It Started With This:

Posted on April 3, 2026 by freestateofjen

I asked my Uncle Cameron (UC) to take a photo of me on the trailhead of the Great Ocean Walk (GOW), and later I disovered this nugget as I scrolled through the photos I’d taken during the day. See, he’s not really my uncle. He actually belongs to the Cool Guy I’m Married to, but because I don’t have any uncles of my own, I’ve decided he’s now my uncle and his wife is now my aunty. She doesn’t look anything like this though, which is a good thing, because there’s only so much you can put up with. Without UC I wouldn’t have made it to the trail or back from the trail, so even though he’s a complete unit, I’m glad I’ve got him on my team.

I hadn’t done any hiking for a couple of years because I got into mountain biking, plus I was busy and probably a bit lazy, and maybe, just maybe I’d developed a bit of an ‘attitude’ which basically said, what’s the point of even bothering. But after my last work contract finished I decided I wasn’t going to get another job and there was no way I was going to sit around on my arse being sad and lonely, I was going to get right back into being properly awesome by taking on some adventures. I also accepted that there really is no point to pretty much everything, not in a nihilistic way, but just because that’s life isn’t it? The only point to stuff is the point (meaning) we give it, so time to get on with shit because all of us only have one life.

I decided to do the GOW because it would be a dffierent kind of challenge: my first interstate hike. I’ve hiked a lot in Queensland (QLD), but never anywhere else. In Qld I can get ‘rescued’, but in other states, the options for that are fairly limited. Plus, the GOW was only 100km and the distances for each day were very short, averaging 12.5km/day. Piece of piss, I thought. Yeah, good one dickhead! As if. The whole hike was pretty much the entire opposite of a piece of piss. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because almost the whole thing is either vertically up or vertically down or trudging through deep sand on a beach while you dodge the ocean. I remember the Sunshine Coast Hinterland Great Walk being difficult because of the terrain, but I’m not sure it was as hard as the GOW.

The GOW starts in Apollo Bay and ends at the Twelve Apostles. It’s 100km and takes 8 days to complete. I carried everything I needed for the seven nights and eight days, but each campsite had water tanks with rain water, so I replenished my water supply every night. Everyone else I met on the trail filtered their water, but I didn’t bother even though the signs said you had to. I drink unfiltered rain water at home because that’s all we’ve got and I’m not dead yet.

I loved this section. Not all of the trail is hardened, but some of it has constructions, like planks, stairs and bridges to reduce the impacts on ecologically sensitive areas.

Cape Otway Lighthouse 3rd day. I stayed in the keeper’s cottage accomodation here.

I saw two koalas, one at Elliot Ridge and one at Blanket Bay. At Elliot Ridge he/she was in the undergrowth right next to my tent and it climbed up this tree as I watched it. I didn’t get a photo of the Blanket Bay koala. I actually thought it was a dog because it was walking along the middle of a road and I wondered, Who brings a dog to a national park and lets it wander around off lead? I hadn’t seen a koala since I was on a field trip for uni back in 2009, so I was pretty excited about it.

Johanna Beach, 5th day. There were two really hard days and this was one of them. It was the best campsite on the whole hike though, so that kinda made up for it, but not really. I still lost my shit halfway along the beach, shouting at the sky, “What the actual fuck!?”

Marc & Suzy from Taranaki in NZ, Mark & Karen from Gympie in QLD, Zoe from Germany. Missing from photo: Alexia from California in the USA, Clay & Shararay from Sydney and Newcastle in NSW, and me – I’m behind the camera, but you can see my Trangia on the RHS of the table. EVERYONE ELSE had a Jetboil)

The cool thing about this hike was the shelter shed at each campsite. The Great Walks in QLD don’t have these. At the end of the day the other hikers who all happened to be on the hike at the same time all congregated in the shelter shed to chat and cook their dinner. I’d never experience anything like this before. In fact, I’d never had the chance to make friends with anyone else on any trail I’d ever hiked or ridden. It was great to talk to everyone else about different gear and we all swapped tips and tricks. Clay gave me lots of food and on the last night everyone shared their leftover extras. Of course I didn’t have anything to share because I am eterenally hungry, so I ate every single thing I could get my hands on including the wild blackberries growing along much of the track. I should probably pack more food. It’s just hard to find packable stuff that I can imagine my future self eating. I fucking hate meusli bars, like really hate them and I can never come up with any breakfast alternatives because I don’t drink dairy milk, so can’t put the powdered version in meusli. I’ve tried powdered coconut milk, but ugh, kill me now. This was the first hike I bought freeze dried meals for. I liked them (mostly), but they weren’t enough to fill me up and I can’t come at buying two meals for each night because they’re $25 each. Argh!

