to meet the STEPS Coordinator, Sue at 1pm so we could go and see the Minister of Health: the Hon. Dr Seven Miles. I had “brunch” at a fancy cafe, which was right next to the Tattersalls Club and talked to a really nice older man there about hiking. He’d never been hiking before and wanted to start. It was nice to have someone so interested in the hiking part of what I was doing. He asked me to demonstrate how to take the pack off and put it back on again. I got him to lift it up and he was a bit scared about how heavy it was. “If you’re hiking with other people, your pack doesn’t need to have absolutley everything in it because you can share the load. Plus, I’ve walked 450km, so I needed a lot of stuff for such a distance,” I said, and he nodded, but I could still see he was a bit worried. “Don’t even worry about it. Once the pack is on your back and you’ve started moving, you really don’t even know it’s there,” I said. It’s hard to believe this, but it’s actually true.

I went back out into the mall and a random person shoved $5 at me and kept walking. I didn’t even get to see their face! It was really funny. At the Pen Shoppe I got talking to the ladies working there and they gave me a donation too. I’ve always loved that shop. I have a bit of a weird obsession with pens (I have a small chest of three drawers that is FULL of pens and it’s so hard to not keep buying more). I have it with paper too, but I’ve had to set that one aside because it’s very hard to find nice writing paper these days.

Finally it was time to meet Sue and we walked over to the Minister’s office to see him. Sue said he wanted to come on a walk with me. We waited for him with his sidekick, Riley, out the front. A fit looking man about my age strode up wearing a Deadly Choices shirt, shorts and a pair of runners. “You’re not what I was expecting,” I said and he laughed. I really thought he’d be a fat old guy in a suit. I really liked him and we talked about heaps of everyday stuff on a fast walk over the bridge. I felt a bit sorry for Sue and Riley as I knew it was probably a bit hard for them to keep up. When we arrived, two people from the PA Research Foundation were waiting to meet us: Damien (CEO) and Meredith (Marketing Coordinator). Everyone from the PA was really happy to have the opportunity to speak to the minister because it’s not something they would normally be able to do.

The Health Minister and me on our walk across the bridge. He ran back to the office after this.

Damien very kindly bought me a thickshake after the minister had left and we sat around a bit until it was time to leave. Sue dropped me back at the Roma Street station with another bag of corn chips. I had to catch the train back to Bundaberg. As I travelled I saw places I’d been on the hike and it made me nostalgic for what had just been.

I wish it could always be like the hike; the feeling that I’m doing something at least a little bit worthwhile. I wonder if the people I saw, smiled at and spoke to will remember me. I wonder what it might be like to have perfect recall and what my brain is like now. Is smarter than it was before part of it was cut out; both less and more at the same time? Less because some of it is missing, more because of the connections that have grown in through all that I’ve done since becoming brain injured. I long to see myself objectively, but I know this is impossible. I want to know how it is that I appear to others; in my actions, my words, my mannerisms and my pursuits. How am I perceived?

As the train pulled in at Bundaberg I thought I caught a glimpse of the person who was picking me up, there he is! I thought and I smiled, but when I got out of the train, it wasn’t him because the platform was empty. He’s forgotten to pick me up, I thought, disappointed, and it felt like someone had pulled the plug out of sink filled with happiness water. All the water drained right out when I saw that he was actually sitting in the car out in the carpark. He didn’t even ask if I wanted help with my stuff. I was never more sad that the cool guy I’m married to wasn’t there to share in what should have been an awesome moment to end a significant achievement. I really wanted the whole thing to end on a good note, but it didn’t and that’s not something I really had any control over, unlike the hiking itself, which I was totally in charge of.

This song with its simple lyrics has had a big impact on me. It’s about my life (and your life too) and also about the hike: