Tag Archives: hike

Brain Injury Hike Landsborough to Caboolture 42.4km

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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.

 

Brain Injury Hike Tewantin to Caloundra 80km (but probably more)

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Fundraising and Awareness Hike: 450km total

8th of October – 11th of October

Right before I got to the Sunshine Coast I had to make up the distance I had missed out on by not being able to walk the Cooloola Great Walk (it was closed by QPWS). I did that at home by walking to my mum’s place along the Buxton Road (22km), and walking around Burrum Coast National Park and out along the road that connects Walkers Point to Woodgate. It’s pretty cool living right next to a national park:

The melaleuca circuit is 12km. One time, at the bird hide, a snake slithered over my hand. Another time, I saw a musk duck. That was pretty cool. Better than the snake.

Echidna all scrunched up. I tried to sneak up on him/her to get a good photo, but they must feel the vibrations of anything that is approaching and go straight into scrunch mode.

The wetlands on part of the Melaleuca Circuit.

Note on Sunshine Coast Section of hike: The hike jumped around a lot here. I expected to be able to walk straight from Tewantin to Caloundra, but wasn’t able to garner the interest of any caravan parks in helping me out with a free tent site, which meant I had to trek over, across, back, forwards and sideways to cover the distance, while being accommodated very kindly for free by some people I’d known for a long time, but mostly by people I’d never met before.

The first day on the Sunshine Coast was really hard. It was soooo freakin’ hot and the concrete paths really hurt my feet. It was good to learn this though. For the rest of the hike I stayed off the concrete and walked on the grass/dirt next to it.

The cool guy I’m married to dropped me near the Tewantin primary school and I walked from there.

I walked past a cafe, where some cyclists were having coffee. One of them was super-friendly. He was really excited about what I was doing and he gave me donation. I thought it was a good sign and that everyone I came across would be friendly, but it didn’t really work out like that. I tried smiling at everyone I went past, but pretty much everyone wouldn’t even look at me and the ones that did looked away really quickly. For most of the day no one smiled back at me and the main reaction I got was the stupid-weird look that people seem to give me no matter where I am. After a while I stopped smiling at people and just looked down when I had to walk past someone.  It’s really hard to get past this because I can’t understand it. Some of my friends reckon that people ignore me because they’re city people, One of them said it’s because people are jealous of me (why anyone would be jealous of someone carting a 20kg pack is anyone’s guess!) and someone very close to me said that it’s because while I’m doing this I am a “proper weirdo”. I think I agree with that the most. I mean, not every single person looks at me like I’m the biggest weirdo of all time, but I’d have to say at least 95% of them do. It’s no big deal in areas with a very small population, but in a place like the Sunshine Coast and in Brisbane, it’s constant and it kind of got to me a little bit. The scenery was pretty good though:

Looking across the Noosa River

I did have some nice people speak to me in Noosa. The first one was a lovely lady from a shop called Poke on Hastings. Her name was Deanne and she came over to me and offered me to have anything I wanted to eat from her shop. I said I couldn’t eat anything at that point, so she gave me a nice drink instead:

Down the road a bit another lady came out of a coffee shop and was really interested in what I was doing. Her name was Jodie and she was really beautiful. She gave me a donation. I couldn’t remember what the name of her cafe was, so I googled “Jodie cafe Noosa” and got the right result: Puncheur

After that I didn’t talk to anyone until Sunrise or Sunshine Beach (I can’t remember which one). There was a dude there standing on seat looking out at the ocean.

Me: Are you going surfing?

Him: It’s low tide (said with derision).

Me: Does that matter? (the waves looked perfectly fine to me).

Him: You should have a different hat (didn’t answer about it being low tide).

Me: Yes, thankyou, but it’s hard to hear traffic and bikes approaching from behind with a broad brimmed hat.

Him: Humph (I could tell he wanted to argue with me about it. I didn’t bother pointing out that he should probably be wearing a shirt for his own sun protection considering he was so concerned about mine).

Me: How far is Coolum? (I didn’t actually care, I just wanted to redirect away from the hat topic).

Him: All the way up there (while pointing and smiling as though I should be afraid of how far away it was and that it would be impossible to actually walk all that way).

