I can hardly walk. I am not as fit as I thought and this small overnight hike has sadly testified to the fact. The plan was to have a gentle stroll over Morton Island, breaking in my beautiful new equipment and getting a sense of what it feels like to walk while carrying a backpack. With my numerous hikes in Israel (the longest been six hours) and my weekend strolls in England (two hours at best) I scoffed at the proposed 18km walk in the guide book and undertook what I thought to be a twenty kilometer improved hike going East on Middle Role from the docking bay at The Wrest on the western shore to the Lagoon camping ground on the Eastern shore. The track would cross the Island before turning up towards Tempest Mount. From there eight kilometres along the Telegraph track connecting to the Lagoon which is a skips throw away from the Eastern coast and the Blue Lagoon camp-site. My plan was flawed in the sense that the twenty kilometers were according to my satalite tracking gadget twenty seven and the terrain for more than half of it was foot deep soft sand making a gentle 4% incline similar to climbing a bloody mountain.
I should also mention at this point that while I consider myself a pretty competent walker I am still somewhat full figured (over weight) and of average fitness. So while Bear Grylls might have jogged the same walk it in a few hours while munching on a few worms from the side bank and skipping over a passing snake it took me just over ten hours and when I'd finished setting up camp I was using my hiking poles less as balancing tools and more as walking stick.
Morton Island is a small sand island just off the coast North-East of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. Its famed for it unpolluted shores, sand dunes, bird life and whale watching. It is only accessible by 4 wheel drives and only 5% is privately owned, the rest is part of the Moreton Island National Park. Basic campsites, with water tanks and the very occasional cold water showers and toilet facility, are spread out along the shore lines providing secluded camping with sea views. These campsites are almost solely frequented by campers who arrived using vehicles and set up camp before walking. This was drawn to my attention on the ferry ride over when I was one of a very few who marched off the ship and down the beach. This is partly by chance, no doubt, but also a clue to the type of walk you are to expect: I don't think I quite realised before just how sandy a sand island. There is beauty but the vegetation is thin and hiking along the 4WD roads there is almost nothing to see but your own shoes sinking into the sand.
I got off the MISCAT ferry at 10:30 and set straight off North to the Middle Road. At the dock there is a impressing view across the wrecks of the WWII Japanese ships and submarines. The tide was high giving me at times only a meter or so of walking space between the water and the steep rising dunes to my right. Alongside me were a few people carrying boxes of beer, walking the short distance before the Middle Road where they'd get back in their Jeeps. I assumed it was encase the vehicle proved too heavy so close to the shore with passengers Very quickly however I was alone, and taking out my shiny new trekking poles set about seeing how to use them. I'd read in a book that the poles should fall with the opposite legs. This I tried but my legs were far too quick and I failed to achieve any rhythm. As I turned right into the Middle Road however they soon proved their worth. As mentioned this section of the walk is not meant for hiking, the 4 wheel drives had worked up the road leaving the sand very very soft. It was a solid work out and provided very little opportunity for enjoying the scenery. After only a few hundred meters I was sweating and out of breath. I carried on with the assumption that it would harden the deeper in I got. Oh ignorant child that I am...I don't think I'd have managed it at all without the poles. They might look silly, and I myself thought they were made for ninnies, but once they were out they did not go back in the my pack. Not only did they stabilise me on the sand, I could feel the pounds it took of my back and the relief it provided for my legs by spreading the work across my entire body.
It was 6km across to Mount Tempest. Such distances are easily run and wouldn't even have been considered a walk by me but near the end I wasn't sure I could face the next 14 (or as it turned out 21) kilometers. A 4WD would pass once in a while destroying the sought for feeling of wilderness. I ended up feeling like was a ridiculously glad chubby English girl with a pair of silly walking sticks on the side of a road. I sometimes would try to hide the poles behind my back. A few charitable individuals would stop and check on me, asking if I had enough water. A warden also paused and asked if I had everything I needed. I refused the water politely and thanked them as they left.
It was at the the bottom of Mount Tempest that I ran out of water. I'd felt worried about it for a little while and had decided to forgo the planned lunch and snack instead in order not to waste any water in cooking. This cautiousness proved insufficient. I had a two and a half litre bladder which had always been enough when I'd gone on day hikes in Israel. I hadn't realised how much I'd been drinking. This made the last three to four hours very uncomfortable and quite scary since now I was completely alone and quite a long way from any roads. The day hiker didn't appear again after the summit. To confound my discomfort the characters in the audio-book I was listening to seemed to be doing nothing but drinking the thirstier I was becoming.
The telegraph track was long but the terrain was firmer and inclines while three times as steep than any along the Middle Road were easy. I increased my speed a little and finally had enough breath to enjoy the landscape I was walking through. One area in particular about half way along the Telegraph Track was stunning. A marsh of only a hundred meters in length lay between two sand dunes with such an intensity in colour that I couldn't help but pause to observe it. The coppers, burnt umbers and viridian greens were all so rich yet tonally similar. I could hear my old art lecturer from university talking me through how I might paint it. It was places like this that I thought caused people to be passionate about hiking. To reach this spot they would have had to earn it through the walk, and judging from the emptiness of the track it was a prize enjoyed no more than once a day or week.
