The Bibbulmun Track is a nearly 1000km trail extending from the Perth Hills to the southern coastal town of Albany in Western Australia. Huts, providing shelter, bunks for sleeping, a rain water tank, tables, toilets and tent sites, are dotted along the trail every 10-20 kilometers. It had been a dream of mine to hike the trail since I first heard about it, around the time of its inception in the early ‘90s. In mid-2008, I had just finished a job, under extremely difficult and challenging circumstances. Catapulted into a personal crisis, I needed a break and an adventure that would divert my mind from the more difficult emotional challenges I was struggling with. In early September I left home to embark on a 10-day hike on the Bibbulmun Track. An avid walker, I wasn’t sure I could handle the more demanding conditions of a long hike carrying a backpack. My pack weighed 20kg — far too heavy for a woman weighing in at 50kg! — but necessary given that I needed to be self-sufficient as a solo-walker. I initially set out for a ten-day ‘trial period’, testing my body and endurance levels and finding out whether it was something I really wanted to do. At the end of that first stretch, my body was strong and my spirits high. I returned to the Track with the intention of completing an ‘end-to-end’ trek in approximately eight weeks. This is the story of that journey.
Day 1 (3rd September) – Herne Hill
Kalamunda at 7am, a sleepy hills town stirs with its first residents walking the streets, money out of the ATM, on to the bakery or coffee shop, only things open this time of the day. But these aren’t bush hillbillies; rather, immaculately dressed workers, commuters no doubt on their way to join the other grey-suited 9-to-5ers in the city. Johan and I, true bushies in our bulky sweaters, down jackets and unkempt hair, join them in their pseudo-trendy coffee shop. The coffee is average, I can’t get past the first few bites of the cakey overly sweet muffin.
We’re too early to get into the chemist across the street so we dawdle but the free space seems to only make us vague towards each other. Not a comfortable feeling after nearly two months of good connections flowing out of the tragedy that swept through our lives these past two months. But we’re both nervous about this – me going away on my own for ten days.
We wave a bashful good-bye at 9am at the trailhead. I’m off on my adventure. Silence and solitude slowly take over. I smile within; this feels right. A brief stop for Morning Prayer and I plunge into the bush, merrily listening to the stereo sounds of bird calls, water trickling down still-full springs, sunlight streaming through towering jarrah trees.By 11am I’m lost. The squiggle snake on the orange triangle has disappeared. I can’t believe the management of this track is so inept! Where am I? Where’s the Waugal?? A woman on a horse appears across the vacant lot that looks like it’s used for Saturday night hoon parties. She looks at my map and tells me I’m at least 2km north of the Track. What?! She must not know what she’s talking about, know the area very well, or know how to read maps properly.
We chat briefly; she’s from Nova Scotia, a semi-retired cartographer who bought an 11-acre farm nearby a year ago in order to take up her hobby, horse-riding. She’s been all through these hills back of Kalamunda. I smile a thanks, hoping she’s wrong about my position.
I soon discover she’s right. I’ve taken a two-hour, 4-6km detour and I’m mad! By 1pm I end up at the creek where I took my first rest stop at 11am. But I’m still a kilometer from the Track. I opt for a service road leading south and then east that looks like it will eventually meet up with the Track. The trail turns a steep upwards and I spend an hour huffing a 20kg pack up what feels like a 40˚ incline. When I reach the top, exhausted and beaten, I take off my pack, lie down on a fallen log, and cry.
This is what I think while I’m lying on that log: if we’re serious about being Christians, eventually God calls us to walk Jesus’ path. It starts with some sort of crucifixion, the sole intent being to destroy the grip the small self has on our lives, and ends with resurrection. The recipe is unalterable and has been in place for 2000 years. But most people who call themselves Christian can’t stomach it so opt for the idol-worship form of religion, adoring either themselves (for their piety) or the God they’ve created, usually a nice one whose on side in ensuring their lives are made rich, holy and relatively problem-free.
This is not Christianity. God wants us to walk steep mountains, get lost, side-tracked and found again, all in one long symphony of struggle. God doesn’t want to hurt us, but to heal us, and he knows it hurts, it’s gotta hurt. But his love and support are there, as close as we are, closer still, breathing into and through us. He loves us. He loved me as I battled up that steep incline, my body in high revolt, as my tears flowed when finally, gleefully, I saw that squiggly snake again, as I lumbered on painful feet and dead-tired body to trek the last 6kms to the shelter where I would spend my first night on the Track.
God’s not going to let up with this one. He’s on a roll with me, I can feel it deep inside.
Day 2 – Bell Creek
Vonnie, my hut-mate for the night, thanks me for my company as I lug my pack off for another 10km day. She’s only out for one. She gets up at some ungodly hour and rustles her camping gear and flashes her head torch around the hut, frequently into my sleeping face. She looks ill and says she has bad lungs but loves to hike, though she walks very slowly.
Day Two hasn’t progressed any from Day One. It starts well, the blisters are semi-healed after a night’s rest; but by midday they feel like knives again. Mundaring Weir is empty of people, interesting to view and damn difficult to get out of. Like yesterday, I revolve in circles, swearing as I climb a set of rock stairs for the second time, having been misled by what I thought was a track sign that eventually leads me back to the top of the dam wall. I go slowly the rest of the afternoon, day-dreaming about what I can dump from my pack to make it lighter.
3pm, I arrive at the next hut. Four people taking up three bunks are already there, making merry. A gaggle of school kids descends the trail from behind me and our adult reality is temporarily suspended while a smart-mouthed school teacher gives them a talk about the Bibbulmun Track, the kids sprawled around the camp semi-listening. She then gets them all to sign the Log Book, which takes forever.
I disappear, looking for a place to pitch my tent. Too much noise and claustrophobia. I need distance though am vaguely aware that this is God’s special dish for me tonight: lotsa company.
Day 3 – Mt Helena
The morning starts so well: the feet feel good again, the night’s rain has nearly been dried off the tent and I’m on the trail by 9.40am. The good feet only last an hour; I take my shoes off at a rocky outcrop and dip them in a thin veil of water running down the side of the rock to a small pool. It’s a beautiful spot. But it’s downhill for my feet after that. Momentarily refreshed, the first uphill grunt ruins them for the day.
By the time I hobble into camp at 2.30pm I’m nearly lame. Leena, my hut-mate for the night, is a 25-year-old ex-Navy medic carrying 25kg and suffering for it. She camped two nights at Bell Creek to recover. I marveled at that: 25, tall, strong build, ex-service woman, she had it all over me. But today she walked lithely and I hobbled. I think I’ll take her cue and camp here an extra night while my feet heal. Please God they do.
Day 4 – Mt Helena
My hut-mate and I have been in our beds for over 12 hours. That’s what happens when you go to bed just after dusk because there’s nothing to do and it’s cold outside. She finally gets up but I resist, finding my sleeping bag a greater comfort than the frigid morning air. But the light intensifies and finally I drag myself out of the continuous circuit of dozing and waking, dozing and waking. I mutter ‘Good Morning’ and take off to do my prayers. Over an hour of prayer, meditation and exercise later I head back to camp, slightly dreading the morning chit-chat that will be expected of me.
Instead I meet emptiness. Leena has packed up and left, not so much as a good-bye scribbled on a slip of paper torn from her journal. I feel abandoned and utterly alone. Terrifyingly. I make breakfast and huddle around my coffee cup, looking for warmth and comfort.
Later, I walk up the hill and smile when I find a signal on my phone. I text Johan a message and feel warm inside when he texts back that he’s been thinking and worrying about me. And he loves me! The day is looking brighter.
I rest on a blanket of smooth rocks for the day consuming the Dorothy Sayer novel I find in the hut hamper. By evening I’m enjoying my solitude and praying it continues through the night. But after Evening Prayer I find Carol and Dave at the hut, a friendly 60ish couple just started out on their trek to Albany. I marvel at their fitness: they double-hutted today and walked 20km – on day two of their trek. No blisters on their feet. I’m hoping mine have healed enough from the day off to handle the 10kms required of them tomorrow.
Day 5 – Waalegh
The most beautiful campsite yet! A stunning view west across the valley; a mere glimpse of Lake O’Connor; white gums spread around a mammoth boulder and yellow wildflowers adorning the understory. The sun sets over Perth’s hills as I write. The only flaw: a distant rumble of motor bikes making their last grunge through the valley below before the weekend dies.
Carol and Dave Bond from Brookton, last night’s hut-mates, preceded me on the trail today. It was hilly, up and down, up and down, one more down then up to the campsite. But they didn’t stay. They’re ‘double-hutting’, track lingo for those who skip a hut on their daily hike.
Now I am alone; the first night thus. An edge of loneliness, wanting to share the beauty of this experience with someone, hangs gently, not oppressively, over me. I will learn the art of solitude on this trek. Not easy, but much coveted if it can be acquired.
Meanwhile, my feet were good to me today, the blisters enough healed that I could jaunt along at a good pace, aided by two newly acquired walking sticks, remnants of the flowering grass trees – strong, sturdy and straight. I felt like I acquired two more legs as I scrabbled up steep inclines like a mountain goat. Today I could do the whole trail. Will I?
Bibb Track volunteer Kevin thinks I will. He turns up with his thermos of tea after hiking from his car for an hour and a half. He’s supposed to be sitting in his car recording the number of people going by but I guess he got bored. He has his tea and we chat about the trail. He’s a 60-something, good-natured man with cloudy eyes and a rooster’s warble under his chin. He’s done the trail end-to-end twice and hiked on it for 20 years. He knows it’s infectious and smiles knowingly when I say I’m not sure if I’ll do the whole thing. You will, he says, with a twinkle in his watery eyes.
Day 6 – Between Beraking and Mt Dale
Feeling a bit glum, despite the beautiful spot I chose to camp at for the night: a wide span of gently sloping rock with just enough flat spot to lay my mattress, overlooking a sweet valley with a dead tan and brown gum tree extending its lacy burnt branches into the sky. I should have been farther than this, but the ascents are killers and my pack is weighed down with 3 litres of water (3 extra kilos!). As I won’t be stopping at a hut tonight I needed to plan ahead. But geez, water is heavy!
The delight of my day: stopping at a swiftly flowing stream at the day’s low point, stripping off my tops and socks and gleefully washing my pits, my feet, my face and my stinky sweaty shirts. How wonderful to be wet and clean!
I put the wet shirts back on and prepared myself for the long ascent ahead. I’m glum because I thought I’d gone farther than the map says I have. Should have done nearly 8kms but it seems I’ve only done six. Oh well, another big ascent tomorrow but the miles shouldn’t be long. I hope it doesn’t rain. There’s nowhere here to pitch my tent and I intend to ‘sleep under the stars’. I hope there will be stars and not clouds full of water (as forecast).
Day 7 – Brookton
After two days of solitude, enter the people. If I needed your help with being alone, dear Lord, I need double the help now. The Tenth Anniversary walkers, a group of 17 people making a 60-day trek from Albany to Perth, along with a half a dozen ‘sectioners’, those who join to do only a section of the walk, have descended upon Brookton Camp. I found this out about a half hour before reaching the camp, my chosen destination for today’s trek. If I’d had more stamina, I would have walked on further and camped in the bush. But I needed an easy break, a hut to wash in and get a decent, dry rest.
As I write, the twenty or so weary walkers are pitching their tents around the place. They’re not allowed to inhabit the hut, though one zesty white-haired man is setting up his bed below me. He must have been given the grace to do so given his advanced age – definitely over 70. A good many of them are retiree age, most over 50. But wait, the man with the white beard taking off his boots starts chiding the white-haired man, who’s now comfortably in his bed having a munch from zip-lock bags of food.
“We reckon you’ve been given a free ride this trip,” says white-beard. White-hair grunts and attempts a snigger. “Ah well, get an inch, take a mile.” And that closes the subject of his privileged spot in the group.
When I arrived three ‘sectioners’, looking bright and clean having hiked in a mere 2km from Brookton Hwy, were here to greet me. We chatted briefly, but I took more interest in the ochre looking chap with the ‘coobra hat, fishnet scarf and a backpack the size of a walrus. He’s a DEC worker, getting paid to walk end-to-end if he writes up a report on each hut. After the reports, he complains, he has to organize maintenance. His grimace suggests it’s not fun mixing work and pleasure. His maintenance crew comes from prisons, convicts he interviews for the ‘job’ and, if accepted, get six months early parole.
He has wide baby-eyes and smokes rollies, a thirty-something with an eye for Aussie bush fashion but a good heart. He likes his work and treats the prisoners well, sometimes giving them literacy lessons as many don’t know how to read and write. I’m intrigued and instantly like him. He lives in Collie and calls us ‘neighbours’ when I say we live in Myalup.
Now the place is spotted with domed tents, mostly orange and yellow and people rustling through their food bags, lighting camp stoves and getting ready for a feed. It’s going to be a long and potentially noisy night. God help me!
Day 8 Canning River
Living with the 10th Anniversary walkers wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. They stayed up an hour or so later than me and made loud talk and laughter ‘round the fire, but it was actually nice to have them there, a change from the solitude I mostly inhabit in the bush.
In the morning, Mike Woods comes to chat with me. He’s a bright, youngish, energetic looking fellow and within five minutes I’m made aware of his credentials: one of the group leaders, the Chair of the Bibbulmun Track Foundation and the owner of Mountain Designs. He’s curious I guess why a middle-aged woman out on her own would do the Track. He says there’s a lot to be gained from joining the BTF and I submit to his sales pitch and promise I’ll join when my trek is finished. I tell him some of my gear comes from way back when I backpacked in the North American mountains in the ‘80s – a long time ago. I admit I wasn’t sure whether I could still backpack at my age. He wants to know my age. I tell him I’ll be 49 in a couple of weeks. “I’m 48,” he says, “49 in November.” Something else to know about him. We laugh about being ‘59ers, the tail end of the baby boomers. He leaves with the last of the group and says he hopes to see me at some BTF events.
Mark hangs behind; he’s a 60-something just here for the night, having hiked up from Brookton Hwy with his pack and video camera. His job is to film the big “Tenth Anniversary Walk” and has joined them at several spots along the way. He’s a crusty bloke, short and hairy and doesn’t hear too well. He laughs at the wrong places and squints his eyes, perplexed by much of what I say. But he’s a nice man and offers to walk the 2kms to the highway with me. I resist inwardly but submit to yet another challenge to be with people.
We chat the whole way and the walk goes quickly. By the time we reach the highway I’m glad I met Mark and spent half an hour bush-walking with him. He says his biggest dream is to get 100 acres far away somewhere and ride his horse and cart into town once a week. He doesn’t like civilization in the 21st century.
I set off on my own on the other side of Brookton Highway. Four kms in I meet a solitary young man, glumly pumping himself up a hill. I’ve stopped for a morning snack and he jumps when I call out hello. He’s doing a 10-day round-trip and is struggling with solitude I surmise from his brief but friendly comments. His aim is to get ‘back home’ by Saturday, though that doesn’t look likely given his somewhat dejected physical appearance. He looks sore and tired and says he doesn’t like to sit down because he feels his injuries too much when he does.
Now I’ve hiked 19km – my biggest day yet – and pitched my tent next to the Canning River. The birds twitter, the clouds, which splattered a few light showers of rain today, are parting and the late afternoon light looks inviting through the craggy jarrah and banksia trees. It’s nice to be embedded in the bush and away from hut life for a night.