I had to get away from this guy as quickly as I could, so I made up some excuse about having to meet someone and started walking again. He was the biggest knob of all time!! He reminded me of the people I knew back in the nineties when I lived in Mooloolaba; the ones who all thought their shit didn’t stink.

Coolum waaay off in the distance. It’s actually so far that you can’t even see it.

At Peregian I spoke to a really nice lady called Rachel. She had a big scar on her shoulder and I asked her how it happened. “I was living in Brisbane. I was absorbed in my life there and just like everyone else, I was in a hurry all the time. I tried to beat a car at a pedestrian crossing and slipped on the white marks because it was raining and I was in such a rush. I fell down and smashed my shoulder against a high curb. It was a bad thing to happen, but it changed my life. I’m so much happier now. I moved away from the city after that and slowed the pace of my life. I should never have moved away from Coolum. I love it here.” I got the feeling that she could no longer see what she had found so attractive in the fast-paced city life.

I couldn’t work out how to get back onto the bike path. Rachel wasn’t sure, so after I left her I asked a man in a car, who was fairly useless at polite interactions, so I asked a lady in a shop, who pointed out that the path was only about 20m away on the other side of the carpark. Not long after I got back onto the path I walked through the area that had been burnt by a deliberately lit bushfire several weeks previously. One of the houses had lost its back fence and the shed was warped and twisted. There were melted surf boards and body boards inside it. The fire had licked up against the sides of homes that I walked past and many of the fences had been destroyed, not to mention the gardens and big trees. Some homes were totally destroyed in the fire, but I didn’t see any of these, thankfully. It must have been horrible to see the fire approaching through the bushland that was just across from the homes I walked past.

It seemed to take forever to get to Coolum. In fact, it took me over seven hours. WTF! It was only meant to be 20km but someone said later that it was probably closer to 40km because of how I walked by the longest route possible rather than the direct route I put in on Google Maps. That seemed plausible. I started whinging out loud towards the end: “How much further is it for fuck’s sake? Whyyyyyy is it so far? I can’t believe how long this is taking! Come on, am I there yet?” Lucky I was on my own. I saw a sign in the distance that I thought said CBH. That’s got to stand for Coolum Beach Hotel, I thought and it did.

I’d set up a Facebook event to start at 4.30pm, but no one came. I tagged the Coolum Beach Hotel in as co-hosts, but they mustn’t monitor their social media because they never got back to me (in fact, none of the venues did for any of the events I tagged them in on). There were big comfy lounges in the beer garden and as I sat there I watched a huge water dragon slide out from underneath one of the couches:

I got some donations from a few people in the beer garden. One of them was a lovely young girl who shyly handed over her money. Another was a strange man who came over to my pack and traced his finger across the words on the sign as though it was helping him to read it. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to put up with shit.

Him (in a gruff voice): Are you a good one or a bad one?

Me (in a no-bullshit voice): What do you think?

Him: I just wanna know if you’re one them good ones or bad ones.

Me: Well, what do you reckon? I’ve walked a long way to get here, I’m not getting paid, I’m raising money for a good cause, so you work it out for yourself.

He must’ve been happy with that because he gave me a $4 and off he went.

I had a few people like this on the last long hike I did in 2016. I’m not sure what their caper is, but I found last time that I had to speak to them the same way they spoke to me otherwise I had to put up with a mountain of bullshit. Sometimes it’s ok to put up with bullshit, but after hiking almost 40km I really wasn’t in the mood for it.

That night I stayed with some people from the Maroochydore STEPS group who were very kind to come and pick me up and take me back to their nice home in Buderim. It was quite a drive.

The next day we all went to the STEPS meeting together and I met some lovely people, one of them a man named Wayne who had come to be brain injured when he was run over by a car. His story was very similar to mine in that he didn’t know he was brain injured for a long time and thought he was going crazy, which is exactly the way I felt in the five years I lived with brain injury before I knew what was going on.

