The main impetus for the development of this trail hike arises from a growing mass awareness of the Australian environment and country, the changes that have occurred to it since European settlement and the threats to both the natural world and our way of life that it now faces. Coupled with this is the desire to embrace 'slow travel'.

 

The proposed trail route is roughly in parallel with the Kings Highway but well separated from it. Much of the trail traces the original rough track that thousands of early settlers used to pioneer the region in search of farmland, gold, a new life, and before that the traditional pathways of the indigenous people.

 

In our highly urbanized society regular contact with the country the bush and our wilderness areas, is becoming a rarity. The Australian landscape is fragile and in the last 200 years its health has been challenged by industrial agriculture, mining and infrastructure. As beneficiaries of the wealth that the natural resources of this land have provided there is an emerging sense in society that we must take greater responsibility for the future survival of the land. To do this we need to understand its complexities, listen to it, see it up close, feel it. 

 

The best way to know your local landscape is to spend time in it. Walking through the landscape provides a more intense and meaningful experience than any other. Hear the call of the birds, smell the wet forest, see the relationship between earth and plant life, feel the effect of night and day on natures rhythms, stand in awe at the foot of a 500 year old tree. 

 

At a more fundamental and personal level this trail hike offers a break from the fast and highly connected world that impacts so strongly on our individual health and well-being. A walking and camping  experience of this duration offers time and space to think, recalibrate, restore good health and hope. Walking alone or with friends and family, carrying one’s means of survival on one’s back, camping under the stars, telling stories, listening to the sound of the bush, getting hot, getting cold, feeling muscles ache, cooking simply…these experiences are liberating and restorative.