Day 9 – Mt Cooke
It rained all night and the tent leaks. Puddles of water sit just inside the tent door. I stuck my only two cloths on the back corners of the tent in the middle of the night in an attempt to stop the puddles from trickling down to my pillow.
But the bush is beautiful this morning, alive and odorous after the night’s rain. The birds are uproariously giddy with glee at the wet. I pack up a sopping tent and hook it to the outside of the pack. I trundle down to the river to wash out my two cloths and sponge which are caked with dirt from mopping up the wet mess inside the tent. I take the fresh face cloth and mop my face with it. I feel feral. But loving it!
By 10.30 I’ve hiked my first hill and stop for a munch at Monadnocks hut. It’s Liam’s 19th birthday and I send him an SMS, telling him his mum’s gone feral. He beeps back and chides me for being outrageous.
Eleven o’clock and I’m on the track again. Two ‘mountains’ to traverse before lunch: Mt Cuthbert and Mt Vincent. Both are steep and remind me of trails in the Cascades: rocky, narrow and straight up. The view from the top of Cuthbert is sensational. The rain continues intermittently. I throw my cheap poncho over myself and the backpack, loving the feeling of wet, mingling with nature’s elements.
The second hill is a different story. My energy’s waning, the rain is increasing. At the top, I meet two fitness fanatics, 30-somethings on a 16km circuit up and down both hills before returning to their car parked on Albany Hwy – all before lunch. I feel like an overstuffed toad compared to their lean, clean bodies, clothed in the latest fitness wear. I’ve been on the trail a week, can’t imagine what configurations my hair’s playing today, my thin silly poncho flopping in the wind barely covering what it’s suppose to. But I rouse with them for a few minutes, then find a rock to sit on for lunch. I switch on the phone and ring Rin. It’s good to talk with him, and somewhat surreal to have this level of convenience and technology on the trail.
The view west is awesome, especially the foreboding grey cloud dumping buckets of rain heading my direction. I eat quick (no hot soup lunch as I’d hoped for) and hunker down under the poncho waiting for the rain to pass over. A tiny break and I’m up, packing away lunch and throwing the poncho back over me and my pack. Now it has a rip down the front and my shirt is exposed. Cheap useless piece of bull crap. It flies in wispy bulbous twists around my body as I descend down the rock face, fully open to the strong westerly and driving rain. The storm doesn’t let up till I’m back in the trees, half an hour later.
The remaining 6km to camp taxes my patience and wears on my aching feet. It’s a 20km day and I think I’ve pushed past my limit. At Mt Cooke hut my old mates, Leena and Carol and Dave, greet me with shrieks of delight, as though we’re old friends who haven’t seen each other for too long. We chat for a bit, then I unpack my wet gear, hang the tent on a heavy rope just under the eaves of the hut and sit down to consume first the hot soup that was meant for lunch and then a hotpot of mashed potatoes, carrots, cheese and shallots. Oh does it taste good!
Day 10 – Neranga and home
Another mountain to traverse, another day of threatening rain. Mt Cooke offers a fantastic view and invites one to hang out and enjoy the vistas. But I’m intent on going home. My rain gear is insufficient to see me through the coming days, which are forecast for continued rain. I text Johan several times, and he agrees to pick me up on the road just south of tonight’s hut. I text him again but the message won’t go through; my pre-paid account is empty. I get onto Telstra and push endless buttons in between inanely bright and cheerful voice recordings telling me my payment options. Meanwhile the wind howls around me and rain threatens. It seems a sacrilege to be dealing with Telstra in this setting.
Down the other side of Mt Cooke and I’m lost … again. I’m losing count of how many times I’ve lost track of that damned Waugal. It takes me about an hour to find it again, twisting my map around trying to figure out which road I’m on and where the Track is in relation to where I think I am. When it appears again, I slunk down in relief and eat a late lunch. As always, being lost zaps my energy and I trudge the last 6kms to the hut feeling dispirited and ready to be done with this bush trekking.Leena is there and her smile fades when I tell her I’m going home for the weekend. There’s an old bloke with her at the hut and I don’t think she’s too fond of the idea of spending the night alone with him. But I have a quick cup of tea, wish her a good and safe journey, and sprint off down the track again, meeting up with the road where Johan will meet me around 4pm.
12-14 September – Home at Myalup
Day 11 (15th September) – Just south of Neranga
Johan and I drive in silence for a couple of hours. We’ve gone to Bunbury to get his broken tooth fixed and after a weekend of absorbing each other’s company we seem to have come to a place of quiet. The silence feels mildly uncomfortable. I’m on the edge of feeling an old irritability towards him. I don’t want the Good Times to end so push it away hoping avoidance will overcome my anxiety.
We part at the trailhead, twenty-five kms south of the Jarrahdale road. He gives me his ‘good luck’ charm, the green stone from New Zealand given to him by his daughter. We kiss and hug and feel the tension of his impending sciatica then call out good-bye while he takes my picture.I head south. Though the Neranga hut is only a kilometer north, I’m not ready for hut-life yet and it’s a beautiful calm full-moon evening, perfect for camping out. The map says there’s a creek alongside the trail (there was one at the hut) but it’s disappeared. With only an hour of daylight left I find a flat patch of ground to pitch tent. Silence fills the world around me again, broken only by the occasional squawks and chirps of birdlife. I’m happy to be home in the bush again, despite a mild case of sadness and the edge of loneliness.
Day 12 Gringer Creek
Good to be on the trail again. The edge of discomfort is there, adjusting from the comforts of home-life back to the ruggedness of the bush. But it isn’t threatening and the transition is actually surprisingly smooth.
Fifteen minutes down the track I meet Johnny, a South African who’s been on his own for four days and is in desperate need of company. “I’m glad to see you!” he exclaims as though we know each other. He’s just lonely and, coming from a violent country, is wary – downright scared – about being alone, especially at night. He carries on at his faster pace; I shrug my shoulders wondering whether that’s the end of my solitude on this 12-day part of the trek. We may end up hutting together the whole way to Collie. So be it; this is what life has given me this day.
Our talk ‘round the campfire later in the evening is pleasant. He’s 40, divorced, one kid, re-married recently to a Chinese girl and loves golf and sport. He’s also a Christian so we talk a lot about religion and the Church. He wants to know if I believe Jesus is the son of God. I hedge, not wanting to get into controversial territory, so take the easy way out and nod my head. How can I tell him God doesn’t have a ‘son’ because God isn’t a man? It’s we who continually anthropomorphize him into some sort of father figure.
He keeps feeding more sticks on the fire, exclaiming more than once how wonderful it is to have company and not be afraid. Now he can really enjoy the bush. I feel like going to bed but I oblige the situation with my presence until just past 8pm.
The most awkward part of hut life for me is first thing in the morning. I unzip my bag, sit up, mumble a good morning in return to his, then wander off to the toilet and my morning prayers. He’s gone when I return an hour later.
Day 13 White Horse
Climbed two ‘mountains’ (hills really) today, Boonering and White Horse. Boonering was nice but the trail didn’t take us to the top. I could have scrambled up the rock face (sans pack) but I wanted to preserve my energy and feet for the next hill. Indeed I was sore and tired and cold when I arrived at camp at 3pm.
Johnny is there to greet me, letting me know he’s worried about me (he arrived hours before I did) and what his plan is if I didn’t show up – call the posies sort of thing. I squirm inside, feel the familiar claustrophobia of having to accommodate other people and their expectations into my life, then tell him not to bother. If I don’t turn up one night it’s likely because I’ve camped out somewhere. I stress that I have an independent spirit and am inclined towards compulsive behavior. Anyway, we’re hut-mates again – so be it.
Slogging up the sides of hills today I wrestled with my demons, players from the old New Norcia story. So tiring – when will it end? I also started composing an article (or two) that I want to write about this trip and my experience at NN, but the dark angel that came to wrestle with me wouldn’t allow me to be wise and insightful – only vindictive, self-pitying and glum.
Day 14 Mt Wells
This place is creepy. An old cottage, turned into a Bibb Track hut. Only it’s all enclosed with a smelly cook-stove inside and two rooms with platforms for beds. None of the character and charm of the bush hut. It feels like one is crashing in some abandoned house, replete with mice and ghouls. I’m here alone and don’t look forward to a long dark night in this eerie place. There’s a road leads up the hill from Boddington mine and apparently workers come here regularly to party after work. Hopefully the rain and high wind will keep them away.
Johnny moved on. Perhaps I offended him with my declarations of independence or my minimal reaction to his disclosure last night that he and his family had been the victim of some brutal violence – a house break-in at his sister’s in Capetown earlier this year where he and his brother wrestled with three black men, all armed. A gun went off, hit the wall and ricocheted, hitting Johnny in the forehead just above the eye. He showed me the scar and how close he’d come to blindness. It was a truly awful story, told impulsively as I was excusing myself to go to bed. I didn’t know what to say in response, didn’t say much, and probably hurt him for it. Sorry Johnny.
Now I feel lonely and abandoned as I do when I must readjust to solitude. It would help if it was a beautiful bush hut – I would like to stay alone then. As it is, the closed-in feeling and haranguing wind will probably keep me awake all night and give me the jitters and bad dreams.
I got off track (i.e. ‘lost’) again today. Fourth time. I was so angry I felt like spitting. Instead I swore. A minimum of 4kms out of my way following the wrong road after missing a sharp left turn. It was raining madly when I passed it and I was hunkered down under my poncho hood. Damn!
After that my feet hurt like hell and I was sick of the wind and rain. All my good cheer dashed! The last slog up this mountain was the last breath possible out of my sore and sopping body. Disappointing to meet such an unappealing campsite.
Day 15 Chadoora
It wasn’t so bad after all, Mt Wells. I moved my stuff from the little single room outside into the main cottage, lit a fire and some candles that were left from previous campers and it turned into quite a cozy evening. The wind raged with an eerie whine across the top of the mountain all night long, but it felt safe and cozy in the little enclosed hut. The three candles burned out one after the next. I watched from my bed as the last two died out, the cabin growing progressively darker until there was only the red glow of the embers smouldering in the wood stove. Gradually they too dimmed and then there was only pitch black, except for a faint glow coming through the small round skylight in the center of the ceiling.
Midway through the night I got up to pee. The world outside the hut was magic! Clear black sky, a waning moon just up from the horizon, the wind singing plaintively through the trees. I took it with me back into the darkness of the hut. My sleep was restless, but I had no fear, thankfully, or bad dreams.
This morning I massage my feet back into life with herbal ointment. They feel new again and I bounce down the track, finishing the descent before I expect to. The rest of the walk is flat and uneventful. My feet start hurting again midway through.
The Australian bush is Aboriginal. For the many thousands of millennia they walked this land, the Aborigines grew to look like the bush, gnarled, black and ochre red, gangly limbs and unkempt hair. Now we European invaders have turned what used to be a way of life and means of survival into a recreation: bush walking. And the Aboriginal natives live way up north, drink too much, sniff petrol and beat up their families. While we white people play in their land.
I wrestle with other demons than my chequered ancestry: thoughts of New Norcia won’t abate. I want to fight, wrestle with this Dark Angel that has wreaked havoc in my life and threatened death to my sense of self. I flop like a tired fish, abusing itself while it waits to die, between hating what happened and wanting my accusations heard and acknowledged, then quietly accepting my fate, this quick stroke of God’s hand that sprang into my life to unleash me from insipid pride. To teach me humility. I want to accept this discipline, while I also want revenge.
Today the Abbot was the target of my wrath. Damn him for his indifference, for not accepting or embracing me as a member of his community, for not disciplining his errant monk when he behaves badly and hurts people. Ah, I fear it was a case of unrequited love, this infatuation with the Benedictines. I was never truly accepted by this community, other than for pragmatic reasons – give her a job when there’s a need, ask her to play the organ, sing, don a robe and fill the high vacancy rate for servers at Mass. But they gave me little in return. I’m a jilted lover and like all whose love is not reciprocated, I want to attack the one who was once so loved and adored. Or else make up. Or have it out so at least we both know where we stand. But they stand steadfast in their solemn indifference. Holy indifference, Benedict calls it. Life will go on without her, they sigh (if they think anything about it at all); it always has, it always will.
Day 16 Dwellingup
My hut-mate last night is an older man with a hang-dog face and watery eyes behind foggy ‘80s style glasses. He doesn’t talk much and he grunts around the hut sounding vaguely like a pig rooting in his den. We make a few attempts at conversation but it’s obvious neither of us is seeking it. I never learn his name.
I wake in the night to go to the toilet. It has rained heavily but now the clouds are parted and a sad waning moon hangs heavy in the sky. A barn owl shrieks like a mad woman and a gentler species of owl calls out in a more soothing, “hoo hoo”.
I wake early and am on the trail by 6.50am. I hike 20km to Dwellingup, order a burger and chips at the first take-away I come across and eat in the park across from the hotel where bikies in black are huddled around their Jack Daniels at outdoor tables.
I spend the afternoon cleaning up: two loads of wash, a hot shower, organizing my new food drop into their colour-coded bags – blue: dinner, orange: lunch, brown: breakfast. My single room at the caravan park is 1/6 of a modified transportable, cheap materials and damp smelling. But it’s home for the night away from the incessant rain. I wake several times in the night to the sound of downpours. The poor sods camped in tents! I snuggle into my sleeping bag adoring the coziness and protection of my cheap smelly room.
I’m up early despite a desire to sleep in. It’s Sunday and I go looking for a church. The Catholic church advertises mass at 6.30pm on every 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month. The Anglican church across the street doesn’t advertise anything and looks boarded up and unwelcoming on Sunday morning. I go to the café down the street, open at 8am, warm and inviting, and order myself a country breakfast and a mug of cappuccino. Leisure activity: this is what the modern world does now on a Sunday morning, especially in Dwellingup.
On the long 20km trail, I’m thinking about writing. Yet again. It doesn’t go away, this calling. But it’s more pleasant thinking than the New Norcia story, which still circles in my head like an angry bird. I will write articles about my experience at NN, about trekking the Track as a lone middle-aged woman, about learning humility, my never-ending story. I’ll submit my articles to magazines, secular, religious, popular -- maybe not alternative. I’ll make a living from it. Or at least some money. It’ll be the start of taking writing seriously. A new breath of life in my purported vocation on the eve of turning 50.
Day 17 Swamp Oak
I sit under the eaves of the Dwellingup General Store watching the rain. This is a prolonged shower, waves of water sheeting down, sometimes steady and firm, occasionally in torrents like a waterfall. I’ve just eaten a hearty breakfast and I’m not in the mood for getting wet. It lasts maybe 20 minutes, after which I amble through town and back to the caravan part to collect my things. It’s been a good stopover in Dwellingup.
At my lunch spot by the river I meet Lorraine and Rob having a picnic on the trail with friends whom they’ve met for the occassion. They know all about me, having read my entries in the log books at the huts and heard about me from other trackers. “We know you’ve been in Australia for 27 years and your star sign is Sagittarius,” quips Rob, half in jest. Well actually, I say, it’s 20 and my birthday’s tomorrow. We’re like old friends, as trackers often are, at least when they first meet. Later, when we get to know each other and share the intimacies of hut life, it all becomes a bit more awkward keeping up the pretence of chumminess.