After the meeting I went to Sunshine Plaza and walked around a bit. I had to wait until the afternoon to meet Olivia who had offered for me to stay at her place via a request I’d put on Facebook. I’d never met Olivia before and I told myself that she’d be similar to a really awesome friend I had when I was younger; Erin, and it turned out that she actually was a lot like Erin! I had a great time staying with Olivia and her family. The house was full of people and her two boys Remi and Marli were both really cool dudes. I talked a lot with Olivia’s father, Serge and he had a lot of really wonderful things to say about his wife and his family. He was obviously very proud of them all. Olivia very kindly gave up her own bedroom for me and I had an excellent night’s sleep.

The next day Olivia took me to the Sunshine Coast University Hospital to look at the radiation oncology unit. She said we could go behind the scenes and see the planning section. This was interesting to me because I’ve had radiation therapy for brain cancer and while I knew planning had been done for my treatment, I didn’t realise how involved that actually was. I had no idea that physicists had input and that there were teams of people working behind the scene to make sure that the treatment was delivered effectively. I got a bit upset at one point and started pissing out tears. It was because the lady giving me the tour was explaining to me about why they have a photo wall. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that people wanted a photo to remember having radiation. I couldn’t wait to forget it.

Olivia very kindly drove me all the way back into Mooloolaba, which is where I’d scheduled a Facebook event at a cafe. I sat there like a twat for over 30 minutes. The dude behind the counter didn’t even say hello, which I thought was weird considering I’d called him to let him know I’d be coming and also seeing that my pack took up about one third of the entire floorspace in the tiny cafe. I wrote a story about being invisible and having an invisible disability in one of the adult colouring books he had on the table, then I left. I wonder if he read it.

It was impossible to work out where to walk today! I had printed maps (I don’t have an iphone), but the detail wasn’t good enough or maybe my spatial reasoning deficit wasn’t really helping, but man oh man, I walked in the wrong direction, back again, then back yet again, all the while being on the wrong side of the canal. I got the shits really badly and almost started crying a couple of times. The more I looked at the map, the less it seemed to make sense. I had to ask a lot of people where to go and in the end I found my way to the right road. As a result of all the to and fro, it took ages to get to my destination and I was really tired.

I stopped in a Maccas and a friendly lady there offered to give me a lift. I said no, but she gave me a donation anyway, which was nice. I had a thickshake and I felt better after that.

I was walking to Harmony Estate, which is on the other side of Sippy Downs to stay with Peter, who I’d never met before. Just like Olivia, I’d come across Peter on Facebook when he very kindly offered for me to stay at his place. I had a great time with Peter and his very cool dog, Bessy. I felt like Peter was the male version of me and I imagined we could easily be best friends in the non-hiking world. We talked about music and watched a DVD of Midnight Oil’s tour in 2017. We’d both gone to their gigs on that tour. I wish I had taken a photos of Bessy. She looked like a nice dog I used to know called Manoo, who was a big Irish Wolfhound.

I was looking forward to the next day because I was walking through the Mooloolah River National Park:

When I got in there it was great and I thought, I wish it was all like this.

Then I got to this sign:

What, does the Aemula fire trail go straight down into the centre of the earth? And which way does the Boronia fire trail go? Is it left or right? This wasn’t on a straight stretch of trail, it was on a corner. Luckily I came across some people not long after I saw this sign and was able to ask them where to go. I had a map, but couldn’t make sense of it. I followed the people I met, even though the lady was walking stupid-fast (around 7km/hr by my estimate). I wondered if she thought that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with her and that she’d show me up. It wasn’t me that couldn’t keep up, it was the poor man she was with, who I think was her husband!  They went out of the park and back into civilsation and I somehow managed to find the right road.

I had lunch at a fish and chip shop and a guy (Terry) came and sat down with me and started telling me about his brain injury from a car accident. He showed me his arm that had this horrendous scar on it and said that it had nearly been cut off, and that his hand had undergone 24 surgeries. He said he had to relearn everything again. He was a really nice guy and I really liked talking to him. He beeped at me later when he drove past me.

Not long after that, a car driven by an adult, but full of kids (about 15 -16 years old) drove past and they all hung out of the car yelling about me being a legend and giving me the Shaka sign, which was pretty cool because I could tell they were all surfers. It made me feel really good.

