Between Worlds

I’m going to Gracetown, Gracetown

Well woobloodyhoo.

If only you could see me now.

I’m sitting up in the most luxuriously comfortable emperor-sized bed you’ve ever not seen, the mattress is perfectly a-little-hard-but-not-too-hard, the aircon is set to unbelievably-pleasant-at-all-times, I’ve just drained a whole reservoir’s worth of water having the longest and most delicious hot shower of my life, I’m freshly shaven soaped shampooed conditioned and cocoa-butter moisturised, and there’s even a few fresh smudges of sandalwood paste on my face and throat from my little yellow-glassed jar, which has travelled with me all the way from the government handicraft emporium in Mysore, exactly for the why-the-hell-not-this-is-heaven-so-may-as-well-smell-divine-too-type situations like these.

I’ve been out for a delicious Thai curry with Miranda, we’ve been tucking into the locally brewed Margaret River Beer Farm IPAs (can you tuck into a drink?), and telling each other many tales about our past few months of travel.

I’m absolutely completely satisfied, satiated, and slightly inebriated.

Yep, I’m definitely not camping tonight.

I’m in a palace in Gracetown, right on the coast near Margaret River. Miranda and I have the whole triple-glazed bottom floor (of 3) to ourselves.

I’d have a massive party here right now if I knew anyone around here other than sleeping zombies. There’s plenty of space, a massive lounge room, pool table, there’s a big stereo home entertainment system, and the bar’s undoubtably chokka. I’m all ready to go. There’s even a bloody piano down here, inconceivably gathering dust. That should be illegal.

So where-the-bloody-hell-are-you?

I hiked out of the Cape to Cape track this morning, with Rodrigo and John. They’re such lovely guys. We had real food at last at Gracie’s General, the best little cafe ever, I’ve been there a coupla times now and got to know the staff a bit, they’re the friendliest crew of all time.

John told me he was having leg troubles hiking, so I ended up giving him a lift to as close as we could get to the next campsite, Moses Rock, so he could rest a little. Those guys’ll be doing it tough tonight. It’s really cold, wet and blustery out there.

But not in here baby.

Here in Graceland.

I’m gonna send them a hunka hunka burnin love, warm ‘em up a bit.

I pressed the “Colour Enhancer” button on one of the many electronic control pads on the wall, and this happened

Our friends have been the warmest, kindest and most generous hosts ever. Their family is like a wonky Brady Bunch - instead of the neat 3 girls with the mum, 3 boys with the dad, it’s a 4 - 2 permutation, with mixed genders all over the bloody confusing place.

The kids had a surf comp today. They were out all day in the death-defying swell - death only being defied if you were seriously skilled in the surf and had no brains, I mean fear.

Food Droppings

Organising food for a four week hike is no mean feat. You need kind hands. You need the kinda hands that are prepared to blend your own palace-sized mountain of muesli mix from millions of bags of dried fruit nuts flakes powders and potions, and then mix it all up and patiently spoon it into millions of other little ziplock plastic bags, trying to work out how many portions you need for this particular section of the hike etc etc. It’s a logistical nightmare.

Then there’s the working out the dinners thing. Our method is pretty simple. Miranda cooks one night, me the next.

So that basically means we have one absolutely gourmet vegetarian feast one night, followed the next by a mediocre mush of things mixed together that aren’t supposed to go together.

Like Donald Trump and the White House.

Or guns and people.

I don’t know how Miranda puts up with my “cooking”, she says my meals are “nice,” or even “delicious,” but we all know what that means. She calls me “the Italian chef” due to my pasta vaganzas (no extras). I guess she knows deep down that if she complains I’m not gonna invite her on the next ridiculous hike idea that I concoct out of thin maps.

So we carry food for up to a week, and pack it in plastic tubs to collect on the track at the end of each section. Sounds simple. But it looks like this:

Note the massage chair at rear, and cinematic TV screen

Food sorting for hiking looks like so much fun doesn’t it. Especially when the “dogs” come in sniffing around, 3 poodle-horse crosses that I kept trying to commandeer to ride me around the palace because it’s so big even my well-cured hiking legs couldn’t handle it.

Why don’t they just get corgis like all the other royals.

Gorgeous designer equinadogs. Notice the zillion-dollar ocean view.

After we’d finally finished the  epicurean mission we graciously thanked our hosts, said goodbye, and headed south.

We were so hungry. We ate schnitzels and drank beer at the Walpole pub.

Ok, calm down, don’t look so shocked. The schnitzels were plant-based. Which for Walpole probably means the young cows were originally based in a paddock. They were actually quite delicious, so was the beer.

I was ecstatically happy that at last I would fit in, in a real bloke’s country pub, because I was having a beer and a schnitzel. I mean, normally the blokes have steak and the “ladies” schnitzel, but I was almost there.