The rain breaks up and I tempt fate by leaving my rain gear off after lunch. But half and hour before reaching the hut a significant shower breaks loose and I stop to put it on again.
Rob is a retired architect, Lorraine (Rob calls her “Loz”) was an academic and came to Australia from England 35 years ago to live on a remote northwest station with her then husband. It was hard and the marriage didn’t survive it. They are a nice couple, friendly, conversational, intelligent. But nothing deep. We anxiously await the arrival of South African Johnny, whom they’d met at the hut before Dwellingup, but he doesn’t show. Rob manages to get a fire going with the rain-soaked wood but the skies are clearing and it’s getting chilly. We’re all in bed by just past 7pm.
Day 18 Murray
Birthday in the Bibbulmun Bush! I unzip my bag and sit up. A chorus of Happy Birthday greets me from my hut-mates, the whole song plus the “hip hip hoorays”. I’m touched. After they leave I eat my birthday cake: a Danish bought at the Dwellingup general store yesterday. A mouse has nibbled a corner of it during the night so I cut off that end and toss it in the fire ring. Within five minutes a crow swoops down to investigate and manages to find the discarded pastry in amongst the grey ashes. Me and Raven, enjoying a birthday party in the bush.
I ring Johan on top of the first hill. He tells me about the Friends Picnic that happened yesterday and I feel myself seize up. I’m annoyed that he participated by taking photos, that he hasn’t chosen to boycott the event because of my hurt and ill treatment. Later, I’m pounding down the trail fuming over it. How dare he? Where is his loyalty? I almost set my pack down and ring him to give him an earful, but instead I turn to God and implore that this wound be healed and taken from me. I get into a wrestling match with God rather than Johan over it, but as usual God stays silent and I neither hear nor sense a response. I turn my focus towards meditating, disciplining my angry mind from these repetitive thoughts, and start marching out the mantra in cadence with my steps, “ma-ra-na-tha, ma-ra-na-tha…” As the afternoon hours wane, the intensity of my anger diminishes.
Around 4pm the trail scoots down to the Murray River. At last, something besides green trees and dry earth. I strip off my shirts and underwear, give them and myself a good wash and bask in the late afternoon sun to dry off. But there’s only 20 minutes before it sinks behind the ridge of trees above the river, not enough time to dry off. I say Evening Prayer in the solitude enjoyed by the river and hike the last 20 minutes to the hut, where Rob and Loz have already made camp.
We share the demitasse bottle of sparkling wine I bought at the Dwellingup pub and toast my 49th. They give me a square of Lindt chili chocolate as a birthday gift. Despite my raving mind, it’s been nice day.
Day 19 Between Dookanelly & Possum Springs
A long day! My legs and knees and feet are aching. 17.5km to Dookanelly but it’s only 2pm – I could do another 6-7 and put in some extra kms to get to Collie by Friday. But the next bit is killer stuff – four steep grade hills, one after the other, running alongside a private tree farm. I text Johan while I’m on top of a hill. He rings later and tells me he’s having a bad day, the usual stresses of work. I say I’ve been wrestling with my demons and then I tell him why – which doesn’t add much to his already bad day.
The struggle with the hills gets me going on my frustrations again, mostly about him participating in the Friends Picnic. When the hills are over and I’m on flat ground again I find a cozy nook to pitch my tent. It feels safe and the bush is intense with silence. The clouds have gathered again and I hope it doesn’t rain tonight. I like sleeping out but I don’t like getting wet.
Day 20 Yourdamung
I wake in the night to a strange vibration permeating the bush. The crystal silence is gone. What it is? In my middle-of-the-night grogginess I think something has gone wrong with civilization, a major meltdown causing the air waves to vibrate uncontrollably.
It’s still there in the morning as I pack up my tent. I walk south towards Harvey Quindanning Road; the sound gets louder and louder. Through the trees I can see some sort of raised platform with what looks like a water line. The sound increases, shattering the pristine stillness of the bush. The trail goes directly under this raised contraption and as I climb the hill the other side I see it’s a conveyor belt, stretching for miles through the bush. What it’s carrying or where it comes from or goes to I haven’t a clue. But the rape of the bush from its clattering noise is abominable. Grumpiness overtakes me. Further down the track, the noise barely diminishing, I get angry and frustrated because I’ve miscalculated the distance to Possum Springs and it takes an hour and a half longer than I anticipated. Plus I have to listen to that horrid noise which sounds like the inside of my head when I have a migraine.
Possum Springs hut is empty and beautiful. I revive with a cold wash of my body and clothes. I feel immensely better and after lunch I take off for Yourdamung, 19kms further down the track. I’ve already hiked 13kms before lunch. Doubtful I can do it but I’ll give it my best shot and camp along the way if it gets too tough.
Five pm I’m at Harris River crossing, a beautiful open wetlands and the late afternoon sun is exquisite through the gathering fluffs of white cloud. Another hour and I could be at the hut. I’m tired, achy and my feet feel like milk toast but I decide to do it. If those clouds produce rain, which looks likely, I’ll be sopping wet by morning if I sleep out.
Six pm I’m at the hut, thoroughly spent after a record 32km day. I have pushed my body to its furthest boundaries. It aches and screams in pain and I groan as I hobble around the hut getting dinner. I’m alone at the hut so I don’t have to restrain my moans. I light the stub of a taper candle to light my way as I cook.
Not long into the night the rain starts. Hard, steady, unrelenting. I feel such relief that I pushed myself to get here and can stay dry. The sound of the rain on the roof keeps me awake much of the night. It’s clammy under my sleeping bag and I let cold puffs of air in to dry it out. I wake at dawn but relish in my resolve to have a lie-in and a lazy morning. Only 13.5kms to do today and I have the hut to myself at least until early afternoon. Midway through my meditation the relentless grinding of the conveyor belt lugs down and finally stops. Silence returns.
Day 21 Harris Dam
The middle-of-the-night rain sends loud drops from an overhanging gum tree clattering on the roof, making sleep difficult. In the morning it’s grey, damp and still raining. I relax in the shelter of the hut, finishing the novel I’m reading, slowly pack up my things and get back on the trail by 10.30. The weather is cold, damp, wet and relentless, like a Pacific Northwest kind of day, on and on and on, all day for the four hours I hike, leaving my gear a soggy mess, and continuing the whole afternoon while I mill around Harris Dam hut reading back issues of Bibb Track magazines.
At 5pm I sit on the bench to say Evening Prayer. As I finish, a man appears on the trail, yellow rain pants, blue jacket, navy pack cover. A woman lugs up behind him. It’s Lorraine and Rob who’ve double-hutted this rainy day to join me in the last hut before Collie. Despite the loss of my solitude, I’m happy to see them. I’ve been feeling slightly edgy all day since reading in the last Log Book that Collie locals can occasionally use the huts for parties. I’m not interested in experiencing that juxtaposition of two realities: hoons and their hard core play next to the cheerful, good-natured crew that tramps the trail.
Rob scuttles ‘round the camp collecting wood. He’s a wizard with fire and despite the rain-soaked wood, he again manages to get one going. Only problem is, it’s still raining and not too pleasant standing around the campfire. The smoldering wood provides a fair degree of smoke as it fights to stay alight. My gear will get its last smoke bath before returning to the comforts of home tomorrow. Smelling of smoke is probably nicer than my sweaty, unwashed body odors anyhow.
Day 22 Collie
The rain stops in the night, thank God. The morning is reasonably clear but as the day wears on, the clouds and a cool wind return.
I tramp into Collie around 1pm, stop at the first shop I come across, a camping store. I buy breathable rain pants, a sleeping bag liner and thermal gloves, lightweight. I’m adding more weight to my bag, while subtracting little. But these items seem essential. The woman who waits on me is friendly, chatty and gives me a 10% discount for being a Track walker. I feel buoyed by her support and enthusiasm, despite my tired and grungy state.
Collie doesn’t have a reputation for salubrious residents, but compared to me the place and people are immaculate. I catch sight of my reflection in a dress shop window as I plod around town in search of something decent for lunch. I’m a mess! My visor is scarred with slashes of charcoal from heaving my bag on wet burnt logs. My hair has that hasn’t-been-washed-for-six-days waxed look. My boots reflect the muddy trails they tramped on yesterday. I smell like the back end of a sweat lodge. Nobody will want me in their eating establishment despite the jingle of coins in my hiking pants.
I opt for a meatball sandwich at Subway, a sloppy mess of cheap meatballs and salad on a parmesan oregano roll, toasted. I watch Collyites going about their day through the window. People look so civilized, polished, prim. I want to strip them bare and put them out on the trail for three days just to see what they really look like.
Now I sit in the park waiting for Johan to arrive. Could be another 45 minutes or an hour. I huddle behind my backpack, trying to block out the cold wind coming from the east. I put on my beanie making myself look even more estranged from this civilized world.
A man and woman in a parked car across the street are looking at me. The woman gets out of the car and heads in my direction. “We were just wondering,” she offers timidly, “whether you needed any help?” I must look a real tramp, suitable material for an act of good Christian charity. “Thank you,” I smile, mildly guilty that my appearance has made this kind lady go to such effort. I want to oblige her wish to help, but really, I’m OK, despite my motley appearance. “I’m just waiting for my husband to pick me up.” I smile bigger, but she turns away, embarrassed by her gesture of concern, as though it suggests I was the homeless bag lady she must have seen from her car window. “Thank you,” I call as she slithers away. She gets in the car and her husband drives away.
27-29 September – Home at Myalup
Day 23 (30th September) Yabberup
My body feels like it has grown soft after just three days of pampering at home with nice meals, a soft bed, log fire and cuddles from my Loved One. He drops me at the Collie trailhead at 7.30am and initially I feel enthused and happy to be back in the bush. But it’s a long 20km day and less than halfway through my feet flare and my pack feels far too heavy. I miss Johan and can’t imagine living without him for five weeks while I complete this bleemin’ track. What the hell am I doing? Did I really agree to finish the whole track?Just past two I plod into camp. It’s empty and a small spiral of smoke comes out of the fire ring. It continues to be a struggle, this time emotionally, to get back into the swing of things: life on the track.
Forty-five minutes later two hikers turn up from the north: a mother and son. He looks 16/17 and says he’s doing the track in stages during school holidays, a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer foundation. His mum is a young, slim, mom-type. I instantly feel envious. Why didn’t my boy and I do something like this when he was school age? Why didn’t he take me serious last week and consider my invitation to join me for a few days on the track? I knew he wouldn’t, but I long for ways that we might connect again, like when he was young.
It will be a challenge, watching this mother and son interact for the next three nights as we share huts to Balingup. His dad’s meeting them there, taking over chaperoning the son from the mum. Again, the pang of guilt and regret that my family missed out on such things.
Later I find out that Phillip, the son, is 13, completing Year 9 this year, and Catherine his mum is my age, 49.
Day 24 Nogerup
My spirits lift a few notches today. I’m back in the swing of it. Enjoyed retracing the steps of the Collie walk we did last year with Di, Neil and Gabrielle. It looked different and the same. Regrettably, the Mumbellup Tavern was closed so no burger and beer, but it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway because the trek up the hill south of the Mumby Pub was a killer. Great views though and nice to walk through green paddocks for a change. A herd of cows finds me curious with my poncho flapping in the wind and my huge purple back. They line up along the barbed fence and nudge each others’ heads aside trying to get a good look at me. I talk to them and they seem to like that. When I “moooo”, they moo back. Next come the pigs, dirty, ugly, incredibly lethargic, most of them asleep in their own dung. They’re supposed to be smart animals but they look sick and dumb.
Now Mum and Son have arrived; they sit side-by-side, an easy rapport, reading the log books and sipping hot soup. Suddenly they remind me of Tamara and Cedar. My jealousy flares. Were things that easy with Liam when he was 13? This 13-year-old still feels OK about sleeping beside his mum in the hut and calling her ‘mummy’. It seems so long ago.
I think to text Liam: “Camping with mum & son, bit younger than us. Makes me think agin be nice 2 hav u on the trail w/me 4 a few days. Think about it?”
But I don’t.
Day 25 Grimwade
Day started good, solid. I was back into the swing of it again. The day ended with two new blisters and feeling spent. An 8-hour day to walk 22.4km. Not good timing. My hut-mates leave ½ hour after me and pass me up at about 9km. I watch them bounce down the track, walking sticks clicking in two-step time, click-click, click-click. They look spunky and fresh – a monumental mother-and-son moment. As I watch them sprint ahead of me, the intermittent sharp pain returns in my hip. I start hobbling, feeling old and slow and weighed down by a too-heavy pack.
The pain persists so I stop for an early lunch – a lush green open patch with sparsely towering trees and consistent sun shine. I eat voraciously then lie on my back on the log and absorb the warmth and the sounds of the bush. Grudgingly I get up when the clouds start to drift past again. I’m surprised by a resurgence of energy, a second wind post-lunch.
Half hour later I catch up with my track companions, just finishing lunch on a log. We exchange a few pleasantries and they’re off again, bounce-bounce, clickety-click. Watching them, I start trudging again, envying their seemingly bottomless reserves of energy.
Four pm I finally make it to camp. Another sordid blister pisses a stream of juice into the air when I examine my feet. My companions have a fire raging and offer me a cuppa. Later we sit around the campfire playing Rummy and Hearts. Just like old times.
Day 26/27 Balingup
The previous day’s pains have miraculously disappeared, despite a restless sleep and aching joints. It was a cold night which kept my wool hat on my head and me tossing and turning trying to find a warm spot.
I leave camp full of energy, bidding adieu to my mother-and-son companions whom I’ve enjoyed being in company with. Two hours down the track I turn on my phone to see if there’s a message from Jenny letting me know if they’re coming to Balingup or not. They’re not; she’s hurt her back and can’t move from the couch she’s nested on. I get another SMS and text both of them back while aimlessly plodding along the trail.
I finish and put my phone away, hike another 15 minutes before I realize I haven’t seen a Waugal for a while. My heart starts its usual racing, hoping the next tree will display a yellow triangle. But ten minutes on and none appear, only a T-intersection with no Waugal telling me which way to go. Damn. I’m lost again.
I check the map, think I know where I am and head west, sure I’ll meet the track in a few minutes. Fifteen minutes and no track appears so I turn around. I head back down the trail I was originally on but it looks unfamiliar and I start to worry that I’m not on the same track I got lost on. I turn around, back to the T-section and head east, thinking I’ll meet the trail, but the track bends south, not what my map says it should do. I turn around and head back down the first track, lost, confused, increasingly panicked, angry because I have 23km to do today and this chasing my tail is not only going to make me very late into Balingup but will zap my energy and test the stamina of my aching feet.
Twenty minutes down the track the Waugal appears. A stupid mistake, made all the more inane because it happened while I was playing with my phone, a technology that doesn’t mix with the track. I’m now one-and-a-half hours behind schedule and I’ve only gone 5.5km in 3 hours. Damn!
Two pm and I reach the last leg of the day’s journey, a major climb over a hill to get to the low-lying flatlands of Balingup. I opt instead to follow a country lane into town: a flat, 6km tree-lined road flanked by farms, quaint country cottages and curious cows.
