Tag Archives: national park

The Hiking Crew and Muddy Shoes

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The other day I took some people hiking. I’d never done anything like this before and I was surprised that 1. People came, 2. They all liked it, and 3. They didn’t seem to think that I was a dickhead! In fact, they all said super-nice things about the experience on our local community Facebook page, which made me feel really good. Yay!

This is what they looked like when we got back. Four of these people I already knew and four of them I’d never met before:

What I bang on about throughout this website comes down to this: Don’t let fear hold you back. It wasn’t easy to put an invitational post on a Facebook group with over 600 members, especially when some of the people who use the group are vitriolic haters, but I did it and look what happened: I met four new people and the people who came on the hike all got to meet new people too, all while having a new experience. Not only that, since I put the invitation on the group’s page there has been lots of interest from the community about future hikes, which isn’t something I thought would happen when I decided to do this.

I’m always going, blah, blah, blah, people should be more active, blah, blah, blah, but I never actually DID anything about it. This shows what can happen when you take physical action and offer an opportunity for others to step outside their comfort zones or to try something new. It kinda blew my mind that it was little ol’ me that made this happen! It might not seem like a great big deal to some people, but it’s a big deal to me and who knows what kind of big deal could flow on from it.

The next day, with an inflated sense of my own greatness I took off on a 30km ride on Fatty to check out one of the new hikes I’ve mapped in the national park. I rode 7km to get to the trail head, and this is what it looked like:

At the end of the formed track my stupid little hand drawn map didn’t tell me if I was meant to go left or right, so I went right. It was the wrong way (of course). It appeared that I wasn’t as great as I initially thought! No big deal though because I know the tracks, so I could just find my way back to where I was meant to be, which was here:

That’s fine for me, but not so great for anyone else who might try to ride off into the wilderness. Obviously I need to do a lot more work for my maps to actually be usable.

About an hour away from home I’d gone back to the inflated sense of greatness I’d started out with, but that didn’t last long. At a muddy track I decided that it would be no problem to stay on the narrow dry strip between two deep wheel ruts. My mind said, nah, it’s easy, you can stay on that no worries, stop being a pussy, and then in one revolution of the pedals I was in the mud:

I was not pleased and I said some nice words beginning with the letters f and c. At least I didn’t get hurt, even though I got covered in mud and so did Fatty. I had to go to the beach when I got home to get all the mud out of my shoes before putting them in the washing machine. I felt sorry for the pelicans when they all flew over to eat the fish scraps they thought I had. “Sorry guys, it’s just muddy shoes!” I yelled at them and disgusted, they promptly flew off.

The bottom line is this: You don’t have to know what you’re doing before you decide to do it. Ducks have a habit of not lining up and if you don’t act now, you may never get to, and even if you fail (you fall off in the mud or get hated on by moronic idiots), it doesn’t matter because:

From boldness courage flows

 

 

 

 

Hikes of Fire

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Last year we had some really bad bushfires in this area. The national park was closed and there was no access to the two walking trails (The Melaleuca Circuit and the Banksia Track) until QPWS cleaned them up and deemed them safe. The fire fighting effort meant that the firebreaks in the park and on council bushland were widened and upgraded. Once everything was burnt to a total crisp, it was easy to see through what had once been inpenetrable, dense wallum scrub and Melaleuca swamp, and I took the opportunity to explore areas that I didn’t realise were accessible. I got a bit excited about this and thought it might be possible to work with QPWS to develop a hiking network in the Woodgate and Kinkuna sections of the national park to begin with. Delusions of grandeur have led me to believe that the entire park (taking in the Buxton, Burrum River sections and Bingera NP) can eventually be networked with hiking trails and walkers camps similar to those found on any of the awesome hiking trails we already have in Qld. Click here for a description of what I’m talking about.

After much frustration due to the images being updated on Google Earth last month, I was able to come up with three new loops and an overnight hike. The loops all utilise the caravan park at Woodgate as a campsite. The overnight hike utilises Burrum Point campsite. Speaking as a hiker, this kind of thing is more likely to attract hiking visitors to the area because hikers like hiking and presently there are only the two short walks in the park, which wouldn’t really attract visitors who are keen on covering long distances. Basically what I’m saying here is that people aren’t going to come here for hiking because there’s nowhere to hike. In fact, this whole region doesn’t have many opportunities for long distance hiking, which is kinda silly considering the Burrum Coast National Park covers 26 000 ha, which is quite a chunk of land and is considered an ‘outstanding example of Queensland’s natural environment and cultural heritage’ according to the Department of Environment and Resource Management.

So far this is what I’ve come up with. I’m not a cartographer and I don’t expect anyone else to understand these stupid maps, but I had to start somewhere, which is what you’ve got to do if you want to make change. I do not recommend that anyone attempt to follow these ridiculous maps! Don’t do it, just don’t! I’ve emailed QPWS and hopefully they’ll come through with the goods to improve on what I’ve got and we can eventually have lots of awesome trails in this area:

This is the map I started with. You can see why I wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt to follow this!

 

First loop: 17.73km

Second loop: 23.68km

Third loop 21.62km

Overnight hike: 34km

These pictures are crappy, I know that, but that’s OK because there’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there if you want to make change happen. If I waited until everything was perfect before I did anything, I’d never get to bloody well do a single thing!

So, it was shitty that we had the fires and some of our houses nearly burned down (mine included), but if that never happened I would never have come to find these new hikes that will not just benefit me, but others who are interested in living a life made of adventure.

Appreciating nature is what humans are made for and the more we can get out in it, the healthier we’ll be, the happier we’ll be and the more likely we’ll be to be able to overcome the crappy things that seek to tear us down, like fires, viruses and mean-spirited arseholes. 

Flame a new path and fire up your mind

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me and the Food

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Today I spent eight hours getting the food packed up and organised for my brain injury hike. 

This is a typical ration for one day:

Some of the meals have dried vegetables in them and then there’s the dried fruit. The fruit and veggies went from this:

To this:

Then it all ended up looking like this:

Packing up the food isn’t my favourite thing. I get quite anxious over it. I’m not running around with my arms flailing about, knocking into walls while crying and screaming or anything, but I do worry about getting it exactly right (I can’t handle the thought of having to go without my dinner!) That’s not at all helped by the high fire danger in just about all the areas I’ve planned to walk in. I’ve had to remap the route twice due to national parks getting closed to walkers due to the high fire danger. It was kind of annoying, well, a lot annoying, but at least I had enough time to plan alternatives and I haven’t lost my shit at all yet, which is pretty damn awesome! I did almost start crying the other day when three people in a row, who were your basic big ol’ meanies, were really mean to me when I asked for their help about camping, but then I met someone nice, who was happy to help me, so I got over being upset about the three big ol’ meanies. My idea of a big ol’ meanie is probably not your idea of a big ol’ meanie, but if you read this post, you might get where I’m coming from.

From adventure it begins