Home again

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Back home and back to "normal" life.

I have one blister that's bothering me - enough to think that starting the Great Ocean Walk on Sunday wouldn't be a good idea - I'll try and postpone it.

Crossing from Waterloo to Oberon

Yesterday, I woke at 5am and got up at 5:30 - still had 8 1/2 hours sleep. I used up everything for breakfast except 4 muesli bars and some enough water for the day, packed up everything and set off at 7:30am. Didn't see anyone for 3 hours. Low cloud and wet mist eventually gave way to sunshine halfway from Waterloo to Oberon Bay. Things slowly warmed up from then - eventually getting well into the 30s.

Oberon Bay in the sunshine

Oberon Bay was the best - wide sands shared with the birds, looming hill at the head of the bay, rocky islands sitting beyond reach. From there it was a slog back to Tidal River. I finished the last of my water with around 30 minutes to go. Just put my head down and went! Once back, had a shower (so good!), checked-in at the Parks office, got a foccacia and cake for lunch, had an ice cream ... and set off home. Hilarious crimson rosella pecked my cake through the gladwrap then harassed me when I ate it. Finally flew off when it saw a girl with an ice-cream.

Cheeky rosella!

Norman Bay

The first night at Waterloo Bay, there were 2 groups of school boys. One teacher came and talked to me - a nice guy. I said I couldn't think of anything better for young blokes of 16-17 to be doing. The second night there were fewer campers. A group of 3 French walkers came in at 10pm, shone torches everywhere, then talked late into the night. There was a group of schoolgirls too. Funny to think I'm older than their fathers!

The thousand-year beach

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1000 year beach

"I have loved you for a thousand years, I'll love you for a thousand more" - song lyrics running through my head, seem so appropriate in this eternal place.

When I finished reading Richard Dawkins' book "The Greatest Show on Earth" a few weeks ago, a curious thing happened. I think everyone who's ever had theistic beliefs has some sense of a "God of the gaps" - at some point, they find it hard to resist pointing to God's involvement somewhere, somehow in the universe. The last faint echoes of that were finally laid to rest by that excellent book - I was left instead with a question: what is there left of "God" or the idea of God and contact between God, the idea and us? After a few moments came an answer: to experience God as a living presence. That's all. "God", or as I'd prefer to say, the divine or the numinous or the "other", a universal and unifying presence. Perhaps another name could be Life, this wondrous thing all living things share and are bound together by, as Dawkins expresses so eloquently and movingly. Understanding how life has come about doesn't reduce my sense of wonder and interconnection or my "spiritual awareness", it brings it all to life.

Eternity. Forever. A thousand years. Will something of me break free from the bonds of this mortal life and soar, as my father did? How lovely to think of me in a thousand years, haunting this sacred, blessed place. I have loved you for a thousand years - this is our song now. For me and Nadia but also for my battered soul's journey through eternity.

And surely animals have souls too? Purer ones than us, I'd dare say.

Nothing to write about the hike back this afternoon - just an uneventful retracing of my steps. Saw a tiger snake slither off the path ahead of me - black back, yellow/white belly.

Up the lighthouse - windy!!

Copy of mine-laying records of German WWII ship

Sheltered by the stone wall

Lightkeeper's house

I managed to have a look around the lighthouse - Julie the ranger was showing a couple she knew around. It was great, especially the WWII history regarding a German mine layer in these waters.

I've survived. That's what I said to myself before on the 1000-year beach, here at Little Waterloo Bay. I've seen so much, been through so much ... and still I'm here. Felt like raising my arms in victory!

Lightstation

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Lightstation

These places are special - I feel such an affinity with them. Wild, remote, on the edge between land, sea and sky. I love the colourful little flowers, huddled around the lichen-covered rocks, the white-washed buildings, the vast, vast horizon. Low trees clinging on in the wind. Stone walls, the moving ocean. Clouds running across the blue sky. Rocky islands, hazy in the distance.

I had a reasonable night's sleep, considering how much my back was aching after the walk yesterday. While I'm walking, everything feels pretty good - it was just doing things around the camp site , then trying to get comfortable once "in bed". I've managed to tune my pack pretty well - I've never been so comfortable on an overnight hike. And my new boots are brilliant - I put a preventative blister plaster on my right big toe and little toe but no issues after the walk today. This is a great hit-out for the other walks I've planned.