My feet are flaring mad, blisters on both heels that are biting sharply and aches that make me hobble like an old lady. Balingup is a welcome sight by 4.30pm under a shimmering blue sky pock-marked with wooly storm clouds. The walk along the creek and over the mossy bridge at the end of the trail is characteristic of Balingup’s old-world, European-style charm.
I meet a fellow tracker at the town library. We chat briefly – all the usual questions – then we walk together to the General Store where Catherine and Phillip are finishing a late afternoon snack. The community of trackers feels good and buoys my spirits. I buy a Magnum ice cream, then a few pastries at the French patisserie down the road before heading south for the final 4km trek to Jenny and Rex’s house.
Six pm and my feet are unforgiving of my abuse. A 30km day, eleven hours of walking. But the early evening sky spins a triple rainbow across the hilly green paddocks and the world is alive with refreshment. I’m so glad to be here!
I take up residence in the cottage, just down from the main house. I light a fire and fix myself a bed, wash my clothes, shower and hang the wet clothes on a stand near the fire. I am happy beyond belief, despite my throbbing feet and aching legs. I fall asleep in pitch black darkness.
The morning dawns but I manage to sleep until 7.30am – a real lie in! I eat three eggs, scrambled and the two French pastries. I spend three hours cleaning the cottage – a deep clean it hasn’t seen for probably years and a gift to two good friends whose extension of hospitality is always gracious and generous.
At noon I walk into town, flanked from head to foot in wet weather gear to protect from the intermittent heavy showers. I walk the railway track, which stays at level ground compared to the hilly road. I retrieve my parcel of food from the Visitor’s Centre – 3 kg!! – and buy myself a burger and beer at the tavern across the road – the best I’ve had on the track so far.
I end up at the French patisserie, buying more rich buttery pastries and a cappuccino which I finish off while reading the Weekend Australian, chock full of bad news about the world financial crisis.
An hour walk home lugging my box and pastries in the frisky showers that break open to splashes of brilliant sun sparkling on the shimmering rolling hills. So beautiful. Again, I feel intensely happy to be alive.
Day 28 Blackwood River
At 2.15am I get up to go pee. I haven’t fallen asleep yet since I went to bed at 9pm. While on the toilet, I pull my loose toenail, which has been dangling for the past several weeks. Finally it comes off; the stub of regrown nail underneath looks ugly and malformed. I go back to bed and fall asleep immediately.
At 7.30am I wake and entertain the idea to stay in Balingup an extra day, to rest my feet and weary body. But I check the map and there’s an alternative route I can take, which stays level along the Blackwood River and cuts off about 6km. The walk starts along a bitumen road, just up from the house: a beautiful winding road through hills and pastures very reminiscent of England. It’s good to be walking again and, despite my heavy pack, I feel energized and excited.
At 3pm I make camp by the Blackwood River. I turn on my phone not expecting to get reception but I do so I text Rin. He sends a message back: Fr Abbot has died.
My God. So suddenly. The first thing I remember is the last time I saw him, at Vespers the Sunday before I left New Norcia to start my trek. He smiled at me and, despite my lingering anger towards him, I smiled back and said, “Hello Fr Abbot.” His smile, typically shy, carried with it what I thought to read as a measure of concern. But perhaps it was wishful thinking.
I wonder how the Community is taking this news. And who will stand in his place as the new Abbot. Dom Chris? Fr John? I register a slight hope that there will be the possibility for reconciliation with the community after all. But certainly not if Chris steps into the role.
I want to go to the funeral. It means breaking the trek but it feels important. Despite what they think, or the way they behave, I’m still an oblate, and therefore a member of the community.
Day 29 Gregory Brook
Endless corridors of monotonous yellow flowers; this is what I walk through today. They are claustrophobic. And my pack’s too heavy and sits uncomfortably on my shoulders, despite making repeated attempts to adjust straps so it won’t put extra weight on them. The hills seem endless along with the yellow corridors and the hut’s taking too long to turn up. I only had 14kms to do today and I’ve been walking over 5 hours! Besides I’m grizzling over the Abbot’s death and whether I’ll go to the funeral. It raises old hurts; he didn’t care enough to defend me. My sorrow and anguish over unrequited love! I am nothing to this community; why should I turn up as though I care? Because I do care, even if they don’t care about me.
Now I sit with an aching back in my tent. The hut is inhabited by four burly blokes with loud voices. I’ve left them to their men’s thing and camped some distance away in a tent site. Besides, one of them snores, loudly, I’ve been forewarned.
It occurs to me I’m having “midway blues”. Things aren’t quite as fun and exciting anymore as they were for the first weeks. And the end still feels so far away. I’m flagging, but I don’t want to quit. Pissed off that the Abbot died and I have to interrupt my walk to go to his funeral, which will make restarting difficult. Not to mention getting off this trail, onto a bus, and up to New Norcia.
Day 30 Donnelly Village
Completed 463 kms today!
To rescue myself from a possible state of alienation from my fellow hikers, I take my dinner things to the hut to make dinner with the blokes inhabiting it. I feel cheerful and chatty but there is a distinct silence, awkwardly felt when I arrive and despite my attempts to stimulate a conversation, none happens. The blokes and I sit in an uncomfortable silence. So, dinner finished, I gather my dinner ware and wish them a good night.
A bit later the two middle-aged couples camped in tents near mine saunter down to the hut. A lively conversation ensues, wallops of laughter, the right combination has been made for a real party, Aussie style.
I read in my tent, fall asleep, wake some time later to the sounds of their gaiety, which continues on for what seems like hours and could possibly be alcohol induced, if anyone’s brought any. Finally, the two couples retreat to their tents, the two men loudly bantering as though they’re drunk and unaware of the volume of their voices or the need to be courteous to other campers. “I’m glad we went there,” says one bloke, “those were great guys.” Not the same boring ones I had dinner with!? Hmmm, must be me. Not Aussie and outgoing enough. The two men, not far off my age, continue their loud banter for some time, issuing forth many an expletive – “Shit!”, “Fuck!” – and yelling loud raunchy jokes to each other. Presumably they’re in their tents and think they need to yell to hear each other through the thin cloth walls. I wonder where the wives are and how they’re managing all this folly.
The hike to Donnelly Village is easier then yesterday’s. More long corridors of thick underbrush, but the karri trees arrived today – long, slender steel grey trees with a tangle of dancing branches reaching up to the sky in praise. Such beauty! A forest full of silver trunks lends an air of the mystical to the bush, as though a light haze settled in to soothe and soften the landscape. Their ramrod bodies, so strong and masculine in their steel armour; or some with a gentle, sensuous curve, like a young woman provocatively undressing, strips of darkened bark falling to the forest floor, teasing, tempting, revealing smooth virginal skin underneath.
Suddenly they disappear. The jarrahs are back, so rough and course, black gnarly trunks, the ugly cousin of the karri.
And the marris: huge old growth knobbly trees dripping dark red blood and bending in hideous malformations through the canopy. Some spectacular cathedrals made out of their giant burnt out stumps.
All this beauty and novelty contrasts to the sordid state of my mind, which woke to the world this morning completely undone again by the death of the Abbot. The fragile scab covering my festering wound rips open again. How can I go back there? To the place where I’ve been shunned? To honour the man who shrugged an indifferent shoulder to my pain, my dismissal and subsequent departure, despite all I had given to his community? To the place where the man now in charge is the one who caused me such anguish and grief? I wrestle with my Dark Angel again, yet again, despite my war-weary state. I plead to have my “heart of stone turned to a heart of flesh.” But here’s the answer: your heart isn’t made of stone. It’s a bleeding heart. Let it bleed. Blood is big in this tradition.
My mind and bleeding heart torment me while I hike, anger fills my embattled soul. I tramp on, beating a cadence with my mantra, the only thing that brings reprieve from these relentless voices in my head – “Ma – ra – na – tha” – and soon my heart and mind grow quiet.
I try to explain my angst to Johan when I call on the public phone in Donnelly Village where I can’t get reception on my mobile. But it’s a tired old story and I can’t evade my sense of guilt that he’s had enough of hearing about it. He is there; I am here. We live now in two separate worlds.
After consuming a delightful Devonshire Tea at the shop, I take my smelly shirts and a bar of soap to the tiny public toilet and wash them, along with my sweaty body. Then I tramp on out of town, declining an invitation from the blokes to share their chalet for the night. I find a level campsite, just out of town in the bush. Alone again.
Later: I’m flat on my back staring at the half moon through the darkening canopy. All is still and quiet as the dusky sky turns a deeper shade of azure blue. Suddenly something flies over the top of my tent, soundlessly. I turn my head and see an owl perched in a tree a few metres from my tent. We watch each other. Then, in the faintest whisper, I hear “Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo”. It’s so soft I could be mistaken, but I see the outline of the owl’s body heaving in cadence with the sound. It flies away, soundlessly.
A couple minutes later, something lands on the ground near my tent. A moment later a dark bird flies up and over the top of the tent and off through the trees. The cadence of its wings cuts through the silence of the night.
I lie motionless watching the night sky through the mesh ceiling of my tent. Now the leaf debris on the forest floor shuffles; an animal draws near. I sit up and see a dark object in a nearby tree where my wet clothes are hung. I grab my torch and shine it through the fine mesh. It picks up the round reflection of eyes, gazing solidly and unperturbed back at me. A possum has arrived to investigate the items hanging on the string. No doubt his experience tells him he’ll find food there. He extends his body over to sniff the face cloth hanging closest to him. Nothing. He jumps to the floor and scampers away. I’m entranced with this enchanted evening.
In the morning I’m doing my exercises, stretching up to the clear blue sky. An emu saunters near, seemingly undisturbed by my presence. He watches me stretching and stretching, then cuts a wide circle ‘round me, pausing to nibble on leaves now and then.
Day 31 Green Island (beyond Tom Pool hut)
The weather is holding fine. Beautiful still nights, clear sunny days, warm but not hot. I love sleeping out in my tent. A self-contained little house that folds up into a neat little portable life on my back.
I get to the next hut at 1pm and pull out my stove to make soup for lunch. Oliver from Germany is already spread out. He started from Donnelly Village at dawn and got here well before noon. He has a thick accent, dark skin, a single earring on the top of his left ear, mid-thirty-ish. He’s friendly and we chat over lunch. But I’m moving on. I want to sleep out in the wilds again, enjoy the good weather while it’s here rather than shacked up with five blokes. Pity because Tom Pool is a beaut of a campsite, with a lovely swimming pool made by a crick in the Donnelly River. If it was just a little bit warmer I’d jump in.
I intend to hike for another hour -- the feet are already screaming -- but the underbrush has grown thick again and the track is far above the river where I’d intended to get water. So I hike 9kms to this cosy little public campsite tucked in a bend of the river. A cul-de-sac of five or six campsites around a central green with a rain water tank and a pit toilet. And it’s free! The only other campers are a family set up for a two-night stay. I chat with them briefly while their dog licks my hand and the 6 or 7-year-old daughter draws my attention away with comments about herself, her life, her family.
I’m stoked to have found such a lovely, groomed but simple campsite. It made the extra 6kms worth it, though it was hard going. I light a fire, eat dinner and sit by the fire to warm up. At 6pm two cars pull up. Out jump two families with a gaggle of kids. There goes the peace and quiet. Why do I dislike kids so much? Ah well, this is what life delivered up today: a beaut campsite and noisy neighbours. So be it.
Dusk descends and the children’s laughter eases but only a little. Suddenly a loud vibrating noise starts up at the neighbour’s camp: a generator to power their flood lamp, providing adequate light for their little settlement. Buzzzzz. It clamours through the still night air. Worse than Johnny’s radio but not as bad as the Worsley conveyor belt! Let’s hope they make an early night of it.
I’m awake for some time in the night, tossing and turning and feeling the aches and pains in my body, especially my pelvis and lower back. It occurs to me this is insane what I’m doing to my body – 20kms a day carrying a 20kg pack. It’s outrageous to expect a 50kg woman to do such a thing.
I fall asleep again just before dawn. A profound dream stays with me when I wake to the chorus of bird calls. I’m at a party or some sort of celebration; there are lots of people, cheerful, having a good time, dressed well, some outrageously as though in costume. Perhaps a work party or a gathering of the residents of a village or some other community. I’m wandering around alone. I see a man I vaguely know. He has an unhealthy red pock-marked face and looks slightly deranged. He’s looking at me and somehow I know that he’s in love with me and wants to tell me so. I try to avoid him but he corners me then climbs onto a bed and says, “I know you; you’re in love with me.”
I’m surprised that he’s got it wrong, backwards. I shake my head, but he’s very intense and I’m afraid of him. A man comes over, a strong-looking, big man with a concerned face. He’s a friend of the deranged man, or maybe a carer or just someone concerned for my safety. He attempts to draw the man away from me. I say to the man, “I’m married, I have a husband; I couldn’t be in love with you.” This seems to upset him and the strong man looks at me and says to go get help. I wander through the party wondering who to ask. Finally I see an ambulance or a paramedic truck out the back. A woman in a uniform, a look of irritation on her face, is making ready some stretchers. I tell her there’s a man in the house who’s possibly having a psychotic breakdown. She looks frazzled, uninterested, irritated by yet another request. I don’t know whether she’ll take it serious or not. But later, I see her and other paramedics wheeling three stretchers out of the house. On one lies the deranged man, his face even deeper red and heaving. The strong man walks alongside the stretcher. The deranged man seems to sense my presence and rolls over and lifts his face. It’s horrible, monster-like and I duck out of sight so he won’t see me lest it exacerbate him further. Then I awaken.
Day 32 Chappell Bridge camp (just short of Boarding House hut)
Another beautiful day! The rising sun glimmers through the trees as I say Morning Prayer at a little grassy nook I find near the river. The calm is exquisite.
Midway through breakfast a grey pall descends over the camp. A bank of clouds has rushed in from the west. As I begin packing up a mild drizzle starts, turning to a gentle rain before I’m finished. Everything’s wet and I’m not happy. What happened to the forecast “week of clear skies”? It didn’t arrive until Tuesday and now it’s only Thursday. Perhaps my happiness is being tried – to ensure it’s not dependent on circumstance: the noisy family and their generator; the unexpected rain shower. Still, a couple of angels carry the morning: the family I chatted with briefly upon arrival have come over twice to check on me – once to offer fresh food (“You must be getting tired of dried things?”), a second time batteries for my phone, which is rapidly losing its charge. Both times they wish me a good remainder of my journey.
I trudge off laden down in my rain gear. The usual early-morning revitalized energy that propels me down the track isn’t there today. The eternal struggle with the pack starts straight away. It doesn’t sit well atop my rain gear and already it sags heavy on my shoulders.
I stop at One Tree Bridge and find a zap of energy from a brisk plunge in Glenoram Pool. Bleemin’ cold but it feels good to get clean. I meet my track-mates, the blokes, back at the trailhead. They’re gloomy that they didn’t get a hot feed at the café marked on the map. A ‘closed’ sign straddles the café sign, looking deliberately uninviting. I wouldn’t have minded another Devonshire tea myself.
I take off before them and trudge the long corridor of shaved undergrowth that lines the river trail. Not too inspiring. I take my rain gear off when the sun promises to stay out, but put it back on ten minutes later when the clouds return to spit down more rain. I feel exhausted, bored and sore – and it’s not even noon yet.