I wished I'd been relaxed enough to enjoy it. Similarly the lagoon I passed, the quick pit stop I made to the look out, deserved a great deal more appreciation. They were stunning but by that point it was nearly five and I was thirsty and a little scared. In England the nearest I got to wilderness was when I couldn't see a car for a few minutes.
The Lagoon Road finally appeared, the light house on the Islands Northern peak in the distance. When I saw the road I gave myself another break, observing as a munched on my nut mix with growing resentment the jeep tracks across the soft sand which constituted the Lagoon Road. I reached the coast two hours later and looked around for the camp site. The sign informed me that it was another two kilometers along the beach. I passed the beer carriers I'd disembarked with as I entered camp, and asked them if they knew where the water tank was. I'd been walking through camping pods for half an hour by that point without seeing any pumps and I couldn't set up camp until I had. They pointed further along the beach and said it was only another 500 or so meters, kindly offering their help if I couldn't find it.
I did find it and turning it on drunk half a litre before feeling any shame that I'd neither treated of boiled it first. By this point it was dark and I was in more physical pain than I've ever been in. I could hardly walk any further and was placing a great deal of weight on my poles. Eager to set up camp and sleep I took out my mobile and turning on its torch proceeded to hold it in my mouth as I unrolled the tent. Two black packs fell out as I did so. I had bought a head torch designed for camping but had not found it in my room when packing and was therefore stuck with my mobile. I could hardly see a think. I finally put the correct poles in the correct places, on my second attempt, and searched for the tent pegs. I looked everywhere and couldn't find them. Swearing at myself for not having checked my equipment, at the shitty company for selling me faulty products, trying to convince myself this was all part of the adventure I'd always dreamed of I attempted to stop myself from crying. I tried using my hiking poles to lift the tent, tried tying the tent cords to the nearby tree, use stones to weigh down the sides but all to no avail. I reasoned I would have to simply sleep inside the collapsed tent and attempting to straighten it out on a softer patch of sand pulled it off the tent pegs which it had been covering.The tent was raised and for half an hour I simple lay on the inside floor refusing to move. Finally forcing myself to set up properly I pulled out my inflatable mattress and sleeping bag discovering in the process my head torch hidden in the very bottom of the rucksack where I must have cleverly placed it after I bought it.
Now that I could see again I checked the tent over and better secured the tent pegs. I'm wasn't hungry although I'd eaten no meal all day. I was still too wound up although at that point I was once again able to laugh at my own wow-full inadequacies. Cooking anyway I boiled the water, struggling with the newly acquired stove and added the instant pasta meal. I kept turning the stove off as I attempted to adjust the temperature. It cooked the food all the same and I felt myself become a little more human as I ate it. After I made myself some hot chocolate and left it to sit while I went to the showers to wash. The water was very cold at first and it burnt the raw skin on the inside of my chafed legs so badly it took several attempts to immerse myself. My feet were in a worse state, both had blisters the size of fifty cents coins and my right ankle was refusing to support my weight without my shoes on. It made sense, I hadn't fallen but the sand wouldn't hallow my feet to tread flat and they'd been twisting continually over the last ten hours. Now that my body had cooled they'd already stiffened.
Once back in camp, changed and lying in my tent with my kindle on in front of me I tried some of the hot chocolate. This water based, Coles own brand powder rubbish at that point tasted better than any hot chocolate I'd ever tried. I burst into giggles as I drank it, the tension and fear completely gone. Perhaps it was the fact that, even though I'd failed in so many ways, I was just about competent enough to finish the day, not needing someone else to save me or sleeping in a collapsed tent, but with a luxury and a read before bed time. Before this hike I presumed the biggest challenge waiting for me would be the fear of wild animals and the dark. I'd never slept outside on my own before and there was no one within half a kilometre of me. It proved not to be an issue and by ten o'clock I was soundly asleep.
I took the coastal route back south to the Middle Road the next day in the hope that the sand would be harder where wet and the terrain flatter and more direct. It was much easier and while I was hobbling the entire way my feet were coping and fresh leggings had lent relief to my legs. I felt at times like the gun slinger in Richard King's 'Dark Tower' series: the beach continued forever with seemingly no end, but since I knew the Middle Road awaited me it was with mixed feelings that I completed the ten kilometres to it's entrance. It took me another three hours or so to cross the island and my legs were sourly displeased with me by the end of it. Once back on the boat I took a seat near the window, in the hope of spying a passing wale, and promptly fell asleep.
As first experiences go it wasn't promising There were very few moments of actual enjoyment. I struggled and was frightened for large portions of it. It compounded into me how untrained and unfit I was to do the type of hikes I'd read about in the magazines and books. Yet the moment near the swamp and the thrill of life I felt when drinking the hot chocolate in the tent were of an intensity I'd only felt once or twice before while travelling. I felt ridiculously happy to be as naive and stupid as I am, to be pompous enough to think I could go into the Australian bush alone and complete a hike, however small, across an Island I'd never been to with next to no navigational skills or knowledge on my equipment.
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