Bushwalk Australia

I did the following walk a couple of years ago and made a bit of a mess of it so thought I'd have another go next year and you may be interested in joining the 'party'. It was from Pt Augusta (top of the Gulf) to St Mary's Peak via Lake Torrens and Mt Torrens Station which, when I started out, thought was my first water point (115 km) but I found that there is good water at Toms Tank at 60km. I wasn't feeling well on days 1 and the start of day 3 which slowed things up but I got to the main road just south of Edeowie station at midday on day 5. I was behind schedule and after lunch had virtually run out of food. Rain later that day and next morning (apart from the tent, I took no rain gear) meant that I didn't get to Wilpena until the following night at 8pm and despite passing within a couple of kms of the summit goal after exiting Edeowie Gorge, didn't have the energy or will to climb it! The distance is 185 km and I did it in July with the full moon to allow the walking to go into the night.
So in July 2012, I thought that I'd have another go. I'm interested in trying to do it in four or five days. Being able to move at night and having the lightest possible packs are the keys. (I've got the minimal water load worked out now). It's still 9 months away but if anyone is interested, please get in touch. The route is mainly flat of course but it is much more interesting than you might think and apart from about 20 km, half of that within the Pound, is all off track.

This walk is going ahead and here is the timetable, chosen to make use of the twice weekly Wilpena bus service and the full moon.

Day 0. Sat.30 June. 12.30pm Premier Stateliner bus to Pt Augusta (arrives 5.04pm), pub meal and then walk out of town to camp.
Days 1-4. Sun.1–Weds 4 July. Walk to Wilpena via Lake Torrens (33 km along the lake), Salt Creek, Mt Torrens and Edeowie Stations, Edeowie Gorge and St Mary Peak.
Day 5. Thurs. 5 July. REST DAY (this day allows a spare day to finish the walk if required)
Day 6. Fri. 6 July. 10.30 am. Genesis Bus to Adelaide (arrive in city at 4.30pm.)

The walk is 185km, all but 20km is cross country. Walking hours (12-14 hours/day) not speed is the way to go but we need to minimize the effort and walking time by keeping the weight carried below 15 kg (which includes 4 Li water and 950g dry food per day - suggested itemized gear and food lists available) and using trekking poles and trail shoes not boots. The daily routine will be 8 hours walking till dusk followed by dinner and 1-2 hours sleep (the legs will recover a lot in this time!) and then walking for 4-5 hours by moonlight to reach the day’s target location followed by the main sleep. Station water sources will be reached each day. A spare set of clean clothes will be mailed to Wilpena for the return trip home.

If you like the idea of squeezing a lot of walking into a short space of time or spending more time walking than lying in a sleeping bag - and rogainers will know how much fun this can be - this may be the walk for you and if so, I look forward to hearing from you! I will post a route map in the next couple of days.

So basically 185km in 4 days, 46km per day.

That's a bit of a thrash. Good luck with it.

Thanks photohiker for your interest and good wishes.
Yes the walk will be a bit of a thrash but it gives me incentive to get fitter and I'm interested to see how the body will cope but the mind will have to look after itself Adventure runners would do it in 24 hours or so and that keeps it in perspective for me. Packing to go as lightweight as possible will also be an interesting exercise.
Just a bit of background on the walk. I got the idea (though at first I dismissed it as crazy) after I prepared a list of the Flinder's biggest vertical assents.The Mossel party walked Pt Augusta to St Mary via inland tracks on their way to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1972 and it was Jon Muir's walk across Australia that gave me the inspiration to go via Lake Torrens and though it's extra distance, it adds to the interest. People do grueling expeditions in far flung corners of the earth but this walk will be testing enough for me and it's practically in my back yard.
I'll try and post a route map sometime and maybe someone seeing it will be inspired to come.

Wow 46km per day for fun don't ever remember doing this even in my Army "forced march" days however it it obviously doable and if you wish to walk for possibly up to 8 hours per day so be it but as I have asked elsewhere on this forum why?? with the possibility of doing your body a disservice
corvus

Do you need any access permit or permission to walk Lake Torrens? That would be an interesting walk on it's own, as would some of the other sections.

photohiker wrote:Do you need any access permit or permission to walk Lake Torrens? That would be an interesting walk on it's own, as would some of the other sections.