It took over five hours, but I finally made it to Caloundra:

After that it started pouring rain and I caught a bus back to Mooloolaba where some awesome friends had rented a fancy unit for two nights. The bus driver was the nicest man of all time. He was so helpful to everyone and really tolerant towards a loud mouth yobbo up the back. The yobbo kept swearing and the bus driver kept apologising to everyone on the bus for it. The guy was obviously a dickhead, but the driver didn’t lose his cool and just kept being really nice to everyone who got on and off the bus as though the yobbo up the back wasn’t even there. I wish I could be more like that! (The bus driver, not the yobbo).

The more I seek, the more I get free, and the more I get free, the more I seek

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brain Injury Hike Burrum Heads to Rainbow Beach 150km

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Fundraising and Awareness Hike: 450km total 

17th of September – 25th of September:

The pack wasn’t too heavy (about 15kg) when I started out because I only had stuff for one night of camping (I had to get picked up and dropped back twice), but as it turned out I didn’t get to use any of it, so it all got carried across the country-side for a little holiday of its own.

I walked through the roadworks at the back of Craignish and saw Kim again, who I’d met when I was first mapping the hike. I asked her why the roadworks were taking so long and she said they’d found some really weird shit buried under the road they were trying to fix; an old wooden bridge that wasn’t meant to be there and an underground creek. She said the bridge was totally intact and was so old that the timber appeared almost petrified.

A bit further along I met a man down a hole who was very excited about what I was doing. He kept telling me that I was awesome after he got over his disbelief about what I was doing:

Him: Where did you start?

Me: Burrum Heads today

Him: Bullshit!

Me: No bullshit.

Him: Where are you going?

Me: I’m walking to Brisbane.

Him: Bullshit!

Me: No bullshit.

I wanted to stay and talk to him, but he had hole-based work to do and I had leg-based work to do, so off I went.

A bit further along I came across this giant mattress dump:

I’d never seen anything like it, so I thought it warranted a photo. I wonder what they do with them?

Around the corner, a lady pulled up in her car and asked me what I was doing. She got very emotional when I told her about the hike. She was a carer for some people with disabilities. She offered to take me dragon boating and gave me a big hug when she left.

Out on the hiway I remembered how crappy it is walking along next to cars that are going 100km/hour. It’s totally ridiculous, but it’s really hard not to take the traffic personally. Is that the stupidest thing of all time or what!? Anyway, up ahead I could see a car on the side of the road and there were people in it. I had to walk right next to them and I said hello as I walked past and I asked the guy inside what was wrong. He was a pretty big dude, covered in bad tattoos and had a shaved head. He also looked like he was totally wired:

Me: Hello, how’s it going? What happened?

Him: Ahhh, fuckin’ thing’s cooked. Just fuckin’ bought it too. Fuckin’ bullshit.

Me: Ohh, that’s no good. Is someone coming to give you a hand?

Him: Fuckin’ hope so. Just fuckin’s sittin’ ‘ere waitin’ now. Fuckin’ bullshit. But, hey, you watch out for snakes and stay safe on the road, ok.

It was funny how cranky he was about the car, but how nice he was about wanting me to stay safe. I wouldn’t have normally gone so close to a car parked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t like I could cross over to the other side because there was a big wire barrier in the middle of the lanes and there was a big drop-off to my right.

When I got to the big round-a-bout on the Maryborough-Hervey Bay Road I cut down into the bush and walked along the gas line for most of the way to Susan River, where I’d arranged to camp that night. It was nice on the gas line. Better than walking along the road, but defeating the purpose of making a spectacle of myself for brain injury:

I’d arranged to stay overnight at Susan River Homestead. The owner (Norm) had told me he’d let me camp there for free, but when I arrived he gave me a room instead, which was really nice. He also fed me dinner that night and breakfast the next day.

At dinner I sat in the dining room with the family and we talked about all kinds of things, including brain injury. Norm’s son was a stunt man in Hollywood and had been terribly injured during filming of a movie resulting in a traumatic brain injury. I’d watched that particular movie many times (the cool guy I’m married to and I consider it to be one of our classics) and I didn’t even realise that someone had nearly died in the making of it.

