An overview of 2018 - My Greatest Year of Adventure that included hiking in five Australian states an in everything from subtropical rainforests, alpine landscapes, mountain peaks, rugged Outback canyons, off-track adventures, massive caves in Vietnam and snorkelling the Ningaloo Reef
2017 was a year of significant milestones for the Long Way's Better. Returning from Christmas 2016 on the Overland Track, the main focus of the year was a road trip to Karijini, the completion of our sectional End to End of the Bibbulmun Track and a Cape to Cape thru-hike. After all that, and with the vast majority of the exciting Perth and South West-based trails already well and truly covered over the first three years of the blog, the big question on my mind was - what now?
The impetus for starting the Long Way's Better had been to document our Bibbulmun Track End to End, and while the blog's scope had definitely grown from that original idea, completing the End to End felt like a symbolic end to an era that began in 1999 when I first decided I would one day complete the Bibb. And with the Cape to Cape also under our belt, any major walks in WA would be rougher and wilder, like the Stirling Ridge Walk or the River Gorge Hike in Kalbarri. With these concerns in mind, 2018 looked like it was going to be a much less eventful year than the previous two, however it turned out to be the greatest year of adventure to date.
The year began strongly with out first international hike - the Wild Tu Lan Cave Explorer in Vietnam. A guided walk with Oxalis Adventure Tours, the three day hike took us through a series of massive caves in the area of Phong Nha-Khe Bang National Park - the cave complex that is home to the biggest cave in the world. While we didn't get to visit the two biggest caves in the area, the trek featured a wonderful mix of jungle trekking, swimming and hiking through some of the most stunning caves Alissa and I have ever seen - and it was a nice change of pace to be enjoying a buffet banquet of cooked meals prepared for us at the end of the day instead of the usual dehydrated or freeze dried fare.
Returning to Australia, Alissa and I didn't return home to stay in Perth. Instead, after dropping our bags back home and repacking, we headed east to the Gold Coast where I would commence my new job as a public transport scheduler for the Commonwealth Games for three months. While the work would prove to be challenging, and being separated from Alissa when she had to go back to work was not great at all, it did mean I was able to keep the hiking season going through the Summer months.
While Perth's dry Summer makes hiking boring at best and dangerous at worst, the wet Summers of South East Queensland makes for superb if humid hiking, with the waterfalls and subtropical rainforests of the Gold Coast Hinterland making it one of Australia's great hiking destinations. Over my three months working the Games, I was lucky enough to experience many of the region's classic day walks, with the Coomera and Warrie Circuits easily being right up there as some of the best day walks I've ever had the pleasure of walking.
During the times Alissa was over, we were also able to explore the northern parts of New South Wales. Our first visit across the border to Byron Bay was the impetus for a new chapter in the Long Way's Better as we snorkelled with turtles at Julian Rocks. This snorkelling trip reignited our love for snorkelling, and informed some of our adventures later in the year. On a separate trip to New South Wales, Alissa and I enjoyed a road trip through Waterfall Way in New England, and discovered even more spectacular walks through the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area like the Wonga Walk in Dorrigo National Park.
After a Summer of stifling humidity and needing to decompress after all the challenging work, Alissa and I reunited as I began a glorious two month stint of unemployment. Having had enough of the tropical weather, Alissa and I headed south for our second visit to Tasmania as we tackled the Walls of Jerusalem Circuit, as well as a series of day walks along a road trip up the state's east coast. The Walls of Jerusalem Circuit was arguably the year's best and most spectacular hike, and while smaller and less diverse than the Overland, its scenery was every bit it's equal.
The highlight of our road trip was a visit to Mt Field National Park, with the Tarn Shelf Circuit joining the Warrie and Coomera Circuits as one of the best circuit walks I've ever done. The smaller waterfall walk of the Lady Barron Falls Circuit was Alissa's favourite of the trip, and day walks in Mt Wellington, Cape Raoul, Freycinet and Apsley Gorge all once again proved why Tasmania is arguably the greatest state for hiking in Australia.
Returning home, Alissa and I tackled a handful of day walks in the South-West and I was able to finally tick off Mt Magog in the Stirling Range and thus have completed every mountain day walk in the park. While it was good to complete some of this unfinished business, the major walk for me over this period was the four day Wilsons Promontory Southern Circuit in Victoria. Completed with my former Commonwealth Games housemate Zach, the circuit was a spectacular coastal walk that deserves it reputation as one of Victoria's best multi-day hikes.
A major highlight of the walk was being able to hike to South Point -the southernmost point of the Australian mainland. Having visited the easternmost point at Cape Byron, it meant I was two down and two to go to complete the set of cardinal point places in the Australia!
Returning to Perth, Alissa and I made use of the WA Long Weekend to complete another bit of unfinished business - the Four Ways Track in Kalbarri National Park. During our last visit to Kalbarri, I had had the idea that the Four Ways and Z Bend walks could be combined into a loop walk by utilising the Kalbarri Gorge, and while swimming and off-track hiking was required through sections, the Four Ways - Z Bend Loop was as amazing a circuit day walk in its own way as the ones we'd completed in Tassie and Queensland.
In June I also started my new job, which would see me working back and forth between Melbourne and Perth. With my weekends always spent in WA with Alissa, I was admittedly dreading the return to hiking in WA, as I'd been spoiled by the waterfalls and rainforests of South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales, and the alpine scenery of Tasmania. As in turned out, Winter 2018 would be one of my favourite hiking seasons in Western Australia as Alissa and I turned to off-track hiking in a major way.