I stop for lunch when my raging heels can’t take anymore, but they scream even louder when I resume after twenty minutes. My track mates catch up with me and seem to be managing much better than previous days – but then it’s a fairly level track. Me? I walked 24kms yesterday; today I can’t seem to manage the 14 that gets me to the next camp. By 2pm I’ve slowed down to a snail’s pace, moan as I shove myself up a too steep hill with my walking sticks, then finally collapse when the next hill, which isn’t on the map, arrives and the camp doesn’t. I lie flat on my back on the trail and watch an eagle hovering overhead. Maybe he’s looking for prey or wondering whether I’m dead meat. It would be nice if he was my spirit guide and could send down some energy.
I lay there for fifteen minutes wondering whether I can get up again. But it’s not really an option to end my trek here so I heave myself onto my flaming angry feet, take on the weight of my too heavy pack and strut forward, one slow step at a time. It takes half an hour to go what seems like 200 metres.
When I arrive at Chappell’s Bridge, a free public campsite by the river, I decide immediately to stay rather than force another 1.3kms out of my unhappy feet to camp with five blokes at the next hut. I’m having an emotional situation here anyway and five blokes witnessing my breakdown doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.
A group of five young people are camped next door. They have two cars and plenty of gear. After erecting my tent, afternoon tea of a coffee and muesli bar and examining my feet, which look hideous and suggest something worse going on than a few blisters, I trudge over to the campers and ask them if they’ll take me up to where I can get phone reception. I haven’t talked to Johan for three days. I explain my situation: 32 days on the trail, feet are getting desperate – the three young women look at me with motherly concern and say they’re more than happy to help. They’re all bright young primary school teachers, 20-somethings with mature demeanours and compassionate smiles. One of the guys drives me a few miles up the dirt road and when my phone engages I ring Rin and tell him I’m coming home. The teachers have offered to give me a lift to Bunbury tomorrow on their way back to Perth. Though I regret not reaching my goal of Pemberton by Sunday, I have to concede that my feet are angry and in high revolt, refusing to heal and toughen up. I’m sad to leave the bush, but also quietly relieved.
Day 33 Home to Pamelup
Dawn’s 6am wake-up call beckons me out of bed as usual. I have the luxury of lying in, but I’ve been in bed for 11 hours and the body’s had enough of lying down. I’ve meditated, breakfasted and packed up my gear in a leisurely fashion before my camp companions are even out of bed. At 10.30 I saunter over to their camp. They’re in the middle of a pancake breakfast and offer me one. Thanks I say, I just had a muesli bar and I’m full. “Wow,” says one of the young women, “muesli bar…can’t remember the last time I had one of those.” I tell them I’m going for a short walk up the trail. No worries, they’re in no rush. Neither am I really, but I do notice a restlessness in me that wants to get home and wishes my companions would get moving a bit faster.
My feet still hurt, but it’s a hell of a lot better on the trail without a pack on my back. I bounce along, despite sharp pains in my blistered heels. Fifty minutes later, I return from Boarding House hut; my camp-mates are laughing and gaily kicking around a hacky sack, tents still up, gear still cluttered all over the place. I lie on the picnic table till noon, munch another cheese and cracker lunch. God, I can’t wait to get some real food at home this weekend.
Nothing much to it but waiting. They’re a cheerful lot, good-natured young adults with still some kid fun in them. I could learn something.
10-27 October – Home at Myalup and New Norcia; Attend Abbot’s Funeral; move house from New Norcia to Pamelup
Day 34 Donnelly River [starting at Chappell’s Bridge to just short of Beavis hut]
I catch a ride with neighbour Fiona into Bunbury. It’s been good to have a rest as well as some closure to life at New Norcia. I spend the day walking around Bunbury in my khaki pants, oversized boots and no bra or handbag. I must be a curious sight, especially after 3pm when I pick up my pack from Don and Fiona’s shop and march into the CBD via residential streets, my hiking sticks click, click, clicking on the pavement. I catch the attention of five men, looking suspiciously derelict, fishing and drinking near the river’s edge. They want to know what I’m doing, where I’m from, what my name is. One long-haired man with slurred speech smiles big when I tell him I’m hiking the Bibbulmun Track. He knows that! He helped build one of the huts when he “did time for the Queen”. I make conversation with them, feeling cheerful, accepting of their marginalized place in society, but they become awkward and shy when I turn my interest and questions onto them.
The bus to Manjimup leaves promptly at 4pm. There are only half a dozen of us aboard, some elderly ladies and a handful of students picked up from the TAFE campus. I read and send text messages.
The cabbie is waiting for me when the bus pulls into Manji at 6.40pm. He’s a big man, an ample belly hanging over low-slung shorts, a worn shirt and thongs. His speech is slurred but he’s friendly and keen to get me right down to the campsite at Chappell’s Bridge, 20-some kms east of town, down a dizzy maze of dirt roads.
When I pay the fare and the cabbie’s gone, I stand in the karri forest, my pack at my feet, feeling my utter aloneness. It’s dusk, only 45 minutes of daylight remaining. I unpack my gear, set up a bed on the one bunk in the rickety shelter and make myself half a dehydrated dinner. When I crawl into bed, my stomach slightly too full, I disturb a redback spider’s web, pinned to the corner of the bunk.
I sleep well despite sore hips that my thin mattress doesn’t provide enough cushion for, restless dreams and a prevailing fear that the redback may find her way into my snug bed.
It’s a hilly 20kms for my first day back after 2-1/2 weeks off. But I’m feeling fit, relaxed and energized, even though the hills slow me down. When I haven’t reached Beavis hut by 4pm, I plunk my pack down on a flat spot next to the river, only a kilometre or two away from the hut. It’s a nice spot, gurgling brook, serene trees, birds playing their orchestra in the overhead canopy. The incessant drizzle that started up not long after I left camp this morning continues. I fall asleep to the sound of plunking rain on the tent roof. I’ll worry about packing up a wet tent tomorrow. For now, I’m exhausted and happy to be on my own in the bush again.
Day 35 Beedalup
Indeed it rains. All night, a slow drizzle broken by intermittent heavy showers. I shelter in my tent till I can’t hear the drops anymore, then dash out to pack up my gear. Halfway through a heavy shower starts and the tent and most of my gear gets soaked. I attach the tent to the outside of my pack and slug up the muddy trail to the nearby hut. There I meet Trevor and Geoff, two 60-ish end-to-enders walking in my direction, and Barbara, a 40-year-old woman hiking alone from Pemberton to Balingup.
The day is grueling, non-stop hills and rain and I slog into camp close to 5pm, throw my wet pack onto the hut platform and collapse on my back, my feet blistered and raging. Trevor and Geoff are drinking a cuppa and invite me to join them but I make myself some instant soup and climb into my sleeping bag, shivering and spent.
Day 36 Pemberton
Sleep magically heals all wounds. My body and energy restored, I march briskly up the hill out of Beedalup. The storm clouds have broken and the sun is stripling through the misty karri trees. Pure magic.
The 24kms on a flat trail to Pemberton goes easy and I arrive in town just past 3pm. Trevor and Geoff have rented a cottage next to the backpackers lodge and invite me to join them. I can have the sole room with the queen-sized bed and they’ll sleep in the bunks out in the lounge; we’ll split the cost three-ways. Cheaper than a bed in the dorm rooms at the backpackers, which is full of smoking, surly-faced young people.
I limp up to the Visitor’s Centre to retrieve my food parcel, then treat myself to a pie and ice cream and a cappuccino at the café across from our cottage. It may be mad what I’m doing to my body but the sense of achievement upon arriving in a town is exhilarating!
The guys and I have tea at the pub and swap trail stories. Trevor is teetotaling on this trip and orders a Lemon Lime Bitters while Geoff and I enjoy a pint of Guinness. They’re nice men, both married, houses in the newer suburbs of Mandurah, boats and caravans in the garage, BBQs on the terrace. Swapping life stories suggests we don’t have a great deal in common, other than a love of the bush, but they’re good companions for the few days we’ll be hiking together.
My tent hangs on the clothes hoist outside the cottage, struggling to get dry before the next brief shower. I enjoy my quiet, dry sleep sprawled across the queen bed.
Day 37 Warren
I wake just past midnight with a bad belly, in rebellion from a too big dinner and an oversized jug of stout, which is now screaming to get out of my body. I switch on the light and navigate my way to the toilet, walking lightly to keep from disturbing my housemates. Sleep doesn’t return easily; the room’s too hot from the little coil heater I switched on in the hopes of getting my gear dry by morning. I toss and turn until first light of day returns.
The guys are up early, making breakfast and watching the morning news on the TV. No chance for a quiet meditation and Morning Prayer in my room so I throw my clothes on and head out the door.
It’s just past 7am and the town is still and quiet. I turn down the road following the blue “Hospital” sign. It’s a big new brick structure, a miniature version of St John of God’s in Murdoch. I walk around the back of the building and find the old hospital, rickety weatherboard with an enclosed flyscreen verandah. It’s boarded up now, weeds growing through cracks in the pavement and walls, a rusty downpipe and a barbed fence keeping curious eyes at a safe distance. The southern wing of the hospital where I gave birth to my son is curtained off, inaccessible and lifeless.
I eat eggs and sausage at the pub café, the only place open for breakfast. The plate comes with two eggs, over-easy, and seven sausages the size of a man’s thumb. I only eat three of them and ask the young waitress to wrap the other four in foil; they’ll be tasty for lunch.
A familiar melancholy follows me as I walk out of town. It’s been the same in all the little towns I’ve visited along the way. They’ve all offered something unique and comforting after days of austerity in the bush and it’s sad to leave.
Day 38 Schafer
My hut-buddies and I pace each other today. After a lazy morning watching the sun light up the valley below the hut, we head off, me about 15 minutes ahead of them. We meet an hour and a half later at the log where I’ve stopped to have a morning snack. Trevor and Geoff are easy companions, pleasant to be with for a few days. When I first met them, sitting on the bench at Beavis hut waiting for the rain to stop so they could commence the day’s walk, they struck me as cultured, educated men, hints of alternative or new-age leanings, probably therapists of some sort, possible gay. Turns out they’re true blue Aussie blokes who met some years ago at a club they both belong to. The club promotes fun and fitness and sponsors runs of up to 10kms followed by a BBQ and party. Members eventually get given new names, chosen by the committee elected to run the club who aim to highlight some aspect of the person’s character. Trevor is ‘Brutus’; Geoff is ‘Loopy’. Brutus is a bull-dog of a man, squat and hairy with a pack as big as his stocky body. But he barrels down the track oblivious to the scrapes and scratches that draw blood from his hairy grey arms. His toe-nails are apparently coming off from the excessive weight he carries but he’s lost 10kg while still retaining a sense of bulk about him.
Loopy is the opposite: quiet, sensitive, slightly more gregarious and playful. He sits with his legs crossed or his knees together. He’s the wife of the pair, fussing over the meals and making sure everything’s packed and equally weighted between them. He’s older by two years but there’s an air of boyishness about him that belies his 61 years.
They arrive at camp ten minutes before me. Schafer hut sits on the edge of a beautiful fresh-water dam, which has a small area sectioned off for swimming. Loopy’s in the water, daring a late afternoon swim. Brutus has exposed his hairy grey chest and looks ready to join him. I strip down to my undies and t-shirt and dive in the water. It’s surprisingly warm after the brisk river water. I float on my back, watching the vacant blue sky and listening to the hum of frogs and crickets. My aching limbs relax as they slowly paddle the clean coffee-coloured water. A refreshing end to a long day’s walk.
Day 39 Northcliffe
A cacophony of noise mingles with the early grey dawn: crickets, frogs, birds, roosters, a dog barking on the nearby farm, and a single mozzie flitting around my head hoping to score some breakfast blood. I’ve been tossing and turning all night; no point in prolonging it. I unzip my bag, throw my many layers of clothes on and soundlessly slide down the bunk ladder hoping not to disturb my hut buddies. I circle ‘round the lake and park my butt on the edge of the path facing the ensuing sunrise. A flare of gold light on the tall karris accompanies my morning prayer. The roosters continue crowing. A light breeze etches patterns onto the smooth surface of the lake. All is well this Sunday. The praises to the Great Creator of all this sound genuine and earnest as I recite the morning liturgy. Human life, devoid of struggle and immersed in the natural world, was meant for such contentment and serenity. Paradise revisited.
But now it’s time to adjust back to solitude. Brutus and Loopy pack up early, determined to double-hut on the last day of sunshine before the forecast rain sets in again tomorrow. We part with hugs and smiles and an exchange of email addresses. I linger on at the hut, both welcoming and resisting the sense of emptiness that comes with being alone again. I’ve enjoyed their company; but I look forward to solitude again.
Two tiger snakes greet me on my relatively short and flat tramp into town. Still, my feet hurt when I arrive and I’m dispirited to find new blisters on my fourth toes. Will they ever toughen up?
I eat an expensive but quite average burger at the only café in town, ring Rin and rest my feet on the plastic outdoor chairs. It’s Sunday and whatever tourists are heading towards Northcliffe today seem to have ended up at the café same time as me. Two women sit at a table near mine, speaking loudly to one another. It’s difficult to hear Johan on the mobile. One woman has a deep man’s voice, a big husky body and a wobbly second chin dangling six inches down her neck. I wonder whether she’s a transvestite. Apparently it’s her birthday and her friend has treated her to lunch. The friend’s son comes along later, wishes the she-man a happy birthday and asks his mum for money to buy lunch. He’s around nine and I feel the familiar tug of nostalgia for Liam when he was that age.
Sitting for thirty minutes has seized up my feet and I hobble a slow gait to the tourist bureau to pick up my parcel of food, a top-up to get me the seven days to Walpole. Brutus and Loopy are just leaving and we again wish each other a good journey. The friendly receptionist with wide hips and a polyester pants suit hands me my package and makes small talk. She tells me Loopy asked for a bus schedule back to Perth and I wonder what’s wrong that he wants to leave the track. He hasn’t said anything about any problems over the past four days. I have a particular fondness for Loopy, a sweet somewhat sad man who carries an undernourished little boy in him. His club-mates have called him Loopy – and maybe he sometimes is – but I would have called him Snoopy for the sad smiling puppy dog eyes, which make you want to cuddle him and convince him the world is not really such a bad place.
After the Visitors Centre I saunter over to the Pioneer Museum. Yvonne, my host for tonight, spreads her wide girth in a seat behind the desk. She will take me to her farmstay at 3pm when she shuts up the museum for the day. I limp around town and buy an overpriced coffee at the same café where I ate lunch, then head back to see how Yvonne’s going.
After hugging the young teenager standing near a truck in the carpark (“He’s my grandson”), Yvonne gets in her car and starts telling me about her life, only some of it instigated by my questions. She stops at the shop for food while I wait in the car, (“Sorry I took so long, I ran into the daughter of a neighbour who hasn’t been out from Queensland for eighteen months”), and then at a 94-year-old neighbours shed (“His house burnt down a couple months ago; he’s a shifty old coot but we take turns taking him meals everyday and making sure he’s OK”). The car is stuffy while I wait but the electric windows don’t work without the key in the ignition. I open the passenger door, send the seat back a few notches and attempt an afternoon snooze. Twenty minutes later Yvonne returns (“Sorry I took so long; he’s a lovely old geezer and you can’t get him to stop talking once he starts”).
