A BIG WALK - Step by Step

My last expedition, The Great Australian Crawl, is dead. Long Live the Great Australian Crawl, sent to my small pile of projects that didn't work, not the least because of an untimely heart attack that robbed me of momentum and, if I am honest, of passion.

But you can't keep a good man down, especially ones whose raison d'être is exploration in one form or another - I search google maps therefore I am - and so I give you my next project.

Conventional wisdom says you give three public speeches. The one you want to give, the one you do give and the one you wished you have given. It is the same with a big journey. As I plan my next expedition, my mind and soul clearly reside in Stage One. Before a foot has hit the ground the adventure, a walk from Sydney on the east coast to Alice Springs in the heart of Australia, is playing its highlights package in my mind. In as yet unseen landscapes I stand with my dog, faithful hound, the breeze lightly caressing my hair, pondering thoughts beyond the ken of normal men. My feet don’t hurt, flies fly in another world, my back isn’t a spine of pain. The trolley I pull glides effortlessly behind me like a reindeer’s sled. The hard plains of the outback, the searing heat of the midday sun and the freezing desert mornings, are just  twirling screen savers to the central theme of my indomitable will. I cling to the Lao Tsung's saying, that the 'a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step’ as though that’s all I need to do. 

I’ve walked a long walk before, 1,200 mountainous kilometres along the Great Divide Range, and I should remember the hard lessons from that walk, that it’s not just the first step or the last that define a journey's success or failure, but the thousands upon thousands in between; step by step; thought by thought; story by story. If the showreel of my as yet un-walked trek were to stop for a second, I would have to admit to a deep apprehension, because by any stretch of the imagination this is A BIG WALK!

So come March 1 - 2015, I head off; old dog, new rickswag, ever hovering anxieties, solar-powered devices, photographic equipment and Californian dried food in hand. We will work our way over the Blue Mountains, through the New South Wales outback towns of Bathurst, Cowra, Grenfell, Hay. Up through Mungo along the Darling River to Broken Hill and then into the Flinders Ranges and Lake Eyre to Oodnadatta. I might then trek along the back way to Alice thru the Finke Mission or even the Old Andadoo Track if absolute isolation has called me. From there I will double around the back of Mt Sonder into journeys end, Hermannsburg. 

I need help through. Tommie, unlike me, is getting old. I figure we can walk in the mornings and then pull up in the middle of the day before heading off again in late afternoon. He loves a good morning walk but crashes after that. My rickswag has a bottom compartment which carries about 60 litres of gear and I'll place my pack on that. It is a simple matter to then carry it  on my back and let Tommie crawl up onto the rickswag. I will monitor how he is going but I am hoping that local people can come and give him some R&R from time to time. I really think this is the best solution. I can't not take him, it would be like Laurel without Hardy - Tommies the fat one - I just have to manage and monitor him. There is a slight chance he will become reborn.

I am kind of hoping I will as well. I need to walk again. I need to feel unencumbered again, or as much as is possible while pulling a rickswag. I remember the feeling of walking along the Great Divide from Melbourne to Sydney. I remember when I walked the desert for months on end. There were moments of such bliss, such abandonment, such freedom that made a mockery of my current sedentary self. To be honest, driving a bus was almost as bad as not moving. The massive steel avatar surrounding me did daily battle with my wanderlust, and it won.

The photo above was taken at 6am near Balranald. After my little shoot I walked along the road. A giant kangaroo and two joeys watched me as an emu ran away. The light hit the curve of a creek, a gum tree creaked, a butcher bird gurgled and blue clumps of saltbush aligned into the distance like mop heads with product.

I realised, not for the first time, that some people are at their best in the middle of nowhere on a lonely country road. The Big Walk will prove or disprove that idea. 

Raymond & Tommie 

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