Hiking

Josh and I rest on a couple of handily placed bollards, midway through a slightly exhausting hike in the Brisbane Ranges National Park.

This morning I woke up disgustingly early, to meet up withJosh, Cathy and Pete to go hiking. I met up with them around 7:30 and we squeezed into Pete’s car for the drive west to the Brisbane Ranges National Park. On the way we passed what appeared to be some dirt farms, and had to slow down and drive around a koala which was in the middle of the road drinking water.

We got to our appointed spot near some of the camp sites at around 9am, and with Cathy navigating, set off. It was raining at first, and we saw some kangaroos eyeing us suspiciously, as if wondering "what the hell are these crazy humans doing, walking in this rain?" But the rain soon eased, and we packed our coats away in our packs.

As we walked, we made various jocular comments. The jocularity decreased markedly as the walk got more difficult. Theoretically, according to the book, the walk was rated as "easy". This is what’s known as a lie. Oh sure, it started out easy enough, but at one point we were climbing at an alarming angle (I don’t know exactly how alarming; I didn’t bring a protractor) up a mountain. Hearts were pumping, lungs were going overdrive, mouths were swearing, and various bones all over our bodies were starting to grumble about how rude it was to indulge in this kind of activity on a quiet Saturday morning when we could have been relaxing in our respective beds.

Josh’s worldwide battle against litter continued, as he placed into a plastic bag any litter whatsoever that he found on the path. This admirable cause was doomed to failure however, as quickly one bag became two bags, and try as we might, we couldn’t figure out how to get the two dozen or so metre-long strips of metal that had apparently fallen off someone’s car, into a couple of small bags already bulging with crushed beer cans.

Several rest stops, a lunch break and about four and a half hours later, we completed the walk, our muscles and bones sore, but a sense of achievement… uhh… achieved. We drove back to Melbourne, promising ourselves the next walk from the book would need to be rated as "piss easy".