Day 6-9 – Thursday 6th to Sunday 9th May

So yeah at some point previously I stopped writing regularly.

Anyway – the last three days saw me hiking into some seriously untamed bush and then eventually making my way to the ‘Never Never’ river and then spending a few nights down on the river – totally isolated.



No Phone. No Laptop. No people. Just me, the river, the stars, the sun, my campfire at night, boiling the billy and staring into the embers of the dying fire.



On my second last day I hiked up the river as far as I could go. What I had estimated would be a two-hour hike actually took about 4 hours to get up and then about 3 to get back. Stupidly (and I’m usually pretty good about such things) I didn’t take any food so by the time I got back, after burning huge amounts of energy – clambering between boulders the size of houses against fast moving white water and slowly and painstakingly making my way up a continually more and more rugged ravine – I was almost delirious – and starting to make mistakes. My angel, as usual, seemed to be watching over me though and I got back O.K. Quite scary though in the final stages.

But at the top of the river, when I could go no further and was within about 150m of the falls at the top of the gorge – and knowing I was totally isolated and many kilometres away from any kind of human presence – I swam in an icy pool, dashed my head under pure, clear, pounding water. And felt good.




There's a whole page of pics from this final stage of my trek, and the Never Never River, here...


The last night, after I hiked back out of the valley and back into Bellingen I stayed at the Bello Youth Hostel – which I suspect, in quiet season perhaps, is one of the most beautiful, well run, Idyllic places on God’s earth.



Then finally caught the train back home from a tiny little station just south of Bello and then, into the setting sun,



back to Sydney.







continue to day final photos

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