I asked the Trail Gods of the GOW to teach me something I needed to know, something profound and fundamental. Lessons will roll in over time, but the first came early: stop being a tightarse. I learnt this because I was hungry all day everyday: I was too tight to buy better snacks and more food for my evening meals. I learnt this because I was uncomfortable and freezing cold everynight: I’ve always been too tight to buy a proper sleeping mat. Everyone else I met had insulated sleeping mats they’d paid several hundred dollars for. Not me, mine cost $30 on Temu. That’s why I was cold. Also, my pillow wouldn’t inflate: I tried to avoid paying the retail price for a new Sea to Summit pillow, so bought a cheap one on Ebay and the valve was broken. Sure, I got a refund when I got back home, but that didn’t help me on the trail for seven nights without a pillow. I was also cold because I didn’t have a proper jacket. Everyone else I met had puffer jackets. I’ve always been too tight to buy one of these because they are so expensive. I also thought they were too bulky, but Marc from NZ said, “no, you just shove it in between all the other stuff in your pack and it’ll fit bcause you’ve always got space in between everything else.”

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. I said to them, “I feel like I’ve known all of you for my whole life.”

Even though the hike was hard, it was also really good. I got to see some great stuff and I learnt some new shit about myself: I can get blown over by the wind. This happened on the last day and I never thought it was possible. I really can start a conversation with absolutley anyone: at the Twelve Apostles visitor centre some very large and beautifully attired black people lined up to have one of their group take a photo of them. “You guys look amazing! Where are you from?” I asked. “We are from Congo,” The biggest man said. “Oh, Congo! That’s so cool! I had a dog called Congo, you know, after the movie.” “Oh yes, I know it,” he replied smiling and giggling. It was great. I wanted to take my own photo of them, but I thought that might be a bit weird.

Some of our packs at the Twelve Apostles Visitors Centre. Mine is the 3rd from left.

Zoe in foreground cooking two minute noodles on her Jetboil at the Twelve Apostles Visitors Centre. In background is Alexia, Karen & Mark: all of them my new best friends. These guys were waiting for a bus and I was waiting for Uncle Cameron to pick me up. Some of them were continuing onto another hike, some were going back to work and I was going with UC to the closest Chinese restaurant via McDonalds, even though I’d eaten a sandwich, a big meat pie and drank a long black coffee at the visitors centre.

It all ended with something Alexia said:

THE TRAIL PROVIDES

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?**

RIP Hitecs

Posted on June 15, 2023 by freestateofjen

A EULOGY

3000km+ with barely a blister

Some of the places we visited together:

450km solo hike: Woodgate to Brisbane, Fraser Island Great Walk, Conondale Ranges Great Walk, Sunshine Coast Hinterland Great Walk, Cooloola Great Walk, Crows Nest NP, D’ aguilar NP, Mudlo NP, Burrum Coast NP, Bunya Mountains NP, Table Top Mountain, Mount Walsh, Mt Goonaneman , Utopia rock pools, Brooyar SF, Cooloola Wilderness Area……plus all the other SFs and NPs I can’t remember, and all the countless local walks I did, like walking to the pub on a Friday night, which is 3 hours each way, and wandering around in the bush looking for weird shit and hidden treasures, like these:

Surveyor’s scar tree in Burrum Coast National Park

Original Bridge for Gregory River crossing. Constructed 1921

Old rail spikes I found on a secret rail corridor in Goodwood

I wore them into town and even out at night sometimes because I just love the way they look, plus I felt weird not wearing them if I tried to wear sandals or sneakers because I got so used to seeing my feet in them. I wore the hell out of these boots and I loved them. I’ve always worn Hitec boots, but they became next level when they switched out their Vibram soles for their current Michelin soles. The Vibram soles don’t compare at all to the Michelin soles because the Michelin soles are practically indestructible, plus they don’t go hard like the Vibram soles tend to do with time. This means they don’t get slippery on wet surfaces. It also means they’re kinder to your feet, especially on long hikes when you’re carrying a heavy pack.