We pull into Yvonne’s farm and she shows me to my room, one of three off the musty corridor of the old farmhouse. Yvonne and her second husband Alf sleep in the room next door. My room has three single beds and a strange, unpleasant odour. The room is tidy and furnished with ‘50s style laminated wardrobes, slippery orange and yellow nylon bed spreads and worn mustard yellow curtains and carpet, plastic flowers, a chipped and foggy mirror and a tissue box covered in a hand-crocheted mitt that looks like a house (the tissues pop out of the chimney). Dime store novels, tourist brochures and copies of Reader’s Digest are stuffed in the shelves of the scratched laminated pine headboard, which has a radio embedded into it, a relic from bygone days with real nobs to turn channels and adjust the volume.
Yvonne knocks on the bathroom door while I’m showering, opens the door a crack and calls out something about afternoon tea. My head full of shampoo, I can’t understand what she’s saying but I call out in agreement.
We sit in her lounge and have a cuppa while she tells me about her children, grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Also, much about her ‘late’ husband but not much about her current one. She hands me a woman’s magazine, sent over from her native Scotland, and tells me there’s good reading in it, some recipes and knitting patterns; maybe I’m interested?
Yvonne dropped out of school at age 13, tired of the red marks she regularly got on her papers because she couldn’t spell. She’s lucky to have two husbands who know how to read and write. She has mostly left it to them, though in an emergency she can usually write a couple of lines. I ask her whether she’s ever wanted to learn to read and write properly, thinking I’ll put in a plug for the Read Write Now Adult Literacy group I volunteer for, but she says she’s been far too busy being a mum and a farmer’s wife to give it much thought.
Afternoon tea finished, I head for my room, close the door and take my book to the bed by the window. The unpleasant odour intensifies, rising in wafts around me as I attempt to read. I roll off the bed, hunker down on my knees and peer under the bed. Sure enough, on the far end a couple of round ears protrude above an electricity panel. I scoot around to the other side, lift the spread and find a dead rat, eyeballs eaten away but otherwise reasonably intact, if somewhat smelly. My first instinct is to avoid the embarrassing situation by enduring the smell and moving to another bed. But avoidance only makes the stench grow stronger so I grab a couple tissues from the crocheted chimney box, pick up the dead rat by its tail and drop it in the shoe box I’ve emptied of my food items.
I meet Yvonne at the back door and apologetically hand her the box. She is suitably horrified, effusive in her apologies and brings a can of aerosol room freshener down to my room, spraying madly around the room with particular emphasis on the graveyard of the dead rat. I try to keep from choking on the noxiously sweet floral fumes. She suggests I move into the other room, which, gratefully, I do.
Alf is a broad-chested, red-skinned man with scabs running up his arms and chest. His thin white moustache and mumbled responses to my greeting make him seem unfriendly, but during dinner he loosens up and tells me about his nephew who collects snakes and other reptiles. Dinner is roast chicken, baked pumpkin and soft steamed vegetable that melt like butter when you stab them with a fork. Ice cream and Yvonne’s own stewed and bottled home-grown fruit follow, along with a story of Yvonne’s RAC-sponsored trip to Alaska and Canada, funded by her superannuation and motivated by a need to do something cathartic after her late husband died. The trip was OK but not to be taken as a single woman, especially one, such as Yvonne, who doesn’t drink, dance, gamble or play cards, the only entertainment aboard the cruise liner.
Dinner finished, Yvonne starts to wash up. She calls out that she hears David Attenborough on the tellie. I park myself in a corner of the lounge and watch Attenborough’s tantalizing narrative of crocodiles in Africa mangling poor unsuspecting wildebeests sipping water from a soak. It’s gruesome and ugly and slightly sensationalized, a disappointing deviation from Attenborough’s usual refined style.
When it’s finished, I gather my clean clothes out of the dryer and bid my hosts a good evening.
Day 40 Gardner
“Clancy!” Yvonne shrieks in her nasly voice. “Claaaa-ncy! I need you for something.” An old dog rounds the corner, ear perked. We’re about ready to leave for town; Yvonne and Alf will drop me off on their way to Manjimup. Yvonne ushers Clancy into the fenced-in section of the yard and instructs him to round up the four or five chickens scratching around in there. Clancy’s a bit confused, but Yvonne continues goading him on, trying to get Clancy to do what Clancy is either too old or never been trained properly to do. Clancy’s having fun though, chasing the chooks who’ve gone berserk and are madly scratching at the fence trying to get away from the dog while Yvonne shrieks and shrieks. Eventually Yvonne manages to get the last chicken out of the yard, the dog into its pen and the gate locked.
It’s nearly 10am and the early start promised last night didn’t eventuate. At half past eight, Yvonne lugged up to the house in her Wellie’s, a juice bottle full of fresh milk in her hand. She makes breakfast while the TV blares the morning news from the lounge room. The network newscasters flash pasty smiles and smarmy jokes about the weather. A report on the upcoming American election shows Obama beaming over his expected victory. Yvonne sticks her head in from the kitchen. “You know what’s going to happen if that man becomes President?” she says, a sharp edge to her voice. “Within two months he’ll be assassinated, let me tell you. The American people brought the Africans over to be their slaves; you think they’ll tolerate one of them as their leader?” I attempt a winced smile, not wanting to get into it. Better to avoid any discussion involving politics or religion with strangers, that’s my policy.
I ring Johan in town after sharing a big bear hug with Yvonne and assuring her the dead rat wasn’t such a problem. I shake Alf’s hand and his lips part wide under his pencil thin mustache. Johan is full of work: the demands of tying up loose ends by the end of this week, his last, is causing a strain. Chris’s dad is on the verge of death so Chris has gone to Melbourne for the week, thwarting plans to hasten the acquisition of a new Property Manager to replace Johan. Natalie, the temporary replacement in the Friends Centre, leaves at the end of the month, though there’s no indication that anyone’s looking for her replacement. Meanwhile, the manager in charge of replacing people, Sue, who’s worked hard for ten months trying to keep up with New Norcia’s high staff turnover, has herself put in her resignation. She too leaves at the end of the month. Who will find her replacement? Chris’s sinking ship is looking ever more doomed. And not even an Abbot to defer to when things get to be too much, as they must be now.
When I first came to New Norcia, the sinking ship metaphor seemed a good one to describe Chris’s manic energy and life-on-the-edge-of-sanity approach to running the organization. With his wit and charm, and especially bedecked in a black robe, one couldn’t help but get taken in by his “help me” stance. Johan and I were suckers for it, frequently coming to the rescue, volunteering our time mostly for the Friends but sometimes in other areas. Our contributions went largely unnoticed and unappreciated by Chris. Still, the man needed help, that was clear, so we kept giving it.
Now, several years on and after two years of paid employment, I’ve been tossed indelicately overboard from this sinking vessel. A few kind and concerned souls have thrown me a life jacket, so now I float on this tumultuous sea watching the waves overtake the sides of the ship, which is edging ever closer towards capsizing. Amazingly, I still feel the tug to help. How can our captain – one man whose collective mania and limited skills in people management threaten to not only lose the ship but send himself overboard as well – manage such a debacle? But hang on a minute! He threw me overboard! Redundant! Even if I offered my rescue remedy services, they wouldn’t be accepted, let alone appreciated. How can I be so daft?
I’m not getting involved, I tell Rin. I hunger for his departure from that place, assuming that once he leaves my inner angst will settle more than since I left. South coast camping – bring it on!
Halfway along the track I meet Geoff/Loopy, coming my way. What’s going on? He’s supposed to be heading south with Trevor, now a day ahead of me. He asks me if I have time to sit for a while. Sure, it’s 12.15 and time for lunch anyway. Geoff shows me his yellow-tinged hands and says he’s been jaundiced for about eight days, a sign of liver trouble. He’s increasingly worried and can’t enjoy the hike anymore. He’s concerned about spending a week in relative isolation on the way to Walpole so has decided to head back to Northcliffe and catch a bus home.
I’m sympathetic, concerned, and ask him where he expects to stay the night. “I was hoping to stay with you,” he smiles sweetly, thinking that I was spending two nights in Northcliffe. I’m somewhat taken aback, flattered by his interest in me but also wary. Several of his comments over the past few days have suggested he’s gone a bit sweet on me. He knows I’m married; he knows I know he’s married. But it doesn’t seem to dull the shine he’s got for me.
As I make moves to leave, he tells me he’s so glad he bumped into me today; he could sit here all afternoon chatting away. He gives me an extended hug and says how happy he is that we met. I walk ten metres down the track, turn and wave. There he stands, one hand on his pack, the other sadly waving at me. Poor Snoopy Loopy.
Over lunch he tells me he’s written something about me in the Log Book at the next hut. Here is what I find when I arrive later in the afternoon:
Sometimes in a person’s life someone crosses your path
It may be for a long time, a few days or just a moment.
A person who blows through like a soft zephr
An aura of calmness, friendliness, gentle but strong.
Joan, for me that is you.
Sitting on a rocky ledge with your feet in the water,
You could have been a mermaid with fish tail below
To have shared a swim at Schafer, I’d be blessed
A good angel to me you are, with serenity I cherish.
Sitting alone down by the river, I am writing
Said ‘bye to traveling companion, Trevor (Brutus)
I feel my body is not up to the isolated stretch ahead
Back to Northcliffe leaving the Track, if I’m able I’ll be back.
Jaundiced hands are plaguing my mind,
Cannot enjoy the beautiful countryside as I should
My mind screwed up with thinking “What if?”
As long as I continue my journey through life,
Someone to think of to gain inner strength, I’ll need.
I’m sure you’ve been told many times “You’re a lovely lady”
Liken your looks to Princess Diana
Your face, lips, smile, chin, nose and eyes
Especially your coy sideways glance
Most of all your interested, calming demeanour
When I need someone like this to think of
I will have someone locked away in my memory
Thanks for this fleeting experience, that person?
Joan, for me that will be you.
I read this with the same conflict of feelings as before when his conversation hinted at his attraction towards me: deeply touched, but aware of the tremendous need behind his projection onto me. I feel confused, but also grateful: in my ceaseless search for ‘angels’, I have become an angel for someone else. And though I don’t share his feelings of attraction, in a way he has also become an angel to me. He offers a remedy to that worthless wretch I found myself to be in the eyes of Dom Chris, a healing for my damaged self esteem after an unprecedented experience of rejection. The image Geoff has created of me may not be the whole truth of who I am, but it contains some truth. I can see that now for the first time in a long time. Bless him for being a part of my healing.
Day 41 Maringup
On the odd occasion, the Bibbulmun Track Foundation diverges from its astounding record in grooming and maintaining this track. Today was one of them. I’d been warned of the ‘swamps beyond Northcliffe’ but I didn’t think I’d have to get my feet wet over them.
Maybe it was last night’s rains, for the ‘swamps’, i.e. low points in the 4WD track which the trail followed for the last third of today’s hike, were full to the brim. The first few I managed to bypass by bushwhacking through the thick scrub on the roadside. But one particularly large pond got me; I attempted to bushwhack but soon found the swamp had extended far into the bush on either side of the road. I got tangled in the thick undergrowth, lost my balance, fell on my knee and ended up with a boot fully submerged. Irritating but it did solve the problem of how to get out of the predicament I was in. I submerged the other boot and sloshed through the shin deep water. Schlop. Schlop. My boots oozed and squeaked and squished when I returned to the dry track. When I got to the next pool, I was less punctilious about where I placed my feet - I simply sloshed through. I felt like a kid again, no thoughts about whether I was wrecking my boots or how the heck I was going to get them dry before tomorrow’s 25km hike.
I guess I am lucky because the log book at the hut holds multiple entries of trackers seeing many tiger snakes along today’s track. I saw none, but I did think about them as I smashed a soggy boot through thick scrub, wondering where it was going to land and what was down below the surface of what I could see.
Day 42 Dog Pool
Solitude deepens. The third day and third night without seeing a sole. It is what I fear and yearn for most: a true wilderness experience. Fitting that it should happen in the most remote wilderness of the track: the D’Entrecasteaux National Park. Other than no people, there are no roads, cars, towns, recreational areas or mobile phone coverage. I am truly alone.
Last night I woke with a slight upset in my belly. It could have been, and probably was, due to the spaghetti bolognaise I had for dinner, which contained rather fatty pork sausage (very tasty though!). But my middle-of-the-night thoughts grasped onto the minor indigestion and ran with it. My first demon in the wilderness. The tank water was contaminated, a belly bug had got loose in my system. This was the beginning of several days, if not a week, of nausea, vomiting, unable to eat, my energy spent. I saw myself shacked up at this cold, isolated hut for days before anyone found me and then my principal concern was how to get word to Johan who would be waiting for me in Walpole on Tuesday, wondering and worrying why he hadn’t heard from me. Suddenly the idyllic adventure – plenty of food, time, health, fitness, energy – came crashing to a halt, dissolving into a macabre image of my possible defeat, even death out in the wilderness. Strangely, it wasn’t my death that frightened me, but the worry of how it would affect Johan – the great hassle and stress of trying to find me and then dealing with his anger and grief that I had taken such liberties to go hiking in remote areas by myself – and Liam and Mom and Dad, the only people who really care about me and would grieve pitifully at my funeral.
An alternative vision colours my waking hours: the Bibbulmun Track is a swath of heaven sliced through the southwestern bush. Amazingly, there is little evidence of the darker side of life here – no crime, graffiti, vandalism, marauding strangers, delinquent youths congregating at the huts for parties. There’s little rubbish on the track or at the huts and mostly they are kept clean and tidy by the walkers who use them. Many times, like here at Dog Pool, a pile of dry timber and kindling is waiting under roof, as though the last camper had taken the courtesy to ensure the next camper would have the means to make a fire in this incessant rain.
Still, I struggled last night to get one going. My matches were damp and not striking and stupidly I’d sent my lighter off in the postal package I sent from Pemberton with my excess gear in it. Frustrated, I went to the white box where the Log Books are kept, hoping to find an old magazine I could rip up as starter fuel. Instead I found a little zip-lock bag containing a box of matches, two lighters and one firelighter. I broke the firelighter in two, stuck it under the charred unlit sticks in the fire ring and lit it with the lighter. Voila! Instant fire.
Perhaps the trail is guarded by angels. Or maybe the good spirits with which most of us are hiking this track turns us all into angels, a nearly utopian world where we truly care for each other and the environment we live in.
For me, it is a heaven. After months of stewing and squirming in a Living Hell, as I struggled with a mammothly difficult life experience, the reward of these few months out in the bush is phenomenal. There is a resurrection after all! Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Yet if this is all it was – the reward of a few unfettered, uncluttered, joyous months of being a hobo in the bush – it wouldn’t be worth it, the pain I suffered that is. No, the only thing that makes it worth such struggle and pain is if something in the core of my being changed, remolded itself to make me more open to the Divine, to God and Christ, who lives within me. I truly can’t say if that’s happened or not.
The Bibb Track adventure will end, ordinary life will resume and the magic of the experience will fade. But the wounds and the healing of my inner life will stay with me forever. If I have inched any closer to God, wakeful awareness of what is Real, then all the suffering is worth it.