But then Miranda came in and the whole pretence went to shit.

Miranda trying to work out how to turn her phone on

Later we decided to sit in the beer garden.

So today we did all our food drops, ie. delivered our tubs to various spots to collect as we hike through. One lot we hid right in the bush, so we had to buy a metal toolbox from the hardware shop in Denmark to protect our vital supplies (eg. chocolate, biscuits and chocolate biscuits) from critters such as bush rats and mardoos.

Don’t even ask. This is what a mardoo looks like:

We happened upon this cute little fella in the most amazing sculpture walk in Northcliffe, where we’re camped for the night. It was unbelievable. So many incredible artworks, scattered around the most beautiful forest garden.

Fully armed

This house and tree were cuddling as we passed. One of my ex-clients does this.

We also met the guardians of that special place. They’ve been there for millennia, and didn’t say much. They didn’t need to.

It was so magic in there, so fantastical, that Miranda’s clothes started to unravel and unexpectedly fly off up a tree. Some of the flowers from her skirt did the same thing. She tried to catch them.

We had a game of quoits, but unfortunately one got stuck:

Swinger. Me pretending to be happy whilst Miranda tries to focus my auto-focus camera.

It really was the most incredible mystical fairyland in there, made even more inspiring by the spiced honey mead we drank whilst sitting on one of the carved benches in the middle of the enchanted forest.

We bought the mead at a meadery near Denmark, and our intermeadery was Obe, whose father was a mad Star Wars fan and had named him Obi (after Obi-Wan Kenobi).

But his mother couldn’t bear the name so she changed it to Obe.

Wow, that’s way better.

Anyway Obe had put it all behind him and seems to have turned out quite alright.

That’s a true story btw, he told me.

Obe told us Vikings used to make honey mead and drink it out of horns. They must’ve been very polite, because they always seemed to carry two horns - maybe so they could share their mead with a friend.

Don’t ask me about the end of his plait. I would only be speculating.

A Soaking, Flowery Bibb

The anticipation is over. We’ve finally started our long, four-footed adventure, intending to hike all the way to Albany. And it’s already a complete wonder.

Gardner

My ears wake before my eyes.

A small creek gurgles below the edge of the rise. A flock of waterbirds call in the distance, broadcasting their location to all of us. Us creatures of the forest. They fly towards us, pass almost directly overhead, then head towards the ocean, and into the silence.

Big water drops putt-putt on my tent fly, bellyflopping from the skyscraper trees above. Birds chirp whistle tweet cluck chuck chortle and chatter. A kookaburra starts her laugh, her hoohoohoohoohoo, then stops abruptly.

Peace.

The edges of my body feel so soft that they’ve blended into the sounds, they’ve become part of the timeless edgeless world around me.

Lying in the deep cool lake of nature. Immersed. All you have to do is be here, and it happens by itself. By osmosis. By magic.

You soften up, you become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you.

After 2 days of walking I can hear the ocean.

We’ve been heading south, from the small forestry town of Northcliffe, and we’re heading for the great Southern Ocean, that massive expanse of cold water that slowly filled in the gaps as Australia swam away from Antarctica 45 million years ago. We’ve always been a great swimming nation.

It’s been tall stunning forest all the way so far. Karri trees, amongst the highest in the country, tower above us. A massive array of shrubs, mosses, cycads, grasses and so many other plants surround and inhabit the track, bustling in everywhere, with their new flowers just beginning to explode into colour. It’s the most delicious candy, and our eyes are sucking away.

Spring is springing, but you wouldn’t know it from the temperature right now, it’s about 5 degrees, and the tops of the tall trees are hogging all the warmth from the early sun.

It’s been raining in this region for months, a so-called 1 in 1000 year event = 1 in 100 = 1 in 5 year event these days. So much rain has fallen, it’s caused a lot of damage, and parts of the track have been either closed or diverted.

But not a single drop’s fallen on us (yet).

There’s water everywhere, long sections of the track are like a sponge floating in a tray of water. We’ve spent a lot of time wading through it, boots off, boots on, boots off, boots on, repeat.

These feet were made for walking

It was fun, traipsing through the icy cold black water, black from a combination of tannin and the black soil underfoot. At least it wasn’t slushy mud, it’s compacted beach sand, topped with organic black sediment, easy to walk on. And relatively flat.

Northcliffe

Northcliffe, like many towns down here, is a logging town. We pitched our tents at Sid’s Campground, for $7.50 per person (the town still lives in the 50s). Sid wasn’t even there, payment was by the good ole honesty system, you put your cash in a pink metal pig at the exit. Luckily the slot was in its head. Of course it wasn’t a metal cow, or mardoo, or even a quokka or quenda or some other weird creature they have down here. It had to be a pig didn’t it.

