Day 5 – Thursday 5th May - Finally some wilderness! Or is it?

Up reasonably early this time (7:30 or so) which is a pleasant change – been doing a lot of 10 hour nights. Once the sun goes down at 6:00pm your tired. So what do you do? Boil the billy, make some dinner and by then your even more tired – at 7:30. Staying awake past 8:30 is heroic! So far have not managed the accompanying resolution of being awake at 6:00am and on the road by 7:00am – hah! But anyway – today is better so…

First make a fire and boil the billy, coffee - getting quick at this now. Breakfast again – Muesli, slice of Pitta Bread and some tuna, then hot shower again – mmmmm….shave and…

Pack up tent and hit the road.



Still grey indeterminate weather – Blue patch, grey patch, blue patch, grey patch. Head out and immediately encounter steeeeep hills. Bloody hell.

So now – the mission is to Bellingen. I know this lovely little town is set in some gorgeous bushland and so I call the national parks and wildlife service from the phonebooth in the Camping grounds to enquire about the area I have in mind to explore. I get good advice. Helpful and knowledgeable staff and soon I have a new destination in mind. I will head to Bellingen and then north into an area called ‘The Promised Land’ and hopefully find a river called ‘The Never Never’. My god – what a country.

I soon pickup a lift (using my trusty sign saying ‘Pacific Highway’) out to the highway – and again encounter some-one willing to go a little out of their way to drop me exactly where I need to go.



Then make a new sign ‘Bellingen’. And within minutes again – have a lift.

George now – who regales me with endless tales of his deadbeat son and terrible family life, before deciding to drop me in Bellingen directly. Even goes so far as to drive me initially out the other side of town to show me the turn off I need to take to The Promised Land before dropping me back in town. I have gone off the edge of the maps I bought in Sydney now - need to buy some more – and luckily manage to find good topological ones - of the area if I am to do some serious ‘bush-bashing’. I also pick up one or two things such as a spade and hip flask of rum for the next, and more serious, wilderness encounter.

Ah, Bellingen, lovely little town.



Wander round doing shopping, it’s still early - only 10:30am, then off over the bridge and start trudging North.

Soon pick up a lift from a nice young English guy (!) who seems to only have a vague idea of where he is going as well – but he seems to have time to kill, so, through a pretty haphazard process of map reading, guesswork and naïve optimism we head up into the hills. Soon we are surrounded by real bush. A tiny little logging road twisting it's way up through state forest. Excellent. State forest is, of course, 'anything goes' territory. Whereas national parks are carefully managed and have strict laws regarding their usage – all very controlled and neat, State forest are just big bits of bush no-one has quiet figured out what to do with yet. And state forests are great – bring your dog, light fires, shoot, ride your motorbike - whatever. In state forest – it’s all good. On the other hand – do not excpect a ranger and neatly maintained, signposted cutsey pie little trails everywhere. It’s just bush.

So, after figuring out with my compass and map that we are now on the northern edge of a goodly chunk of state forest with what looks like lots of little rivers, I finally jump out and Ben putters off into the distance leaving me with a dazzling sense of both peace and excitement. Here’s where the real bush bashing begins.

I’m happy here.



Head off down a little trail into the bush – wow! Nice, and then – oh you’re kidding!

Crap.

Within 300m of the road I suddenly emerge into a huge swathe of clearfelled country. The regrowth is all about 1.5 meters high and totally consistant. Clearfelling. The process of taking a piece of beautiful fertile, alive Australian bush, levelling it, throwing it all in the chipper and selling it as woodchips to the Japanese either for chopsticks, or to sell back to us as toilet paper and the like.

Jeezus!

And the scar runs long and wide down the valley. Not quite intersecting any roads – so from the car it looks like pristine bush – but with it’s heart torn out.

Interesting little discovery and lesson.

Bastards.

Anyway – shouldering my pack I Head through this weird landscape, trudging along logging roads with red, red earth until after about 3k can turn off into some more bush.



Cross a cute little stream and trudge on – slowly making my way through some nice bush now – no big trees – all taken out at some earlier date – but still the slim beautiful trunks of the remaining gums and the undergrowth survive and are lovely.

At this point the reality of bushbashing creeps in. In forest such as this I have two choices – either stick to the little logging trails meandering through the bush, or strike out cross-country. And cross country means, waist high grasses, impenetrable undrgrowth and rarely being able to see where your feet are right now let alone what’s a meter in front of you. Not so great.

Eventually I start winding my way back up the hill, slowly making my way back towards the road I was dropped off on. I figure if this area isn’t that great I should revert to my previous plan of heading up through this area to The Promised Land. See if I can get to The Never Never. But now it’s starting to get late. Soon I find a little spot – not too far away from the trail – but clear enough to be able to stamp down the grasses and raise my tent – in a little spot between the towering gums.

Nice.

Encounter a small Blacksnake (extremely poisoness but timid) – we both scare the crap out of each other. The value of singing German hiking songs loudly to myself whenever I’m in long grasses is re-inforced and he quickly disappears into the undergrowth.



So night falls. And now I’m really alone. The billy, the fire, the stars. Deep thoughts. No thoughts. Tend the fire. Stare at the stars.



This night I realised on my entire trip so far I had not yet thanked the traditional owners of the land. An oversight.

So now – alone and out loud, into the darkness, I thanked:



The traditional owners of the land.

The land.

The spirits of the land.



And then they came.

And I talked with them for a while.

And it was good for my soul.









continue to day six

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