Day 43 Mt Chance
I feel lonely as Day Four of Solitude comes to an end. Perhaps it was ringing Rin – after three days of no contact it was good to talk with him. I miss him and so look forward to meeting him in Walpole next week. I am so grateful for his presence in my life; it makes his absence from my life feel like loneliness.
Or maybe it was the view atop Mt Chance: 360 degree view of untouched wilderness, the D’Entrecasteaux. Quintessential Australia. Stunningly beautiful. But also empty and mournfully silent, as Australia’s wild places so often are.
Maybe it’s also this hut, uninspiring compared to other campsites visited this past week. It’s dark, has no view, no campfire. It is empty of diversion.
Maybe it was slogging through knee deep mud on the track today. The hard rains of the past two days channeled all the marshy water into the cut-out space provided by the open track. They became rivers, deep pools with squishy mud floors. I didn’t want wet boots – it took four hours dodging rain in a smoky struggling fire to get them dry last night – so I took them off and went sockless in my sandals, wading through deep coffee-coloured water. The sandals had no traction and slipped and the mud sucked onto them, hurting my feet when I yanked them free. Eventually I ditched the sandals and waded barefoot, fearful of what my feet would touch six inches into the mud or snakes that could delight in my open ankles. I was really scared.
And then somewhat ashamed when I got to the hut and read other hikers’ comments about the mud. Some found it fun, wading like a kid through water, or a welcome diversion from the long 4WD track that made up the first part of today’s trek. No one seemed scared, worried or irritated by the pools as I was. I wanted to write a Bitch Column in the Log Book: the trails need upgrading, proper planks built or gravel dumped onto them so they’re higher than the surrounding marshlands, rather than lower as they now are. I didn’t want to get my boots wet!! I didn’t want to face another inundated track section!! Aaaargh!!
But faced with all the Bibble’s good cheer, I didn’t write it. I was being my cantankerous, self-righteous self, wanting things a certain way, not wanting a struggle, irritated when the world didn’t conform to my desires. I thought I got over all that. Hmm, maybe the best I can do is check myself, and laugh about it.
Day 44 Woolbales
The morning dawns with another dull blanket of grey. I want to roll over and go back to sleep but I chide myself to get up. I put on my boots and lug my stiff body up the side of the rock face, to the top of Mt Chance. The day is more attractive from up here. The sun sends shafts of light through the eastern clouds; like a plaited skirt it falls to the ground in uniform streaks. In the north, thick grey mists tell of showers. In the west, a partial clearing. I do my morning routine and sprint down the hill for breakfast, feeling better.
The morning walk is magnificent. My feet are good again, my body strong and rhythmic, the changing scenery from bush to open marshlands inspiring. I side-step most of the inundated track sections or bushwhack through thick scrub along the sides.
But the afternoon isn’t as easy. My feet hurt after lunch, slowing me down; the pools in the track become deeper, longer, wider, impossible to skirt around. I feel myself growing irritable again, determined to maintain dry feet. But I lose my balance in one thick scrubby bit and my right leg plunges into knee-deep water. Bugger it. The rest of the puddle I wade through in my boots, feeling defeated and grumpy.
Another empty hut. I hang my boots upside down on my walking sticks, hoping they’ll drain by morning (not a chance!), wash my stinking shirts (which I’ve worn continually for five days) and my body. I drink a cup of spicy tomato soup and feel immeasurably better. Tomorrow I will put on wet socks, boots and shirts – but for now, I’m dry, warm and happy.
Day 45 Long Point
My feet are in rebellion mode again. The chronically wet socks and boots from all the swamp wading hasn’t helped the situation. Stinging, aching, biting heels; despite huge calluses they’re still getting blisters. As are my fourth toes on both feet. Usually a long sleep cures their end-of-day complaints, but this morning they started complaining the minute I put on the wet boots and socks. It only got worse as the day went on.
Still, after a heavy grey morning, feeling lonely and lethargic, the sun peaked through mid-morning and broke up most of the clouds by midday. I left the last swamp puddles an hour after leaving camp, then headed into some spectacular coastal scrub, with first glimpses of the long-awaited sea.
A short walk across Mandalay beach with the wind howling from the west made lunch difficult but I stripped off my shoes and wiggled my damp toes in the sun and sand.
A hilly afternoon walking through the coastal dunes; the feet went into high alert and barely get me down to the hut by 3.30pm. I park my still-clammy shoes and socks in the sun, lie down on the picnic table and let the sun do its thing on my poor throbbing feet. Later I massage them with herbal ointment and they are nearly good as new. Enough to get me up a steep hill where I find enough phone reception to ring Rin. Later, after dinner, I walk down to the coast, a fifteen minute walk from the hut. The coastline here is rocky and spectacular water fountains shoot into the air when the rough sea hits the rocks. The sun shoots shafts of light through gathering clouds but the sunset is surprisingly uninspiring.
Day 46 Mt Clare
Ode to Bibbulmun Woes
(to be read at the end of a hard day’s journey)
Oh my toes, my toes
They give me such woes
Knife biting pains
Like nobody knows.
Oh my feet, my feet
They swell and rage in the heat
When I take off the boots
The smell ain’t so sweet.
Oh the knees, the knees
These trails do what they please
Up hills and down hills
With no thought for my knees
Oh my thighs, my thighs
They give off such sighs
Carrying all this weight
Without any cries.
Of my back, my back
You’re under attack
You creak and you crack
From too heavy a pack.
Oh my shoulders, my shoulders
You strong able holders
When the pack sways and sags
And feels full of boulders.
Oh my neck, my neck
You’re really a wreck
You carry all the strain
From this unending trek.
Ah, a town! A town!
Let’s start clowning around
A beer, a bath, a soft cozy bed
Turns my grumpy frown upside down.
[A whimsical attempt at being lyrical after a hard day’s slog.]
Day 47/48 Walpole
The Mt Clare hut is guarded by three giant red tingle trees. I call them The Brothers Tingle and want to write a poem since I’m feeling so lyrical. But actually I’m more intent on getting into Walpole after seven days in the bush. Besides, I’m meeting up with Johan today! A zesty pep returns to my stride
After a brief meander through an attractive well-groomed karri/tingle forest (catering for the 30-minute drive-in tourist), the trail cuts back into rough scrub, thick undergrowth, mostly dead and graying, and muddy tracks for the easy 10km glide into Walpole. She’s a pretty little town on the edge of two picturesque inlets.
It’s always a shock to the system to re-enter civilization after days spent in the bush, particularly solitary time. My immediate impression of my fellow human beings is that they are, by and large, quite unattractive. Today they appear fat, ugly and heavily reliant on artificial means to prop themselves up in a never-ending attempt to disguise their shortcomings.
Me? They must think I’m feral: a wild bush-woman descends upon their town with mud-caked boots, scrungy pack, baggy pants (falling well below the waistline since shedding 4 kilos) and Medusa-style hair branching in several divergent directions and held in place by a week’s worth of unwashed natural hair oil.I walk into town, my sticks click-clicking, feeling both self-conscious and bold in my behemoth look: raw, natural, unfettered and unwashed. Real woman.
First stop the grocery store for the day’s prize: a coffee-flavoured Magnum ice cream bar. Next, ring Rin. He’s tired, frazzled and still three hours away. I’m sympathetic, feeling buoyed by my seven days in solitary confinement and nearly ecstatic to see him.
I pop into the Visitor’s Centre, make enquiries about local accommodation and settle on a self-contained cottage in the caravan park with views of the Nornalup Inlet. It will be a surprise gift for Johan’s 59th birthday (last week). Besides, he’s stressed and in need of a holiday.
The chalet is perfect: quiet, surrounded by bush, clean, attractive. We’re like two young lovers, reveling in each other’s company and the extravagance of a two-night getaway together. We talk and eat, drink red wine and watch a DVD before heading to bed at 11pm, three hours past bush-bedtime.
The weather is bleak and the week’s forecast doesn’t promise much improvement. We make plans for this new chapter of my Bibbulmun journey over a pancake breakfast, wondering and worrying how it will be tent-camping if the weather turns wet, but also excited about doing the final leg together.
My backpack is in the spare room. I go in there to sort out my newly washed clothes and repack. I feel a surge of sadness when I see it, nostalgic for the six weeks we had together, this little bundle which held my whole life, my world on my back. What a trek! What a life. My body is slim and taut. My face shines. My mood is confident. I am present to all that is before me. I’m at my peak. A human being at her peak.
Day 49 Frankland River
For his birthday, I bought Johan a box of chocolates and a card, then sent it via post from Pemberton so he’d get it on his birthday. It arrived a day late but he seemed pleased, particularly with the card, which showed two kittens curled up together, their little limbs entwined. Inside the card said something Hallmark-like about needing a hug on your birthday and I promised to give him one when we saw each other in a week’s time.
This morning, Johan reminds me of that card. We lie in bed, limbs entwined, languishing luxuriously in each other’s bodies and company. We’re two cats, hardly kittens anymore; rather, two aging felines, graying hair, soft saggy skin, pinched morning faces gazing adoringly at each other. It could be a honeymoon, but our love isn’t young. It’s battle-scarred, having defied the threat of separation from a frighteningly difficult time in our relationship this year. We are now more genuinely together than we ever have been in the past. We have nothing to prove anymore, our love having endured the fires of hell where what is most ugly and ignominious about ourselves gets revealed. And surprise! We still want to be together – warts and all.
In a way it is a second honeymoon, a second wind that comes along after a hard battle that was never sure of victory. He hugs me as we leave the cottage, thanking me for the birthday gift and for my love.
After a day of rest, my body is ready again for the track. But now I have a featherweight pack, carrying only what I’ll need for a 20km day hike: rain gear, a jumper, water and lunch. I feel resurrected, light as air, full of rocket fuel as I sprint down the track. Now I know what it feels like for those hikers who can go at a 4-5 km/hour pace. Wonderful! A real buzz.
I cover 20km in five hours, including a half hour lunch break. Johan is there to meet me at our agreed upon spot and he takes me to a place he’s found along the Frankland River to camp for the night. It’s an idyllic spot, tranquil, isolated, beautiful with the quiet, slow-moving river flanked by overhanging bush at our doorstep. Periodically the sun streaks through to lighten the dark brown water. Birds flit up and down the open space provided by the river. An eagle lands on a dead tree limb, which breaks under its weight and crashes into the water. The eagle flies upstream to light upon a sturdier tree.We share a cup of tea, perched in our camp chairs overlooking the still pool created by a bend in the river. I chide him that he’s done well for his first day’s assignment: to find us a 10-out-of-10 campsite. Our camping week sets off well.
Day 50 Conspicuous Cliffs
The day Johan and I arrived at the Colemine Beach Caravan Park in Walpole, the woman who checked us in called on her two-way radio to the camp-hand to show us to our chalet. It was just around the corner, but the man – a heavy-set tall middle-aged fellow with ochre blue Aussie short-shorts and a bucket hat slouched on his round face – walked ahead of our car and handed us the keys after he opened the front door. He looked me up and down in my hiking gear and wanted to know how I was finding the Bibbulmun Track. ‘Great’, I said. ‘Many snakes?’ said he. ‘A few, but they don’t bother us much.’ The man looked at my shoes. ‘Got any gaiters?’ he asked, his faced wincing into a grimace. ‘No, some people wear them,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think they’re much worth it.’ He turned towards Johan, appealing to his protective manly role as my husband. ‘Gotta get her some gaiters’, he insisted. ‘This is the worst section for snakes. I’ve seen ‘em stand up this tall’ – and he held his hand just above his waist – ‘when they’re angry and ready to attack. You get between a male snake and his mate and he won’t back off; he’ll go for the kill before you can jump aside” – and his hand grasps his leg like the fangs of an angry snake.
Johan’s impressed and wants to know how high the gaiters should be. The man touches his leg, mid-thigh, though I’ve never seen gaiters that covered that much of the leg before. I try to brush off what I view as his extremism with a flippant comment but the man won’t be deterred. ‘Get ‘er some gaiters,’ he glares at Johan.
Today, midway through the trek from the tingle forest down through the coastal heathlands, a fat tiger snake lay sprawled out horizontal across the path. My ever-vigilant eyes, sweeping the trail ten meters ahead of my gait, saw him and I stopped short about a meter away. He was still, unresponsive to my presence. I thumped the ground with my walking stick, but he didn’t flinch. I peered around an overhanging branch that was hiding his head. His eyes seemed alert and his neck was flat as a pancake. I didn’t know whether that meant he was dead, sleeping or downright angry, ready for attack. I tried to reason with him: ‘Look, Mr Snake, I need to get by. I’m not going to hurt you. I pose absolutely no threat to you whatsoever, you can be assured of that. I just need to pass by. Could you please move out of the way?’
He didn’t budge. I wondered whether he might indeed be dead, his body so still and unmoving. ‘Come now, Mr Snake,’ I insisted, ‘please, I really need to pass by you. Could you just move along?’ We stood our mutual ground for a few minutes. Finally I decided to try making a wide arc around him through the bush. As soon as he heard the noise of my boot crunching the dry grass he slithered off, quick as a jet. ‘Thank you, Mr Snake, ‘I’m just going to pass by now, don’t be alarmed. I’ll make it quick.’ And off I scurried down the track.
Day 51 Peaceful Bay
What a luxury to be out of my restrictive mummy bag and camped in a 3-person tent where we’ve concocted the nicest queen-size bed from a thin foam mattress, doona and two pillows. Johan’s up at 6am and ready for the day but my tired aching body wants more rest, so I roll over, mumbling something about more sleep. An hour and a half later I wake feeling the warmth of the tent. I stick my head out the door and am greeted with an expanse of blue sky. Yippee! We haven’t seen so much sun for days. It rained heavily during the night and I expected a grey, drizzly day, as we’ve had since leaving Walpole. But the morning sun is delightful and pulls me out of my intoxicating slumber.Hiking up through the coastal cliffs offers exceptional views of the rugged southern coastline. Such a welcome change from the hundreds of miles of bush I’ve been through the past seven weeks.
Midway through the 16km hike to Peaceful Bay where I’ll meet Johan for lunch, I encounter a man coming in the opposite direction. His gait is slower than mine and he wears a medium-size backpack and an unusual foreign style hat. Turns out he’s Swiss, slightly older than me. He’s just begun his trek on the Bibb and is enjoying the beautiful flora immensely. “Like a cultivated garden!” he muses dreamily. He’s in no rush to get anywhere and may just stay the night at the next hut, 5kms up the track, depending on how he feels by then.
Since dropping my pack and feeling the incredible lightness of being without it, I’ve been power-trekking. My goal: to maintain a four km/hour average, which for me is unprecedented on this trek while carrying a 16-20kg pack. I love that my body can move so lithely and with such speed now. But along with that is the inevitable competitiveness that comes with any sport -- the object: to break one’s own or another’s record, or simply to get from one point to another as quick as possible. Northbound trackers whom I met at the beginning of my trek, when I was still starry-eyed and gaga over the beauty of the bush and completely uncaring about whether I did ten kms/day, as long as it was at my leisure, had this sort of single-focused relentless drive to get down the track. The end was near, closer every day. The adrenalin rush to get there was intensifying, intoxicating even.