We ate at the Northcliffe Workers Club, which Google Maps didn’t want us to find. The club sits inside a workers village, there’s a big wooden sign saying “Timber Cluster” as you enter the village. The -fuck ending must’ve greenwashed off.

The village was set up by the WA government in the 1920s as part of the Group Settlement Scheme, which aimed to populate the region with workers so they could log the shit out of the place, and use the wood for buildings and railway sleepers, which is what they did in those days.

In those days?

So, hate to be a party pooper, but here we are, 100 years later, and it’s still happening all around the country, they’re still logging untouched old growth forests, places that have never ever been touched.

It’s ecocide, and absolute stupidicide, given the enormous value old growth forests have as carbon soaks, as sources of medicine, as havens for thousands of species of plants and animals, many of them endangered and some still undiscovered, and, of course, as incredibly priceless nourishers of the human spirit.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not about forestry workers, who need work and income like everyone else, and are rightfully proud of what they’ve achieved. Obviously transition plans are needed so they can comfortably move into other, sustainable, industries.

The WA government has announced they’ll stop logging native forests next year. Must’ve been an election on (there was). But we’ll see what happens, because the Vic government reneged on its promise to do the same. NSW and Qld have theoretically stopped it, but private landowners still do it. SA’s stopped it, which is great, but unfortunately old growth is nearly all gone from there anyway. Tassie’s going hell-for-leather.

The guts of the problem is that big forestry companies are hefty financial donors to large political parties. Not that they get anything out of it, nah.  Current campaign financing laws favour vested interests, and unfortunately the cashed-up owners of well-entrenched profit-making fiefdoms all seem to wear vests.

Anyway, back to little ole Northcliffe. As it turns out, many of the original settlers of the town were poms, they came out after the Great War of 1914-18 (it was so great). Poms seem to like this sort of weather anyway..

The Workers Club is awesome, it’s 110% old school.

Check out the caption on the pic

Linda cooked Miranda a spinach and ricotta burger, and me a vegetarian pizza. Wow. From scratch. She made the pizza base and the burger bun herself. They were bloody delicious, and worth waiting the hour and a half it took for them to get to our table.

There were a few people in there, a local glazier kindly offered to share his fire with me, which I did, until it felt so weirdly uncomfortable that I had to leave.

He was filthy, unwashed after his work day. He mumbled, and couldn’t look me in the eye. He had a massive story going on behind those diverted eyes, there was so much pain in there it was just oozing out, and he was still living right in it. I don’t know what happened to him, but it was massive, and I really felt for him. It was sorta impossible to talk with him though. And that’s me saying that, who can normally have quite animated conversations with things like stones and twigs and very quiet unresponsive shy people. This was next level.

This rock was stunning:

My fingers are icy, but I’m getting used to it. Today actually feels a little “warm” - not north coast NSW warm, but SW WA warm. There’s loads of little robins playing in the shrubs and trees, tweets are going viral right now.

We’ve been sharing huts with Lance and Jo for the last couple of nights, and will again tonight. They’re a warm, funny and very grounded couple from Albany. They’ve been around. Lance has worked as a miner, shearer and labourer, Jo as a rouseabout and, more recently, for a bank, selling loans to farmers.

This is the third time they’ve walked this 1000km trail. Third?! They love the bush, they adore flowers, and so, living down here, they’ve really hit the f-spot.

There’s 8000 flowering plant species in SW WA, 80% of which are endemic to the area.

They also happen to love orchids, which are also prolific in these parts, with over 300 different species.

Lance has a whole folder of orchid pics, the best of which he showed us at the camp. As we were walking along the sandy path yesterday, there was a straight line gouged across the track in front of us, with the words BIRD ORCHID scratched in the sand, and an arrow pointing off to the left. Lance and Jo, who were hiking well in front of us, wanted us to see a real bird orchid with our own eyes. So sweet. And this is it:

Don’t know how it got it’s name

We waded a lot today, I hiked the last 6km in bare feet, which was sorta fun in the water and sandy bits, but a bit dodgy due to snakes, and slightly torturous in the forested bits, because there were sharp twigs, rocks and, of course, honky nuts (also called scooter nuts) all over the place, which look like this:

I get the scooter bit - if you step on one you fly off into the distance like you’ve fallen off your scooter - but honky? They’re actually karri nuts.

The funniest thing that happened today was that Miranda fell in the swamp water, pack’n’all. The unfunniest thing was that I didn’t see it happen. I was so bummed.

Apparently she was wading through the murky black water, hit a ditch in there, and careered in sideways. She ripped her little suede phone bag out of the water straight away, and her phone was ok. Luckily. But I bet the kookaburras laughed, their whole laughs, and some.

Miranda drying off

She arrived at the camp laughing about it though. What a good sport she is.

