Posted on July 19, 2026 by freestateofjen

GO

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

Cooloola Great walk:

Day1: Carlo – Kauri 15.2km

Day 2: Kauri – Littoria 20.5km (HARDEST)

Day 3: Littoria – Dutgee 14.8km

Day 4: Dutgeee – Brahminy 20.3km

Day 5: Brahminy – end 19.7km (EASIEST)

On day one, somewhere on the path to Kauri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dutgee campsite. Lockbox and wooden platform in foreground.

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

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

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

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

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

A gift from the hiking gods: a Lego hiker

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

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…

EPIC FAIL: Rainbow Beach Ride

Posted on February 26, 2023 by freestateofjen

In January I meticulously planned a ride from Rainbow Beach, across the Leisha Track, up Teewah Beach, across the river on the ferry to Tewantin, and back to Rainbow via the Cooloola Way. It was around 150km of riding in total. I only managed to ride 15km: from the beach ramp at Rainbow to the Teewah side of the Leisha track. I didn’t factor in trying to ride into the galeforce wind on Teewah Beach. Ugh!

The problems started early; before I’d even gone 15km. The beach was blocked by a massive treefall just before Double Island Point. To get through I had to unpack everything off the bike and stash it in the timber. Then I had to grab the bike and carry it through all the logs and sticks while unsuccessfully avoiding the waves breaking around my knees. After I parked the bike on the other side, I had to go back for the packs, which were more difficult and cumbersome to carry though the log jam than the damn bike was! I really wanted to go for a swim because the water looked so nice, but I decided against it and that was a good decision given how much time it took me to get anywhere once I got out onto Teewah Beach.

I was meant to ride 25km from the Leisha track, but only made it 17km because I pushed the bike almost the entire way. When I did try to ride I got a massive rippling cramp in my right thigh, so stopped and drank a little bit of seawater. I also licked my arms to get the salt off. It seemed to help with the cramp, but I couldn’t ride. It was waaay too windy. I did not expect that and felt kind of stupid for not even considering it.

Double Island Point side of Leisha track

In my journal (which I really hate writing by the way) that night, I wrote: It really wasn’t that fun today, or even fun at all if I’m really honest. It was really fucking hard. I don’t remember the Wongi ride being this hard…I don’t know how people camp in sand. It’s fucked. It gets everywhere, even into places you know you haven’t touched or opened. And, it’s sticky too because it’s kind of wet, so it’s not like you can dust it off. It’s sooooo annoying!

Lots of people stopped to give me lifts on the two days I was on Teewah Beach, but I wouldn’t have been able to fit Fatty in any of their cars, so I kept saying no. Some people eventually did come along with an empty ute tray, so I got a lift with them. They also gave me mini Mars Bars, so that was pretty cool. They were all very beautiful people. Beautiful in the way that people from cities normally are, not like me; someone who looks like they just fell out of a tree! Ange, who sat in the front told me about her business: About Faces Noosa. No wonder she was beautiful! They talked a lot about Yoga and it made me want to give it a go.

In total I rode for 15km and pushed the bike for 33km. I don’t recommend doing this! I couldn’t even complete the “easy” return section of the ride along the Cooloola Way, so I had to stay in a caravan park and get picked up the next day. When I was there, I wrote in my journal: I like Tewantin. I reckon I could live here.

When I got home I came up with a five year plan to buy a house in Tewantin. I would never have thought of this had I not had this epic fail, so it wasn’t really a fail because I got to learn some cool stuff and come up with more cool plans for the future. I also got to meet some really great people and made it home, even though at times it seemed like that would never happen. This guy wasn’t so lucky…

Come Hiking: $27

Posted on March 13, 2021 by freestateofjen

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).

Brain Injury Hike Burrum Heads to Rainbow Beach 150km

Posted on September 30, 2019 by freestateofjen

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: