Stretching for 1000km between Kalamunda in the Perth Hills and Albany on the Southern Ocean, the Bibbulmun Track is one of Australia's longest and most loved walking trails. It's not hard to see the appeal. Almost entirely contained within a string of National Parks and other protected conservation areas, it passes through the botanical wonderland of the South-West forests, before paralleling the Southern Ocean for much of the way between Walpole and Albany. At it's northern end the track runs for 210km  (crossing two highways in the process) without encountering a single town. After that, a small town is passed through roughly every 4-8 days, allowing through-hikers to either stock up on whatever food might be available from the local grocery store, or collect food drop boxes that they have sent on ahead in the post ... read more

Having faced unexpected trials and tribulations during my first three days on the Larapinta Trail, it was with a fair degree of trepidation that I rose to greet the day on Thursday (August 12th), knowing that - according to the map guide at least - I was about to face one of the most difficult days on the trail. Still, it also promised to be one of the most spectacular, with the route climbing up and over the Chewings Range before descending to a campsite near a picturesque waterhole. Despite wasting fifteen minutes trying to buy a lip balm from the kiosk at Standley Chasm (the less said about that the better) I managed to get going by 9am, as planned. The fact that each of the three ladies with whom I had been camped had ... read more

Rising in the vast Arnhem Land Escarpment, the Katherine River (known to the Jawoyn people as Barraya, meaning 'Blossoming Kookaburra') flows through a fault in the sandstone escarpment, forming a vast gorge system framed by spectacular cliffs. In the Wet Season the river rises up to ten metres, flowing unimpeded through the entire gorge system at a speed of up to 40km/h. In the Dry Season however, the river falls significantly and a series of exposed rock bars divide the gorge into different sections separated by small sets of shallow rapids, with the various navigable stretches of river being referred to as the First Gorge, Second Gorge and so on, continuing upstream as far as the Thirteenth Gorge some 16km away. And though freshwater crocodiles are right at home in this sort of ecosystem (there are ... read more

Ask any serious Australian bushwalker which hikes are on their 'bucket list' and there's a pretty good chance the Thorsborne Trail will get a mention. Stretching down the eastern edge of Hinchinbrook Island (known as 'Pouandai' by the local Biyaygiri indigenous people) in Tropical North Queensland, the trail has a legendary reputation among those in the know for it's rugged beauty and splendid isolation. The biggest problem with the trail is that it's almost impossible to get permits, as Queensland's Parks & Wildlife Service only allow up to forty people to stay overnight on the island at any time. The obvious flipside to this is that for those lucky enough to secure permits, they can be assured a true wilderness experience free from the crowds that flock to other destinations on this stretch of coast (ie ... read more

Seventeen hours on a coach is no one's idea of a good time, but if anything could be worth such an extended period of purgatory it would surely be the chance to indulge in a few days of leisurely sailing through a tropical archipelago. And having spent the previous two weeks giving both my upper body (on my Noosa River kayak trip) and then my lower body (on the Cooloola Great Walk) a workout, I figured it was about time I gave my tan a good workout too. So after taking the overnight coach about a thousand kilometres north from Noosa I ended up back in the tiny coastal town of Airlie Beach, where I had spent my first year as a backpacker way back in 2006. And just like I had during those heady days ... read more