I replaced my old boots with exactly the same make and model from Hitec and they didn’t even need wearing in.

Click here for a ridiculous memorial movie of my beloved boots.

I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more, just to be the girl who walks a 1000 miles, that’s all I’m askin’ for

PROCLAIMERS, WELL MOSTLY

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…

Toowoomba Adventure

Posted on March 10, 2023 by freestateofjen

The coolest chic I know lives in Toowoomba, and a while back, she bought us tickets to see some banjo players at QPAC. I’d noticed last time I visted her that Toowoomba has some cool outdoor/adventure spots, so I decided to turn the whole trip into a mountain biking and hiking adventure.

On the first day I drove to Wondai to see if I could find the mountain bike track I’d overheard some mountain bikers talking about a few weeks back. I went to the tourist information centre, but the lady there didn’t really know anything about it, so I thought I’d try and find it on the stupid map app thing that someone put on my phone a couple of weeks ago. It took me around the block twice, so I promptly deleted it and just went back to google. Luckily I saw some mountain bikers heading down the hill, so I drove down the road and caught up to them. I asked the girl at the back if they were going on the loop (I didn’t realise that it was an actual single track mountain bike track, not just a rail trail loop). “We’re going to the mountain bike track,” she said, looking at me suspiciously. At this point I remembered I was driving a white van. “Ohh, cool! Can I follow you because I’m trying to find it and I don’t know where I’m going?” I said.

I pulled over before the carpark (I didn’t realise there was one), and she rode back to tell me that I could keep driving and park at the carpark about 800 metres further along the road. I felt good about that because it meant she didn’t think I was a white-van-stalker.

This is a bloody awesome track: lots of cool hills and do-able jumps and obstacles. It was heaps of fun. I met a cool fella here called Morris, who took me around the whole thing. He was really nice and I felt like I could be friends with him in everyday life, but as usual, I felt weird about asking if he wanted to stay in touch, so I said nothing, which is stupid.

After Wondai, I headed to Wooroolin with an 18km loop off the rail trail in mind. There was a sign at the start, which I followed up a MASSIVE hill to another sign that sent me down a nice, flat dirt road. A huge dog came running out of a house and I got a bit worried it was going to have a go at me, but it was a big sook. It had its teeth out, but was only doing a stupid grin to let me know it was friendly. I gave it a big pat and told it to go home, which it did. After that, there were no more signs, so I just continued to ride in a staight line, which took me over a grid and onto what looked like a long driveway. It was a long driveway: To someone’s farm house. I turned around and decided to head back to the car because I couldn’t tell which way I was meant to go because there were no more signs. AAAAarrghhh! As it turned out, I couldn’t go back the way I’d come because someone had closed a gate across the road where I’d met the huge dog. That meant I got to ride down a massive hill and managed to go the fastest I’ve ever gone on the bike: 39km/hr. I thought I was pretty cool, but I didn’t realise how much faster I could actually go until I got to Crows Nest the next day.

Wooroolin from the bike loop. Wetlands in the background

I headed to Kingaroy thinking I’d find a stealth camp there, but after driving around there for about an hour and not finding anywhere I felt OK about, I decided to head towards Crows Nest and find somewhere on the way. I ended up at Goodger, which was a much better spot than down the end of some dodgy suburban industrial estate.

I write all this stuff in a journal while I’m doing an adventure so that I can remember it properly later on. I really, really hate doing this! It’s the most annoying form of wrting for me and I have to write very fast so I can out-write the feeling of the approaching tantrum of I DON’T WANNA!! This is what happens when I write in a journal:

The next day at Crows Nest I called into the tourist information centre to see if they had any stuff on the local mountain bike tracks. The lady was really nice, but the biggest Covid conspiracy theorist I’ve ever come across. Apparently everyone who got vaccinated only has five years to live. She claimed that the vaccine was a way of getting us all transformed into AI because the global elite want to control everything and depopulate the world. I kept asking her why, not belligerently, but because I was genuinely interested in where she was going with her particular theory, but when she no longer had a way to answer my enquiries, she reverted to beliefs (a war between god and satan), which you can’t really question, so that shut the whole thing down. Ohhh, what a shame.