Approaching the Lightstation

Rodondo Island from Lightstation

Wildflowers on the path

Wallaby enjoying the beach at Waterloo!

Beech forest

So, I woke at 5:50am and got up shortly afterwards. Hit the trail just before 8am and didn't realise until 15 minutes later that I'd forgotten my trekking pole. Didn't go back for it. It was an undulating walk with great coastal views, including one spectacular and vertiginous lookout atop a giant quartz/granite boulder. The view from there of the lightstation was very striking - it looked like Pilgrim's Celestial City, all white and hovering between earth and heaven. Some of the track passed through Antarctic beech forest - nice to have a change from the ubiquitous eucalyptus! I saw a lady with 3 children on the trail - they were camped at Little Waterloo too. Impressive - the oldest was probably 16 (a boy) but the other boy and girl looked younger, perhaps 12-13.

Yellow-tailed black cockatoos in flight

I nicked some toilet paper from the (flush) toilet here at the lightstation - a precious commodity! The walk back will take a bit over 3 hours - no problem. And tomorrow it'll be 4+ hours out back to Tidal River. Then home to my darling Nadia and our cute fluffy Ruby.

I was thinking this morning, as I walked, that I'm not beset by the same sense of longing I once had, especially in places like this. I remember John O'Donoghue's book "Eternal Echoes" - to "be longing" is an indication of the divine spark in all of us, yearning to be reunited with the Great Flame, the Universal Breath, the One Spirit. This longing is the greatest sense of "belonging" we can have, because it unites us all. I think I'm paraphrasing but that's what I got from it.

The sting has been taken out of my longing because I belong in my little home with Nadia. Do I still feel longing, sitting here in this windswept place of wild beauty? ......... yes ......... but ......... it's different. It is something closer to love, and to quiet happiness.

Little Waterloo Bay

Photos here

Click here for a map of the day's walk

Little Waterloo Bay

Little Waterloo Bay. The last time I was here was with Steve Smith in February 2006. Before that, during those bushwalking days in the early 90s. Other lives, other worlds. I thought just before that this burst of overnight hiking I'm planning is really a distillation of all the hiking I've done in Victoria in the past. And the same for my planned tramps in New Zealand in January. Trying to reconnect with those parts of my past that I really value.

I set off from home this morning at around 7:20am in heavy rain - ironic after 2 months of below-average rainfall. The drive to the Prom was pretty uneventful - I missed the worst of peak hour along Thompsons Road and made it to the South Gippsland Highway easily. Checked in at Park HQ and set off at 11:05am, after parking in the overnight hikers' car park.

Oberon Bay in the rain

The walk ended up being 17.5 km and took me more than 4 1/2 hours, including a lunch break and numerous photo stops. The first 3 hours were a constant drizzle, after that it began clearing up. Wilsons Prom. A special place with a special presence - quiet, brooding, timeless. Waves roaring on white sand shores since the beginning of this Gondwana eternity. I don't really feel like I've got away from anything here - there are other hikers, including a school group, and there were a few others on the trail. I'm also not sure I need or even want to feel like I've left everything behind. My little home with Nadia (and Ruby the cat!) is what I value beyond all else. I miss them both :) It'll be so nice to be home again after this.

Lunchtime at Oberon

In the meantime, I'm here. No phone, no radio, TV, traffic, music, internet. Just this place, me and my notebook!

Why am I doing this? It's a good question - I'll try to answer it over the coming weeks. I think I'm trying to slow myself down, trying to find what I think is important. I'm not actually sure that all this - this wilderness - matters to me like it used to. I'm not sure what does matter - perhaps nothing anymore. After Dad died and again after my anxiety attacks in the mid-90s and again after I broke up with Anne and again after I broke up with Esther - I've felt like it's been the end of everything and have wondered how I would keep going and what the point of doing so was. But life has continued - for an astonishingly long 46+ years so far. I'll quite possibly live for another 35-40. Why? I really don't know - I don't think there's any purpose beyond the living itself. So, the most should be made of that. How? Ultimately, it's people, not things or activities. Relationships. And I've probably been a bit weak on that front for a few years now. But perhaps that's a choice - in part, it's probably why I'm here right now, alone with the wind and the waves.

I used to look for God in places like this. Is something or someone still there, brooding over the waters?

..............

Something, yes - perhaps just a smoky mirror, held up to my innermost self. Whatever it/she/he/they are/is, it's worth stopping for a few moments to become aware of.