Peaceful and warm

In fact, she’s not just a good sport, she’s an amazing sport, especially when the sport is hiking. She loves it, she’s independent, loose, chilled, and did I mention she’s an amazing chef?

Plus she makes great fires

Sometimes we hike together and chat about everything under the clouds. Sometimes we walk alone. And sometimes some of us fall in creeks.

Sizing each other up

Walpole

Time is definitely not constant. Clocks, phones, stopwatches and calendars are always consistently wrong. Just a couple of minutes ago Miranda and I started our long hike from Northcliffe, and now, suddenly, it’s 9 days later. It hasn’t been that long, I swear.

We’ve hit our first town, and its bakery immediately hit us back, right between the cheeks. I ordered a vegetarian pasty and massive salad cheesy toasted Turkish bread thingy within seconds of entering, followed by an apple pie and a decaf almond latte. Miranda, unusually, showed a bit more restraint.

Then we hiked off 3km to our camp carrying enough fresh vegies, fruit, cheese, crackers etc to feed the whole Chinese army for the entire Chinese New Year celebration. The thing is, we were only catering for dinner for two.

We had a fire. We had cheese and crackers. A beer. Phat Thai a-la Miranda, brimming with broccoli, snow peas and other fresh greens, all of which I’d been having soya-based wet dreams about for days.*

*Publisher’s mental health disclaimer for damaging visual imagery still applies.

But the most amazing thing about our evening last night was meeting Vincent, a young cyclist from Canberra, who’s riding his touring bike from Katherine all the way along the coast back to Canberra, to complete a circumnavigation of Australia that he started a while back. It Covidied-in-the-arse for a couple of years, and now he’s completing it.

He’s an amazing guy, we had a lot of cycle travel life things to discuss, as you can imagine. He told me all about his amazing trip. We talked about my upcoming plans to cycle from Indonesia through loads of Southeast Asia, and then eventually towards, and maybe even to, Europe.

And then he said to me, “hey, I really don’t want to embarrass you but I’d like to give you something to help you on your journey,” then proceeded to hand me $100. I was amazed, I sorta thought about not accepting it, but then I did, allowing him the joy of giving (and me the considerably greater joy of receiving).

He said that someone had helped him repair his bike today, for free, and that he’d wanted to pass on the generosity to someone else. Go Vincent, you legend!

And the other amazing thing , which was actually not at all surprising, was that a couple of hours earlier I’d given someone I care about a chunk of money, as a gift.

It always happens.

What goes around definitely comes around and then goes around and then comes around, and if you keep the flow going the world will keep being a very happy (and extremely dizzy) place.

Whoa, Silver

We’re having a rest day today. That basically means that instead of a non-rest day, which involves hiking in the mornings till 2 or 3 in the afternoon and then doing absolutely nothing till the next morning, today we’re doing absolutely nothing all day. It’s so hard, as you can imagine.

When I was an impressionable young uni student I remember reading an essay by the great English philosopher Bertrand Russell, called “In Praise Of Idleness.” In it Russell postulated that society’s obsession with work, and the virtue attached to it, were actually completely misguided, and generally only served the interests and profits of the very wealthy owners of companies and businesses.

Spending a considerable portion of one’s life relaxing was, in his view, vital to living a fulfilled and happy life. Sounds sound.

Russell couldn’t see the point in people spending so much of their lives working, and then earning more money than they actually really needed, because, invariably, people mostly just spent what they earned anyway. If they work harder and longer and receive a higher income as a result, they just end up living a more extravagant lifestyle.

But these days it’s hard to resist the  desire for things and for certain lifestyles, desires which have, in the main, been manufactured by companies who profit from their sale.

Psychologists work full time for marketing agencies, trying to convince us that we’re not pretty enough, dressed well enough, or that we drive the wrong car, live in the wrong suburb, that we need the latest phone, or need to go to Bora Bora, so we can lie on the beach and do nothing.

Whereas in fact we could just lie on our couch or back lawn and do nothing.

Maybe we should all just have a breather for a bit, and be our amazing natural beautiful unique selves, without all that other stuff. And just chill.

What a strange idea.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirits, the sermon is now over.

I should’ve been a priest.

I did try it once, believe it or not. I moved to Sydney when I was 17 and became a novice monk. It didn’t really ding my bell.

Said the actress to the bishop.

East-ing In Eden

Unbelievably, Miranda and I have already ticked off a third of our whole hiking distance, and we’re ticking off again tomorrow, into the magnificent and unique tingle forests, before hitting the coast again, chasing the sunrise to Albany.

May the Lordess carry you in the palm of her hand, to nourish you and guide you, till our cyberjoined juicy neurons meet again.

Awomen❤️

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Btw, a few of you have asked me if you can share my blog link with friends etc that may like it, please do! I had no idea that people actually exist with such warped senses of humour or weird-arsed ways of looking at the world as me. It’s getting dangerous out there.