I'm walking... in Australia!

You know that song “I’m walking”, right? When I did my first father’s day tour in the 90s, with my best friends Ulla and Lea, we had a little cassette player and maybe two or three mix tapes. One of them ran up and down, and it had that song on it which makes me think of that day whenever I hear it…

Anyway, it’s been a few weeks since my last real blog post (yes, shame on me), so here come a little update.

I’m still in Australia. In fact, I haven’t even left the state Queensland (top right corner of Australia) and only made it up north to the tropics this week (Townsville and Magnetic Island - I went because of the cool name, but it’s actually really nice).

Today’s post is about walking. There are many popular multi-day walks in Australia, but two of them stand out for being really, really awesome and famous. These are the Thorsborne Trail on Hinchinbrook Island, Queensland, and the Overland Track, Tasmania.

I’m going to walk both, that’s how cool I am.

It’s taken me 6 weeks in Australia where my feet have been itching to walk, before I got used to the idea of having to carry a tent (and a mat, a cooker, cookware, water). Because this is what walking in Australia means: basic (no showers) to very basic (no toilets) wilderness camping, and no huts.

(Although there are huts on the Overland Track since the Tasmanian climate is close to the British, but a tent has to be carried anyway, since the beds in the huts can’t be booked, so you’d have to be there early if the track is busy in order to get a bed. And I’m not a fast walker.)

I never really questioned my assumption that walking plus camping is too hard before now. I thought that a tent weighs either 3.5 kg and costs 20 € or 1 kg and 300 €. Seeing that my backpack already weighs 10 kg (after sending 5 kg of extra stuff such as warm clothes, make-up, and dancing shoes to Melbourne) I didn’t want to carry 50% more. But then I talked to a lady I had met in a Buddhist retreat (that’s another story) who convinced me that I could actually get a cheap lightweight tent in Australia. And I did. It’s a simple 2 person dome tent for 25$ and weighs 2 kg.

Being now a proud tent-owner I tried to get one of the rare Thorsborne Trail permits of which there are only 40 per day. That settled, I booked the ferry to the starting point of the trail, a shuttle to the ferry, and a bus to the shuttle. Also, another ferry from the end point. The permit was 20$ in total for 4 nights including camping. All transportation to and from the trail: 240$. I also cost me lots of nerves to organize all that.

Thanks, Kat and Daniel, for organizing my past walking trips! I never appreciated it enough!

Tomorrow, I’m going to go shopping for a mat, cooking stuff, etc., and the day after I’m doing it, yeah!