Over dinner I felt like I had a shared history with these people who I’d never met before and it was as though I’d known them all my life. At breakfast, in the kitchen, I wanted to talk to Norm about his life and his business because I found him endlessly interesting, but he had to keep getting up to answer the phone. “After the caravan park that we’re building is finished, I’m putting the place on the market,” he said, sitting down, attempting to eat his breakfast. Momentarily he was up again, his laden fork placed back on the plate as the phone rang once again.  I was shocked, thinking that the property would stay in the same family forever. After all, it’s a local icon.  “No one wants to take it over, see.” And he explained how he never gets a break from the place and the hours are very long. I’d never really given the place too much thought before we had this conversation, but I found myself concerned for the property and how the “feel” of the place would be preserved with new owners running it.  I thought later that Norm would be an interesting subject for biography.

At the corner as I was heading back out onto the hiway, a big black car stopped and the passenger handed me a $20 note. “You’re doing a good thing,” she said and they drove off.

I walked along the gas line for as long as I could. I got stuck at the top of a cutting right before Saltwater Creek bridge and had to slide back down onto the road on my arse. I’d gone up there entertaining a fantasy that it would be a secret way across the creek without having to walk on the bridge. It wasn’t.

Bridges are a worry and I’d been worrying about this particular bridge because it’s narrow and it’s a very busy road. I attached my orange hi-vis bag to the handle of one of my poles and waved it around, high above my head. See, motorists don’t notice me because they’re not looking for a hiker on the road and that’s why the bridges are the most dangerous parts of the hike. Motorists literally don’t even see me AT ALL. The high-vis bag helps a little bit, but I’m serious, for the most part, people have no idea that I’m even there. To them, I’m Harry Potter in the invisibility cloak. It sounds nuts, and it is, but it’s true. The last charity hike I did I got talking to some motorists in a free camp and several of them admitted that they didn’t notice me on the road at all even though they’d driven right past me. Click here to see if you’d notice me.

I wrote a prayer to say before bridge crossings:

Hale to the bridge gods

Banks north, south, east and west

Be the path across safe

No hazards make

And bring your will against my back to push me forward and shepherd my way

Let the traffic flow as it must so I can arrive as I did approach

Hale to the bridge gods

As I was coming into Maryborough, a man zipped up on a little postie bike. He was very excited about giving me a donation. “This is from Ezy Build,” he said. He zipped off only to come back a couple of minutes later wanting to bring me cold water. I had a job to do to tell him I didn’t need water! I felt sorry for him because he obviously really wanted to give me some cold water, but I really don’t like cold water and it was difficult to explain that without seeming weird. But then, I probably didn’t appear particularly normal in the first place.

I found the walk from Burrum Heads to Maryborough pretty easy and I wondered why that could be. I know I really struggled with the last charity hike I did. It’s probably because I am much fitter and the pack is a bit lighter this time.

…This line of thinking didn’t really last that long…

The Cool Guy picked me up in Maryborough and dropped me back the next day. The pack is now almost 26kg, which is waaaay to heavy. I still hadn’t used my tent!

I walked past this cool structure. I don’t know what it is, but I liked it, so I took a photo of it. It’s opposite Walkers and next to the slipway:

Two people gave me donations as I was walking through Granville and I got talking to one of them about a rogaine event they’d just been to. I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about and I assumed that they were marketing some kind of baldness treatment until I asked them what rogaine was. Turns out it’s like orienteering. I didn’t tell them I’d thought it was about baldness! What a dick!

The road to the first real campsite was pretty good. I walked past an earthmoving yard and there was an orange tree totally laden with huge oranges. I wanted so much to go and get some, but it was too much effort, so I just kept walking. I thought today was only 15km, but after I arrived at the campsite I saw on the itinerary that it was actually over 17km. Still, I was pretty impressed with my idea of using toe socks for this hike and my weightlifting gloves for the hiking poles. Both things made such a huge difference.

I was worried about the bee hives that were on the edge of the forestry and I crossed over to the other side of the road to get away from them. I had to really handle my shit not to lose my mind as I walked past them. I am really scared of bees! A couple flew out and I almost started to panic. It was a huge effort to not start crying. It seems so outrageiously stupid that I can do all this tough mo-fo stuff, but if I see a single bee or a spider I start losing it. It’s totally irrational.