While we had completed one of the Walk GPS routes in 2017, our introduction to the augmented reality functions of the ViewRanger app opened up a world of possibility to us. Suddenly, an off-track walk could become almost as intuitive as an on-track walk, with the augmented reality function giving us the ability put trail waypoints into real space on screen. With this new world opened to us, we were able to enjoy some of the best bushwalking within close proximity to Perth. The kilometre of walking along the river below North Dandalup Dam was one of the finest kilometres of walking I've ever experienced in Perth, and the Boyagin Rock Walk would easily be one of the most consistently excellent walks I've done in WA - it is almost criminal that this is not a fully formed and recognise walk trail.
With Walk GPS providing guidance for walking in the Perth area, it inspired our visits Down South as we created the first two Long Way's Better Original walks. Loops off the Bibbulmun Track, the William Bay and Lower Frankland Circuits proved that with some minor track work some really enjoyable walks can be made by utilising sections of the Bibbulmun. With the Bibbulmun Track Foundation looking for more loops off the main track and Trails WA identifying that longer loop walks and shorter multi-day walks are a deficiency in Western Australia's trail supply, and I hope to advocate for these and more Long Way's Better Originals in the years to come.
During the Winter, Alissa and I also returned to Rottnest to complete two more walks of the Wadjemup Bidi, with a second visit at the start of September being utilised to finish the final of the five hikes that make up the trail network. While there are some issues with the trails on the island, the overall excellent quality of the walk proved to us yet again that Rottnest is a vastly underrated hiking destination in the Perth Region that provides a fantastically different landscape to the granite and laterite-dominated scenery of the Perth Hills.
Over Spring, a two week stint in Victoria allowed Alissa and I the opportunity to return to the Grampians. During our previous visit in December 2016, we had only completed one of the three walks we had intended to do, so it was a great opportunity to once again complete some unfinished business by tackling Mt Rosea and the Wonderland Loop to the Pinnacle.
Returning to Perth, Alissa and I headed for our big road trip of 2018 as we headed north to Ningaloo Reef. With the best wildflower season in a decade, Coalseam Conservation Park's newly opened Plateau Loop Trail was a great start to our trip, with the spectacularly rugged hiking of Cape Range's Badjirrajirra Trail providing some of the most memorable views of the year.
Snorkeling the Ningaloo Reef was easily one of the year's best experiences, with Alissa saying it was better and more accessible than the snorkelling she did when exploring the Whitsundays sections of the Great Barrier Reef in her early 20s.
On our way home, a visit to Shark Bay World Heritage Area allowed me to tick off another bit of unfinished business from my last visit in 1997 - to visit Cape Peron in Francois Peron National Park. It was magnificent seeing the desert sands of the cape contrasting against the cool blues of the ocean, and was worth the challenge of driving there. For Alissa, she was able to complete one of her bucket list items as we got to witness a feeding of the area's famous dolphins.
With the weather warming up in Perth and with Alissa and I missing the snorkelling of Ningaloo, a return visit to Rottnest yielded our first write ups of snorkelling trails. This is an area that the blog will hopefully explore more in the coming years, possibly even as early as Summer 2019. Our other major mission for the Spring was to return Down South a few times to tackle some lesser known areas for hiking, namely Torbay Head and West Cape Howe in West Cape Howe National Park, and the sadly neglected Nuyts Wilderness Track.
Heading back over east, I finished off the work year with my first solo overnight hike with the Razorback Track to Mt Feathertop in Victoria's Alpine National Park. My first visit to the Victorian High Country, I could see why this area is such a popular and well loved hiking destination in Australia, with Mt Feathertop living up to to reputation as the Queen of the Victorian Alps.
As has become customary, Alissa and I will end the year with our Christmas holiday hike, which this year will see us tackle Tasmania's Frenchmans Cap in the wild southwest of the state. We will literally be starting this hike two years to the day we set out to begin the Overland Track, and we look forward to seeing the new Lake Tahune Hut.
A few more day walks in Tassie will round out 2018, which I think can quite rightly be considered the greatest year of adventure Alissa and I have ever had to date. When I think about the fact we visited all but one of Australia's six states (we'll get to you one day South Australia!), hiked through massive caves, experienced lush subtropical rainforests, alpine wonderlands, deep gorges, spectacular coastlines, coral reefs, towering forests, woodlands, wildflowers, autumn leaves and more, the sheer variety of scenery we've experienced is astounding, and the fact everything except for the caves can be found in Australia goes to show just how much this remarkable continent has to offer. So much for the ho-hum year I was expecting in 2017!
Of course, none of this would have been possible without my best friend, hiking partner and love of my life Alissa, who has joined me on most of these adventures in spite of the fact it has sometimes taken her out of her comfort zone and challenged in ways she probably wouldn't personally do without me. I'm very lucky to have someone who enjoys our adventurous life together and who I can share these experiences with.
So what's in store for 2019? With Perth's hiking season being well and truly over, we'll probably look at tackling some of the snorkelling sites and trails near Perth, while also doing a few shorter hikes in the South West. With the weather being ideal for exploring the Victorian High Country, I hope to do a bit more exploration up in the mountains over Summer and Autumn until the Perth hiking seasons picks up again. Once it does, we'll look to write up a few more Walk GPS routes in the Perth Hills and also finally get around to Esperance and hopefully revisiting Fitzgerald River National Park. Tentatively, we have a shortlist of possible options for a July multi-day with the Thorsborne Trail, Jatbula or a winter Overland Track walk being top of the list, and I hope to get in the Freycinet Circuit and a return visit to the Blue Mountains in at some stage in 2019. While plans haven't been completely finalised, if this year proves anything it is that I needn't worry - whatever happens, I'm sure 2019 will be another year of adventure!
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