This is an interesting question photohiker and the answer is yes and no depending on which property you are on. Most of the properties on the walk are pastoral lease and you don't need permission to walk on them but you are legally obliged to let the owner know when and where you'll be on the place. (I always ask for permission though so I don't seem so forward). He can only say "No' if for example he has goat shooters on the place. About 4 hours walk east of Lake Torrens though, you enter pastoral leases but they are classified as 'Pastoral - Other' and the same access laws applies to these as for agricultural lands. The area of 'Pastoral - Other' extends north along the plains and western hills of the Range from the top of the gulf to the southern end of Wilpena Pound and then further north west of the main range to Parachilna.
As far as I know, this all came about because the pastoral leases in the region were all rescinded in the 1870s and subdivided into 630 acre blocks for cropping once the Goyder Line was scrapped by the SA Gov't. And with this came the many surveyed towns later to all to turn to dust (the history of all this has been a special interest of mine)and the region returned to pastoral use but the original lease conditions were not restored. The outcome for bushwalkers is that you have no legal access without the owner's approval.
This lead a few year's ago to Arkaba Station banning bushwalkers access and which includes the Elders Range and Mt Aleck. This came about because someone tried to sue the property for damages following injury of some sort. I don't know the details of the case but though Arkaba won the court case (and hurray for that!) it did cause much time and worry and their lawyer advised them to ban access. I then thought that the only decent thing to do if you wanted to go to the Elders is not to seek permission but just go as I think that this puts the owner in a safer legal position. The history of the Elders is though that people have always gone there without ever thinking to contact the owners. Or is that only me? Actually I have found that contacting the lease owners is one of the more enjoyable parts of preparing walks in the Ranges and is the source of helpful information and often an invitation to drop in..

Mike,

Thank you for your detailed and informative reply. I often find myself looking across a fence and wondering if I should hop it These are unplanned walks though, and I generally chicken out although I did lead a trespass party on a Peterborough trip to visit the Black Rock bridge and the scene of the Walloway train crash which are both now on Private Land and fenced. The only resistance met was the risk of barbed wire rash and a marauding brown snake.

Cheers,

corvus wrote:it it obviously doable and if you wish to walk for possibly up to 8 hours per day so be it but as I have asked elsewhere on this forum why?? with the possibility of doing your body a disservice

I have lately been wondering about this possibly 'doing your body a disservice' especially with regards to wear and tear on hip and knee joints. I want in the next year or three to go to Europe and mainly just to walk - along paths in Britain and parts of the high level routes in the Pyrenees and Corsica and so I don't want to stuff my joints or whatever on walks that aren't so special -eg like the proposed Sea to Summit or on more 24 hour rogaines - I'd rather do extended walks in beautiful and new places. With regards to the proposed walk, I'm afraid that 46 km will take me a lot longer than 8 hours and I have a background of being one of the fast walkers in the group. The country is sandy in places, you are often walking to avoid bushes and the salt pans can be soft - you're sinking to a depth of 1 cm or more and elsewhere, the surface can be slippery. The last time, I walked to 1a.m. on 2 days (but an hour of sleep after dinner after sunset) and walked midnight to 5a.m. on another. When you get older, you do slowly get to realise that the body is not as good as it used to be. Not long ago, I read a harrowing account of a Sydney Bushwaklkers group on the POW range and thought that that trip may now be beyond me but it's very hard to tell. I certainly questioned whether the reward would be worth the hell of getting there and back, whereas in my youth, that would have been a major attraction.. It's difficult to predict just when you should start to rein in the enthousiasm and be a bit more realistic about your walks.

corvus wrote:I have asked elsewhere on this forum why??

There probably is no good answer to this question except to say that there is some kind of perverse pleasure and satisfaction to be had out of walking to see if you can meet a goal that you've convinced yourself is worthwhile, even though the body will feel totally wacked at the end of each day.

The other option is to do the same trip at a more body-friendly pace.

I have done trips where I flogged myself to achieve the goal, and others where there was a more realistic goal at a good, but reasonable pace.

The difference is in the recovery. If I over-reach, I suffer for some time afterward (could be days) even though I am unaware during the trip of how taxing it is on my body. This is not to say we can't do a hard trip, just that we have to work within reasonable limits of exertion and make sure we include adequate rest, food and hydration.

We only get one body.

photohiker wrote:The other option is to do the same trip at a more body-friendly pace.

I have done trips where I flogged myself to achieve the goal, and others where there was a more realistic goal at a good, but reasonable pace.

The difference is in the recovery. If I over-reach, I suffer for some time afterward (could be days) even though I am unaware during the trip of how taxing it is on my body. This is not to say we can't do a hard trip, just that we have to work within reasonable limits of exertion and make sure we include adequate rest, food and hydration.

We only get one body.

So much sense in what you say phothiker!

corvus wrote:Wow 46km per day for fun don't ever remember doing this even in my Army "forced march" days however it it obviously doable and if you wish to walk for possibly up to 8 hours per day so be it but as I have asked elsewhere on this forum why?? with the possibility of doing your body a disservice
corvus

It starts to get light. I get up, get dressed, pack up the camp and start walking. When it's about an hour before sunset I start looking for a campsite, unless I'm heading for a specific spot and know roughly how long it will take to get there.
That means I might be walking for eight hours in winter. In summer, I might be walking for as much as fourteen hours. I'd rather keep moving than sit around at a camp watching my fat *&%$#! get fatter.