Tag Archives: Queensland

Come Hiking: $27

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5 days

4 nights

Approx 100km

Cooloola Great Walk

Image: Cooloola Great Walk (from Queensland.com website)

Leaving from Rainbow Beach end

Date TBA, but from 12th April onwards

Cost is $6.75/night/person ($27 on QPWS booking site), plus any associated transfer costs

You won’t need a lot of experience, but you will definitely need to be fit and committed to completing the entire 100km. I’m not carrying anyone out!

Image: I’m not doing this! (Credit for image: click here)

This is a remote hike that requires self sufficiency and you will need to carry all of your own gear in a pack on your back. This will weigh somehwere in the vicinity of 10 – 20kg. You will be responsible for your own water, your own food and its preparation.

I am more than willing to help anyone who needs a hand with stuff, including advice and any recommendations, I just wanted to make it clear than while I am an experienced hiker with eco tourism qualifications, this is NOT a glamping experience and you will be responsible for your own health, safety and any other requirements.

There are a few companies that charge people for this hike. This company lists it as $1095 per person and all you get is your food and the camping permits. That means that the experience and the food is worth a whopping $1068!! Gees, the food would want to be bloody top shelf for that price. Not sure my indian sachets would cut it:

Image: I love these things! They are so freakin’ yummy. You can get them from supermarkets, but the best ones come from Indian shops (Gits Ready Meals). They are all around $2.50 – $4.00 each.

I have a few hiking items I can lend people, but this is a list of basic requirements:

  • Hiking pack (this needs to have some kind of frame. If you can bend your pack , it has no frame and isn’t any good for hiking long distances).
  • Tent
  • Sleeping pad
  • Sleeping bag
  • Mess kit (you know, stuff you use to eat. Include a stove here if you want to take one)
  • Snake bite kit (At least one good compression bandage)
  • Personal light
  • Toiletries
  • Water and water bottles (inlcude water filtration if you want to filter water. I don’t normally bother if it’s tank water)
  • Food
  • Clothing
  • Good shoes/boots

Image: Hiking gear. Trangia stove in foreground. Helinox chair and poles, Wilderness Equipment tent.You don’t need expensive gear like this. I only have it because sponsors gave it to me.

A cheap dome tent (not a pop-up one though) from KMart will work fine, or if you want a cheap entry-level hiking tent, check out Snowys. Wild Earth is another awesome outdoor store in Qld. There’s also heaps of good second hand stuff for sale on Gumtree and ebay.

Some stuff you can share, like water filtration, stoves and tents, so not every person needs their own personal item if you are willing to share these things. Sharing stuff also means you can carry half each to reduce each person’s load.

This kind of thing takes a fair bit of dicking around to organise logistically because you have to work out where to leave your car, how to get to the trailhead from where you did leave it, and then at the end, ummm, how do I get home?? So, what I’m saying here is that if you are interested in coming along, we’d have to sort these details out. I can fit (read: squash) 4 other people in my car.

Image: This is a tidied up version of what dicking around looks like. Of course, this doesn’t capture the ten hours I’ve invested in the whole thing or phone calls and emails I’ve made and sent to ask questions about car storage, transportation, etc, etc. It’s easy to see why a lot of people just pay the thousand bucks for a tour company to do this for them. It would save a lot of hair-pulling.

Contact me on this website or send me and email to let me know if you’re interested:

talulasweetie@gmail.com

Image: Me on the last long distance hike I did (450km).

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