I got past the bees and made it to the first camp. Finally, I got to use my tent (Trangia stove in the foreground):

Campsite: Rainbow Beach 1

I almost lost half of the tent today. The inner and the outer each have their own pouches and one of the pouches had nearly migrated out of the bag that I had them in. It was strapped to the outside of my pack. It wouldn’t have made for a very happy ending if I’d lost it. After that I made a special effort to do the tent bag up a different way and to check the outside of the pack every so often.

This campsite was ok, but it was pretty close to the road and also the turn off, so there were streams of trucks all night long. There were a lot of mozzies and sandflies, but they were doing me a favour by offering graduated exposure to the unending hoards of them at the next camp. I went to bed at 7pm.

The next day was a bit harder and I thought to myself, this is more like it. I walked for  a fair bit inside the forestry. It was nice in there, away from the road and I took this photo:

I was looking forward to the second campsite because it had a tidal waterhole and the day was really hot, so I spent a good deal of time fantasising about a swim at the end of the day.

Campsite: Rainbow Beach 2

I went down to the waterhole, which wasn’t easy as it’s not really a path. The road isn’t even a real road, just a slash that’s been pushed with a posi-track blade. Who knows why it’s even there. No one would be able to drive on it. The woo-boys are huge. (Woo-boys are like giant speed bumps. These ones had been put there for drainage). I thought maybe the person who pushed the road might have wanted their own personal access to the secret waterhole.

I stood on some rocks and had an internal argument with myself about getting in the water, which wasn’t helped when I saw this come out from under the rock I was standing on:

Mudcrab: It looks tiny in this photo, but it would have been just under legal size. That’s it, I’m not going in there! I thought, but I made myself do it. I only lasted about one minute in the water, but I was glad I did it. This is what it looked like:

It’s bizarre to me that this is a tidal waterhole and I was nowhere near the ocean. At night the waterhole came alive. It started out with several gigantic belly slaps. Soon after that it sounded as though the whole thing was full of several teams of olympians playing water polo. I imagined a legion of dolphins that had been trapped during the high tide and there were sirens of the sea cavorting and chasing each other. It kept this up all night long.  I really wanted to go and have a look, but there were way too many bities to even imagine opening the screen on the tent. The space between the fly and in the inner was literally black with mosquitoes. This was the nicest campsite for the location, but the worst for the sand and the bities.

The next day seemed very difficult. I turned the GPS on more than three times to see how far the campsite was because I felt like I should have been there already. I think it was the heat. Plus I walked through a lot of soft sand today and the hills wouldn’t have helped. The hills are weird. They can be huge, but I don’t even notice that I’m walking up hill. It just feels the same as when I’m walking on the flat. I don’t even slow my pace down going up, no matter how steep it is. Going down is a different story. That’s much harder and I have to slow right down.

I walked through a cutting into the forestry thinking that it would just snake back around and onto the road. It didn’t and I had to slide back down on my arse onto the side of the road. Of course I did it right on top of a meat ant nest and they got all over me. They are the one type of ant I’m not afraid of because they don’t actually sting. Thank god for that considering there were hundreds of them on me and I’m alergic to ants, bees and wasps.

I met some long distance bike riders today: Rose and John. They’d started out in Cairns and were on their way to Brisbane. They gave me a donation. Rose said she’d heard about me, but couldn’t recall who from. She thought it was another long distance cyclist. I was sad to see them ride away. It had been a couple of days since I’d talked to another person.

Rose and John on their way to Tin Can Bay

I walked into military territory today, well, not quite into it, but past it:

Lots of cars beeped at me today. I raised my pole closest to the road in response. It makes me feel really good when people do this.