After that I went into Crows Nest to get a coffee and looked at a few maps to work out where to ride. I decided on a 20km mountain bike loop, which was pretty challenging. The first bit was OK and it was before the road went to dirt that I got the bike up to 50km/hr. That was pretty cool! The bike had a small speed wobble, but it was barely noticeable. Not long after that, the road when to dirt with massive corrugations on gigantic hills and I had to get off and push the bike a lot. It was really hot and I kept fantasising about getting a Crows Nest softdrink when I got back to the car. It was on the back end of the loop that I noticed my back brake wasn’t really working, which was a pain because there were some massive down hills on the way back towards Crows Nest and I could’ve picked up some good speed on these if I wasn’t worried about needing to slow down should a car come over the next crest or whatever. There was really only about 2km of nice riding on this loop. The rest was too corrugated and steep to really stay on the bike.

Fatty on the nice part of the Crows Nest loop

After the loop I went to Crows Nest National Park. I did the hikes there, but was struggling a bit by this point because my legs were so sore from a big run I’d done two days prior (the 2nd day after the exercise is always the most painful), and I had to find a big stick to help me get up and down all the stairs on the hike to the lookout at the top. It was worth it. I got to do some great cooees and yelps from the lookout. It was really echoey.

That night, I wrote in my journal: ” I think it’s good to not know too much about what you’re going to do. There’s no way to get disappointed: That bike loop at Crows Nest wasn’t really fun, but it didn’t piss me off like the Rainbow Beach ride did because I had no ideas about what it would be like.”

The next day I went for a drive in the forestry at Hampton, with the idea that I’d end up at Lake Perserverence and then Lake Cressbrook. At Lake Perserverence I found a secret hike:

I got really excited about this because I’d looked into the valley the day before from the Crows Nest Falls lookout and thought how cool it would be to go down and follow the creek bed and explore the bush. I went back to the car and got the GPS so I wouldn’t be held back by worrying about getting lost, but I didn’t get that far. I spent around 2 hours climbing around all the boulders in the creek bed, but couldn’t see where the trail went after the second marker. I assumed you follow the creek bed, but I just rocked hopped around up to the spillway and climbed back out to the car. I didn’t feel like getting stuck in the guts of nowhere. Given the condition of the sign and the two markers I did see, it’s obvious that this trail isn’t really used anymore, so it’s not likely that it’s going to be obvious where to go to get out of the valley at the other end.

Perseverance Creek. I think you follow this creek to get to the falls

After Lake Cressbrook, which was full of rules (YOU CAN’T! DON’T! STOP! NO DOGS! KEEP OUT! NO! NONE OF THAT! KEEP IT DOWN! SLOW! ). I went to Ravensbourne National Park, which was awesome. I found an old memorial at the Gus Beutel lookout, but I couldn’t read who it memorialised because the engraving was worn away. I did all the hikes in the park and at one point, in the middle of the rainforest, with the picabeens towering above me, two army Chinooks beat their way overhead. It gave me goosebumps as images of Vietnam sprung to mind.

A very cranky goanna Ravensbourne National Park

There were two of these overhangs. Both had little insectivorous bats hanging inside.

That night I wrote in my journal: “Today I felt like this is why I’m alive.”

The next day I faffed around in Toowoomba before heading off to Brisbane for the gig. I bought a new seat for my bike (the existing one had snapped) and asked the dude who sold it to me about fixing my hub and my brakes. Nobody in bike shops ever really likes fat bikes, but this guy wasn’t too bad. He reckoned I should probably buy a new bike because mine needs too much new stuff, which will require me to spend more than the bike is worth. He showed me the one below, which seems pretty bloody expensive at $2K (Fatty cost $650), but he reckons it’s only entry level. Entry to what exactly? Entry to spending even more money next time, then on and on ad infinitum. People get really judgey about equipment when you’re doing a specialist-type activity. This is one of the reasons I’m not a huge fan of clubs. So far, the mountain bikers I’ve met on the tracks have been pretty accepting, but even so, I’m not rushing out to join the local mountain bike club!

After the faffing I headed into Brisbane to catch up with the coolest chic ever. We had a great time and, overall I had another really great adventure, which I would not have been able to do had I not crossed paths with the dangerous and stupid iteration of myself in 2022.