“I’m jumping off the track. 5km away from Baw Baw Village. I’ll make my way there now.” Sent October 27th, 2022 8:16am through Garmin InReach.
Was I really doing this? Months of planning, six weeks blocked out from work, and four days spent driving from Sydney down through NSW and Victoria to place resupply drops in the bush. Was I really calling it quits after starting the Australian Alps Track 3 days prior? I had walked twenty-something kilometres out of a six-hundred-and-sixty-kilometre hike.
Something felt off though. Pining over this decision while curled up in my sleeping bag, wind still whipping the canopies and rain slashing my tent, I promised myself that I would return. I wasn’t quitting. I was only postponing. I had not put in this colossal effort, years of dreaming and months of planning to just end it for good.
Yet still, as I slithered back into my soaking wet clothes, bloodied from numerous leech attacks over the last 2 days, and as I wriggled my toes into icy socks and boots, I was fighting off darker thoughts.
Failure. Didn’t give it a proper go. Weakling. You should keep going.
I made it to a deserted Baw Baw Village. Those negative thoughts started to dissipate, as warmth and mobility returned to my body via milky coffee and hot chips. My gut feeling was confirmed. This was not the right season to walk the AAWT. The forecast for the next month was rain, rain, snow, freezing temperatures and more rain. Throw in a bit more snow too. The extreme La Niña weather had blown into Spring, with the ground well over saturation-point, the track existed as a flowing creek, puddles for tent spots and most river crossings impassable. Oh, and the hellish profusion of leeches. I had also packed my boyfriend’s rain jacket, which was about six sizes too big for me. Good one.
Four months later, on February 28th I set off from Walhalla again. I climbed 1,415m up into the Baw Baw Plateau and threw my tent up in a mossy clearing. This felt right. The track had been on the right side of damp, water-droplets glistened on understory shrubs. The ground underfoot was firm, no longer an ankle-deep wade through mud and running water. Not a single leech. As I swung my hiking poles in front of me clearing spiderwebs, I embraced the leg burn and protesting shoulders.
For the next 34 days, I was assured by my decision to restart later. I had not been a failure; I needed that false start to prepare me for winning the next round.
On Day 18, hot coffee steam licked in tendrils from my cup as I acknowledged the start of the day with the quintessential bush alarm. Birdsong. Mt Wills Hut site had been the first time on the track I shared camp company, trading stories, gear choices and track updates. Backpack shrugged on, hiking poles looped around wrists, I cheered a goodbye and marched across soft blue-green Poa grasslands. The honey-golden sunrise softened on lichen-splattered boulders and breathed life into the skeletons of dead Snow Gums, the threatened Eucalyptus pauciflora. Eighteen days in, having spent so much time alone, I was jubilantly singing out loud and vocalising poems, conversing with myself and the plants around me.
On Day 19, I told myself “Not every part of a thru-hike is beautiful, but you can still find beauty in each moment”, as fingers curled around my dampened pack straps. Dull green Eucalyptus leaves crunched underfoot and stiffened straw-grasses concealed snakes, or maybe, it was just a stick? In that sweaty, dusty, pack-heavy-from-a-resupply moment, I found beauty in the mottled creamy, brown and grey bark of the Eucalyptus thriving in this rain-shadow zone and my privilege of being able to experience all of it.
On Day 34, after two weeks of grey skies and rolling storms, the sun busted through. Enchanted by claw-branches of the Alpine Ash that teased apart the lifting mist, I savoured that sunshine and landscape on my second last day of the track as much as I savoured every bite of food I had left. My appetite was insatiable. The next day, I walked through burnt country to arrive at Tharwa. Skinnier, stronger and the most alive I had ever felt.
A bus trip from Canberra the following day carted me back to Walhalla to collect my car. The arid country plains blurred past me. I remembered 35 days’ worth of blue mountain summit views and clouds dancing. The patchwork quilt of heath and peatlands. Brown snakes sunbathing. Twisted rainbow-barked Snow Gums. Dead Snow Gums. Crystalline rivers. Scrub-bashing through regrowth. Singing across open plains. Morning-dew droplets suckered to a leaf tip. Alpine Daisies. Sheltering in a creaky hut. I could still hear the birds.
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