This campsite was the best one on the whole hike because there were almost no bities here and the ground was quite comfy. I went to bed at 4.20pm:

Campsite: Rainbow Beach 3

I didn’t really get that much sleep here though because I had the stupidest dream of all time that featured my ex-best friend, a fancy motel and an elevator that went upwards at an angle. The road was constant with truck after truck. Plus a dog was barking in the distance at one point and I thought how unusual it was for a wild dog to bark like that. It was a long way off, but seemed to be getting closer. Gees, he’s travelling fast. He must be chasing a galloping brumby, I thought. Louder and closer he got and I thought how big he must be to be covering such a distance as he was. I got a teeny tiny bit worried. He was almost right at my camp and it was then I realised he was on the back of a ute doing what I call “the barking tour” and off he went barking into the distance in the opposite direction.  I felt like a dick!

**

Today while I was walking I got to thinking that you don’t get to pick the things you’re good at and the things you’re good at might not necessarily be useful for any tangible purpose other than for your own enjoyment. The idea that it’s possible to commodify a skill or a passion is something that’s common in contemporary society, but to me, doing this could present a great opportunity to extinguish something you love and take away a central part of your identity.

**

I decided at this spot I was carrying too many clothes, so I packed everything up that I didn’t really need and left it under a grass tree to collect when the cool guy I’m married to picked me up from Rainbow Beach. I also fashioned a vermin proof rubbish canister out of my 5 litre water bottle by cutting the top off, stuffing it with rubbish and taping it back up with duct tape. I shoved it under the grass tree too. I don’t leave anything behind when I hike, so I had to go back to each site after pick up and collect the water bottles.

Because I’d struggled so much the day before, I looked at the pack when I was ready to leave and I said to it, “I hate you” then I took this photo:

After I’d offloaded all that stuff it was much easier going and I stopped worrying so much about walking the 20km into Rainbow Beach on the last day. There were a lot of hills again and the road and forest seemed never ending:

It took me over six hours of walking today, but I faffed around a fair bit. I talked for ages with a dude in a posi track about how annoying the wooboys are on the forestry roads. I also went all the way up into this cutting that I’d thought would snake back around, only to discover that at the top of the hill it went in the opposite direction. I had to come back down again and almost fell down the embankment because I was too lazy to walk back to the start of the track again and thought I could just go down the side. The grass was taller than me.

As I came to the nursery, which was the only retail business I’d seen since leaving Maryborough,  I thought I’d go and see if they had cold drinks, but I walked all the way past the service road and had to double back to get into the nursery. I stood there looking at the sign that said “closed Wednesdays.”  How will I know if it’s Wednesday? I wondered aloud. I stood there for a couple of minutes trying to work out how I’d figure out which day it was before it dawned on me to look at my fitwatch. Durr (my phone was almost flat and I didn’t want to waste the battery turning it on to check the day). In the nursery no one was there, so I had to just leave again anyway. Poo bum wee.

At the last campsite I wasn’t happy with the spot I’d picked. It was too close to the road and everyone who drove past would have been able to see me, so I took my pack off and walked around for about twenty minutes until I found a spot that I thought was really good. It was. That is, until the lights came on. I was camped at a water treatment plant and the damn thing was lit up like a Christmas tree as soon as the sun went down. I had to tie a bandana over my eyes! Not only that, there were various pumps kicking in and out all night long. I didn’t get to bed until after 8pm, which was getting really late considering I’d been going to bed at an average of 5pm. The road was also pretty eventful. Every car that stopped at the turn off from Cooloola Cove laid a line of rubber. A team of Harleys came through at some ungodly hour and then there was a carload of people who stopped at the corner and started partying. I was so very glad I’d moved the campsite. No one could see me at all in the new spot:

Campsite: Rainbow Beach 4

On the way into Rainbow Beach more cars beeped, which made me smile. I wanted to stop in at Seary’s Creek and take a photo, but I got talking to a ranger there and I forgot about the photo. I was annoyed with myself because I descended into whinging when I was talking to her, which is what made me forget the reason I went there in the first place. It’s very hard for me to not get caught up in whinging when I get the audience of anyone from QPWS. See, I spent a good chunk of my life (almost 20 years) trying to be a ranger, but could never even get an interview. It’s really hard not to be embittered by this. Sometimes I feel better about it all than I do other times, but I doubt if I’ll ever be totally at peace with it.