I thought then how stupid these people were – driven, stressed, turning the track into a highway, probably the type who compulsively speed on Perth’s freeways.
Now I’m one of them. The end is near. I just want to get there and my strong athletic body is capable of getting me there – and fast.
Day 52 Boat Harbour
Johan agrees to go hiking with me for the first few kilometers of today’s walk. It’s relatively flat coastal scrub and ends at the channel that flows from the Irwin inlet. The map shows the track extending up another three kms to the entrance of the inlet – apparently there are a set of canoes there for walkers to ferry themselves across the channel.
But Johan and I stand atop the dune overlooking the place where the channel meets the sea. He thinks it’s possible to cross along the shoreline, then hike straight up the hard sandy beach and reconnect with the track in about five kilometers. I’m game for an adventure so we give each other a hug and I ski down the steep slope to the beach. When I get to the water’s edge I take off my boots and pants, stuff them in the backpack and enter the quickly flowing stream at a shallow point. My objective is to get across the 10-meter stream in a zigzag fashion, following the ruts of high sand. These go parallel with the deeper sections, which could potentially be waist deep. It’s a grey cold day and the wind whips from the southeast. I steady myself with my walking sticks, poking them into the sand ahead to make sure it’s not too deep. I’m halfway across in ankle deep water when suddenly my next step lands in soft sand and my foot disappears up to the knee. It’s not dangerous but it feels scary and I quickly back off onto the hard sand. I try it again but my fear won’t let me go forward into the soft sand.
I look up at Johan watching me from atop the sand dune. He’s pointing towards the ocean. I back track on to the dry sand and walk to the ocean’s edge. Sure enough, the sand has built up where the river meets the sea – and it’s hard. I wade across with little effort, then turn and give a victory wave to Johan. He waves back, then disappears into the dunes. He’ll meet me later with the car at Boat Harbour.
Walking the beach with the strong headwind is invigorating. It takes just over an hour to trek the beach section before the Waugal appears again at the point where the track enters the beach from the dunes. Another hour leads to the spot where the track leaves the beach and heads east back into the dunes. The sun is starting to peer out of the clouds and I take my layers off. The trail through the dunes is hilly and hot where it evades the sea breeze but the views from high points are stunning.
At 2.30pm I descend the dunes into Boat Harbour, where our white Subi is parked next to the toilet block and Johan is fast asleep, his feet sticking out the open window. I sneak up and tap the bottom of his shoes with my stick until he slowly opens his eyes. We find a beautiful grassy knoll to camp in next to the protected harbour. At a picnic table overlooking the shimmering blue harbour, we have a cup of tea and slice of Dutch ginger cake. It’s a pleasure to be doing this together.
Day 53 Williams Bay
At 7am the spot on the beach where we picnicked yesterday is calm; sometime during the night the wind stopped and now the protected bay is tranquil, still grey clouds defending its silence. I do my morning ritual there then hike back up 100 metres to the shrubs where we pitched the tent for the night. Johan is dismantling the tent and we both agree a Sunday breakfast on the beach would be nice. And it is: French toast, fried eggs, juice and coffee.
The track is busy today. The group of nine, an organized tour which I’ve been tagging all week, heads off at 9am, followed by a set of three middle-aged women out for a Sunday day hike. I take off at half past nine and pass the threesome within half an hour. My newly acquired lightness continues to invigorate me and I enjoy the pleasure of power-trekking up and down the dunes. I pass the group of nine an hour later. I sprint past, my walking sticks clicking in time to my speedy gait, enjoying my agility and the slight competitive edge over my fellow middle-aged walkers.
I meet Johan for lunch at Parry Beach then continue on another 8km of beach walking before the day’s trek is finished. It’s hard going on the beach: fierce head winds and soft sand and I’m exhausted when I meet him again at 3.30. He takes me to Green’s Pool and I strip to my shirt and underpants, feeling grungy and raw amongst the bikini-clad teenagers. But it’s good to wash the sweat off me in the salty bath.
We find a place to camp in a nearby karri bush. Johan is testy and I’m cold and tired – moods that don’t meld well together. The day ends on a sullen note over a dinner conversation about New Norcia – dangerous territory. Will it never cease to haunt us, this unending, unresolved tale?
Day 54 Denmark
It rains during the night and the morning is cold and dull – and so are our moods. We have fallen into a sullen funk with each other, try to repair it with a few words over breakfast, but it only makes things worse. We part at the trailhead without the usual humour and hugs. Perhaps we need a day apart.
A kilometer down the track I meet Rick, somewhere near Johan’s age and just as bushy. He’s a loner, camps most nights in his tent and loves the bush. He’s been tagging behind me for the whole trek, reading my log book entries and he knows straight away my name is Joan. He stutters slightly when he speaks and I wonder if it’s from too many days spent on his own.
We compare notes about time spent in solitude and both agree it’s an OK thing. “I know you’re supposed to be thinking about the Big Bang theory and all that when you’re out on your own,” he says, and his voice trails off into silence. I smile, “Yeah, it’s funny. It really all just turns to quiet and emptiness, doesn’t it?” He smiles back.
Mt Hallowell presents a midday challenge, a 400-meter rise in less than 2kms. I’m sweating and puffing when I reach the top, but the view’s fantastic so I perch on a bed of granite rock and eat my lunch.
I’m weary by the time I trek into Denmark mid-afternoon. The walk into town doesn’t have the same thrill or anticipation as past times when I’ve left the bush for a town, perhaps because I haven’t been roughing it as much on my own this week. Perhaps it’s also the anxiety of meeting up with Johan again and our unresolved funk.
He’s 100 meters down the trail when I spot him and we walk back to the car, making stilted conversation. Our day apart didn’t have its desired outcome: the funk is still there. He’s rented a caravan at the Rivermouth Caravan Park, not nearly as salubrious as our Walpole retreat but it seems to fit our mood and his more frugal style.
Our conversation is left to a minimum, speaking only when necessary to convey practical information. I wonder how long the funk will last – and dread the thought of a potential anti-climax – hugely disappointing – if we can’t resolve this thing by the time I walk into Albany on Saturday.
Day 55 Nullaki Peninsula
We hash it out again, the same old tired story of how everything went wrong at New Norcia. The same things are said, the same corners backed into, the same territory covered. We must have huge unresolved issues with each other to put ourselves through the agony and boredom of this repetitive argument.
By 8pm we’ve had enough and I suggest we go out for dinner. We head for the Denmark pub and order fish-and-chips and nachos. Like before, we are able to drop the argument fairly quickly, though somewhat worse for the wear, and no closer to resolving what divides us. At least we end the day as friends and lovers again.
Denmark is bustling on a Tuesday morning and we enjoy a coffee at the outside tables of the Bibbulmun Café, the latest bohemian hotspot in this funky art town.
After a bit of shopping and walking around we head for the Nullaki Peninsula. It’s my day off so I enjoy wearing my jeans, leather boots and Jacaru hat, city style. We find where the trailhead picks up after the inlet crossing and enjoy the view back to Denmark from the dock built for public access. The whole peninsula has been subdivided for private ownership – the average block is 40ha and costs in the range of two million dollars – a rich man’s paradise. Though still wild and spacious, it doesn’t have the same sense of freedom and access as a national park, which many locals would have preferred as the outcome for this contested land.
We follow the bitumen road to the south side of the peninsula and walk down to the beach where the wild southern ocean is pounding white waves through the reefs. The sun parts the clouds and the day feels warm and inviting. I take a casual stroll along the beach, a welcome change from the power-trekking I’ve been doing.
Late afternoon finds us back at the dock near the trailhead. We sit on the end, sharing a Redback beer and watching the pelicans float like oversized rubber ducks on the water. A man and woman have docked their sailboat and spend over an hour going through their check-list packing everything up. They’ve been out on the water for four days and it appears to have done them a world of good. They’re friendly, relaxed and obviously enjoying each other’s company. After their meticulous labor, they walk down to the pier, hand-in-hand, and wish us a good evening before heading back to their car and driving off.
Day 56 Lowlands Beach (just west of West Cape Howe)
A sense of unreality marks the day. I’m heading off on the last leg of my journey; four days left to trek into Albany. It’s hard to connect my mind and emotions with what I’ve done – the length of this walking trip. The beginning seems so far away and all the places I passed through over the past 2-1/2 months jumble together in one vague memory. I want to press the rewind button in my mind and see it all again, but the effort to remember the sequence of things is difficult and I too easily give up.
The day dawns with a blue sky – a rare commodity on the southern coast. The half moon is waning and I realize the last time I saw her she was a half-moon waxing. I hardly ever miss a full moon and it further emphasizes the strange, unreal passage of time.
The six-hour walk is beautiful in the bright sun with long vistas to the Porongorups in the north and the vast southern ocean to the south. Johan meets me at Lowlands Beach and I wash away my sweat and tiredness with a swim in the brisk sea. We hop across sharp jagged limestone rocks to find a cave Johan knows about, a place he took his family to over twenty years ago. The cave is wide and high but not deep and the walls are covered in an ochre-coloured pasty mud that reminds me of my mother’s paints. The ceiling of the cave drips brackish water down pips of calcified rock. It’s eery, old, Aboriginal. Ugly and beautiful at the same time.
We camp off a dirt road in the flowering peppermint tree bush. A large flock of squawking cockatoos pass overhead while we eat dinner, warning of oncoming heavy grey clouds from the west. Low rolls of thunder grumble in the distance. We watch the darkening sky until the first plops of rain make drum beats on the tent roof. We crawl inside as the rain and thunder intensify and lightening periodically illuminates the dusky interior of the tent.
The south coast is known for its wild and squally winter storms. On the second day of my trek, I met two women who were two days away from ending their northbound end-to-end. They started in June and within the first few days got caught in a severe tempest that battered them about, made walking with heavy packs nigh impossible, and leaving them wet through and through. They heard later that the storm had been classified a level four cyclone. I asked them whether the experience had made them want to cancel the trek but that seemed the furthest thing from their minds. Seven weeks down the track it had become a good story to tell.
The south coast is also known for its inability to embrace summer. We’re coming up to the last week of spring, Perth is getting warm and sunny, but the south coast holds on to its penchant for storms and grey skies. Today it lived up to its unpopular reputation. The thunder and lightening from last night receded, merging into one long raging wind and rain storm. The day’s hike was wet and wild. My poncho and rain pants kept my clothes reasonably dry but my boots got soaked and squished plenty of water by the end of the day. Hiking through the head winds across West Cape Howe took determination and lots of energy. I sloshed into the Shelley Beach car park at noon where we planned to meet for lunch, and we ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches in the front seat of the car while the wind and rain pelted at us from side-on.I set out at 2pm for the remaining 8kms of the day’s 24km trek. I felt less fatigued than previous days while hiking in the hot sun. The intensity of the elements was stimulating. Johan had camp set up behind a line of protective gnarly-shaped peppermint trees next to the beach at Cosy Corner. We spend the night listening to the raging wind, protected in our little cove.
Day 58 Albany
The rain stays away long enough for us to eat a porridge breakfast and pack the car. The beach is still windy but burly clouds fill the sky breaking to send a shaft of light onto the distant wind turbines that line the coast south of Albany. I cross Torbay Inlet in my underpants and black shirt, my pack held over my head as I wade through chest-deep water. The rain starts soon after. Not wild and whipping like yesterday’s but relentless and steady, never very heavy but enough to keep me soaked.
I meet Johan at 3pm just past the line of twelve wind turbines. I’m sick of being wet and camping out in incessant rain doesn’t appeal to either of us. We head to Frenchman’s Bay Road looking for a caravan park or motel. Nothing appeals or there are no vacancies.
We end up at Emu Point, northeast of town in a comfortable chalet next to the bay. It feels disappointing to enter the city by car rather than the climactic entry from the bush I had envisioned. But the weather hasn’t cooperated. It continues on and on into the night and we are both glad to be indoors and out of it.
Tomorrow is the final day of walking. Fourteen kilometers from the wind turbines to the town center. I am ready to finish; my feet and legs are chronically aching. I’ve reached my destination and it’s time to move on to another chapter in life.
But it is also sad to let it go. Such a powerful experience. So much joy living simply in the great outdoors. When will it ever be repeated?
Day 59 Albany/Mt Barker (Saturday, 22nd November)
I’m restless and can’t get to sleep. Filled with a strange mix of emotions I can’t understand. And my body aches. I take a Nurofen, which helps ease the physical pain, but I still toss and turn throughout the night.
I’m out of bed at 6am, glad to see a shaft of sun breaking through the thick clouds – and no rain! I retreat to the beach just below our chalet, say Morning Prayer and do my exercises. The feeling is akin to the morning of a celebration – a wedding or graduation – with its strange mix of excitement and anxiety, the event desired and dreaded at the same time. My body feels lethargic and my mood is prone to procrastination.
The weather is holding so we eat breakfast outside, ribbons of dark clouds circling Middleton Bay. Things are light and easy between us and we make jokes as we drive from the caravan park towards the trailhead, stopping for a takeaway coffee on the way. It kick-starts my energy and I’m happy to be back on the trail – for the last time. I look with longing and nostalgia back towards the west, the many curves and crevices of the southern coastline which I traversed over the past two weeks. The trail peaks at a bench, facing south and offering one last panoramic view of the ocean before turning north towards town, civilization. Ten minutes later there’s another bench facing north, perched to give the perfect view of Albany town and Frenchman’s Bay – the final destination.
The trek downhill to the bay and across to town is easy and I’m feeling light and a bit giddy. I play a game of naming Western Australian towns for each letter of the alphabet – A for Albany; B for Busselton; C for Capel -- and so on. I can’t think of towns that start with ‘X’ and ‘Z’. A young German man with a backpack heads my way and I easily engage him in conversation – Where’s he heading? How long? From Germany are you? I beam when I tell him it’s the last day of my eight-week trek. He laughs nervously at this slightly manic lady with her disheveled appearance and hyper-friendly manner.
Johan is at the Terminus when I arrive at 12.45, greets me with a hug, a single pink rose, a card picturing two people walking arm-in-arm and a bottle of sparkling wine, the same brand I’d bought in Dwellingup to celebrate my 49th birthday on the track exactly two months ago. My eyes fill with tears. It’s all over.
I look at the Bibbulmun Track interpretive boards in the Visitor’s Center, which remind me that I’ve just walked 964kms down a long snaky trail winding its way through all those familiar towns and bushlands. So many memories – a long string of them. Two months of my life spent outdoors, living simply, empowering myself after a difficult life experience – one of life’s worst. I’m stronger for it. Though the pain is not gone, it has subsided and doesn’t overwhelm me as it once did. Hope and optimism for the future have reestablished a place in my heart and mind.
I know this experience, powerful as it was, will fade. We can’t hold on to the joys of life anymore than we hang on to its sorrows. Time changes all things. But our wounds and our magnificent experiences do shape us. Like a potter playing with his clay, each change produces a new form, a new way of being in the world. I am the same person who started this incredible journey, but also, I will never be the same having completed it.
With a broad smile and wet eyes, I pick up my plastic cup half-full of cheap champagne and clunk it against Johan’s. Here’s to us and life’s many weird and wonderful ways. For now, at this moment in time, I am deeply content and happy to be who I am. Thank you Bibbulmun Track.The End
