I used to belong to a group that could best be described as a drinking club with a small hill walking problem. We never got around to writing a constitution for our little company, but if we did, the first rule would certainly be “that all walks must terminate at a pub that offers overnight accommodation or public transport back to the City.”
We would generally leave Dublin early on Saturday mornings and head south towards Wicklow where the hills are sleepy and bathed in heather. We would then tramp for 15km or so in usually toxic weather, warmed only by the prospect of a bowl of Chowder and a pint of Guinness at the end of our ordeal.
Walking in Australia is a different stroll in the park. Everything is bigger here, from Chicken schnitzels to station wagons and walks are no exception. Once you get out of the city, you could walk for 15km and still be in the same field that you started in. To get from one logical starting point to another requires a walk of much greater distance and alas, there is rarely a pub at the end of it.
We’ve been toying with the Great Ocean Walk for the past six months. This runs parallel to the famous Great Ocean Road and hugs the coastline, offering a view of places rarely seen by tourists. We’ve had a few scary moments on these walks, not least getting trapped by the incoming tide and having to scramble unceremoniously through thick bush to get back to something resembling civilisation.
But nothing we’ve done there compares to the walk we did last weekend. We headed down to Wilson’s Prom on Thursday night after work and rested up before our big adventure. The prom sits as an odd shaped peninsula hanging off the south of Australia, like the testicles of a bull in heat. Its tip represents the most Southern point in Australia and next to this stands a lighthouse as remote as any beacon on earth.
Our plan was to stay at the lighthouse, which meant a 32km walk in and an 18km walk out. The route in follows the coastline along the sort of twisting, hilly paths that would trouble a wild goat. We set off at 8.45am, full of enthusiasm and pancakes and knocked off the first 10km in jig time. This was pretty much a downhill run to the first beach but it burdened us with false confidence. We climbed the hill at the end of the beach and had our first taste of the challenge the day would present. Hands fumbled in back packs to find water bottles which had worked their way to the bottom. Jackets were discarded and the straps on our three day packs were tightened. The early morning mist had fainted away with our confidence and the sun started its inexorable rise.
We reached the summit of the hill and the majesty of Refuge Bay lay out before us. A loan yacht bobbed on the azure coloured sea which gave the scene the air of a cast away island. When we reached the beach, we were ready for a swim and simply dropped our packs and dived in. Many Australians are reluctant to dip their toe into the ocean before the Christmas dinner has been consumed, but I have no such reservations. I’ve swam in the sea around Ireland for example, and compared to that the southern ocean is like a sauna.
After we had cooled ourselves sufficiently, we unwrapped the sandwiches that I had kindly prepared for the group. They were hurriedly consumed and followed up with some scroggin (a word I first heard in Australia and is so rare it’s hasn’t made its way to Dictionary.com yet).
We refilled our water bottles and set course for the next peak. This proved even tougher than the previous hill, partly because of the sandwiches swirling around our bellies. We finally made it across the top and down the other side towards Waterloo Beach. By now it was almost 6pm and we still had 10km to cover and although we didn’t say anything to each other, a sense of unease had settled on the group. None of us had any experience of walking through the bush at night and sundown happens pretty quickly here, so we knew that at least the last part of the walk would be done in darkness.
When night came, we found ourselves in the deepest part of the forest and it soon dawned on me that most wild animals in Australia are nocturnal. We slouched along nervously, piecing our way between the rocks and crevices by the dim glow of our torches. Every now and again a crashing sound would come from the deep bush around us and we would cower expecting a Kangaroo to come bounding across our path. At one stage, a large Wombat appeared and surveyed us nervously before sticking his head between two rocks and offering his large derriere to us in an act of defiance.
After two hours night walking that resembled Frodo’s journey in “Lord of The Rings” we finally sighted the lighthouse and thought we were home and dry. The walk however, had one more trick up its sleeve.
Like many lighthouses around the world, Wilson’s Prom sits atop an imposing cliff. We had made our way down to sea level and so the last 800 metres of our tramp was pretty much vertical. I’m reading Anthony Beever’s “D-Day” at the moment and he has a gripping chapter covering the attempts of the American Rangers to scale the cliff tops at Omaha Beach. All I can say is that our endeavour could not have been more difficult if we’d had a bunch of Germans firing at us from the top.
We finally made it and were embraced by our fellow walkers who had taken the easy way in but were in the process of sending out a search party.
We were too tired to consume any of the alcohol we had diligently carried in and we made our way to bed, to rest weary limbs and to try and banish the thought from our minds that the only way to get home was by helicopter or to walk back on Sunday. I dreamed of rotating blades and fell into a deep sleep.
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