Anyway, she was a nice lady and was interested in what I was doing. It wasn’t until I got 200 metres down the road that I realised that I hadn’t gone to the toilet, nor had I taken the photo.

As I got closer to Rainbow Beach the amount of crap on the road increased. I heard a giant rustling in the bush behind me and I thought, gees, that’s a big goanna, so I stopped to look and at the same time, the rustling also stopped. I started walking again and the rustling started up too. What’s going on? I thought. Looking down at my shoe I noticed that I had fishing line caught around it and must’ve been pulling a giant wad of it through the bush with each step I took. Normally I would have stopped and found the end of the line, rolled it up and taken it with me, but there was so much of it on the road, that it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Not only that, who could tell how long it was or where the end could possibly be.

Further down the road I found an animal’s horn, but no animal. I found a wallet that had been sitting there since probably 2014. That was when all the cards expired and lots of camping bits and pieces and stuff from boats.

I met a lady while I was walking who stopped and gave me a donation. She went back into town and organised for another lady to meet me and walk into town with me:

Alison and I just before Rainbow Beach

Right before we had this photo taken I found a $50 note on the road! How cool is that! I’ve found money on the road before, but never anymore than a $10 note. I felt sorry for the person who’d lost the $50, but happy for me!

I was meant to be staying with Gary and Julie, but Julie had to go away on short notice and Gary’s two brothers had decided to come and visit, so I ended up staying with their neighbour Lyn. I’d never met any of these people before. It had all been very kindly organised for me by way of Lee McCarthy who runs the local newspaper.

Gary dropped me off at Lyn’s place. She wasn’t home, but had left the place open so I could go inside and have a shower. It was pretty cool that someone I’d never met just left their home open for me to access. I was very excited about having a shower. It was the first one in five days.

Later that afternoon I went with Gary to St Vinnies, where they’d offered for me to have anything I wanted for free from the shop. I only needed a pair of thongs, but they didn’t have any, so one of the guys volunteering there gave me his fancy Havaianas (I left them with Gary to return to him the next day).

That night we all went out for dinner to the sports club where the manager gave me a meal for free. Some people from the community came and I got lots of donations, which was really nice considering none of these people knew me at all: $220 in total. I gave a speech I’d written beforehand. I felt dumb saying it. It’s always difficult to talk to a smaller group of people than it is to speak to a larger group. You can’t fake eye contact with a smaller group and it’s more likely that everyone is paying closer attention to you as well.

Back at Lyn’s she gave me chocolate icecream because the kitchen was closed by the time I’d asked about getting dessert. I love icecream. I’d wanted to get a ginger beer spider when I arrived in town. I’d been fantasising about it for a while, but there wasn’t really anywhere to get one, so I bought a small bottle of sarsparilla and it was just as good.

I was really looking forward to seeing the cool guy I’m married to the next day. It felt like it had been forever since I’d seen him because I wasn’t able to talk to him while I was hiking; I forgot to charge my phone before I left and I was conscious of preserving what little charge there was incase of an emergency. “Didn’t you bring a charger?” someone asked. I just looked at them for a moment wondering what they could be possibly thinking. “Um, no, but if I did, where would I plug it in – to a tree?”

Some of the stuff people say to me when I’m hiking is out there. People think I can just walk down the road and back to get water, when down the road and back is over 10km in one direction, which would be a 20km return; an entire day’s walk. They don’t seem to understand the difficulty that water presents, often suggesting that I can walk along a different route because its easier or shorter even though there’s no water within 100km.

Once, when I was telling someone about the kind of food I take, they said, “Not me, I’d just have a BBQ everynight.” I wonder how they think they’d keep their meat fresh or where the actual BBQ might be or how in god’s name they’d do the dishes after a greasy BBQ.

Another one is the mattress. People forget that it’s hiking, not camping and there’s no vehicle to carry a giant mattress for you. Often I get suggestions about how comfortable such and such a mattress is, only to have to remind people that weight and size are factors when hiking.

After this little break, I’m off again and still have 300km to go. Yay!

I saw brumbies on the way home:

One foot, then the next, then the next, then the next…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bik pla bagarup

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Tok pisin for a major bugger-up.

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

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

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

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

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

Adventure teaches equanimity