Day 30 (from Charters) Fri 6Sept

 

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Up around 6am. Felt tired (& cool), just wanted to roll over and go back to a warm bed.

Since my support crew was determined to be there for breaky in 10 km, decided to miss out anti-blister strapping, because I could reassess with time after 10km. Out on the road by 6:45am. Looking at our van as I go. 

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Stopped and had breaky with Dad after 10km at station creek where we had intermittent signal. Mum got through for a few mins on a call to Dad. I wonder if my lady is teaching this morning?

We’re playing with the UHF to get it to work. Dad has put an Arial up on his car, and I’ve got a handpiece stuck to my pocket.

Story “Alright there’s a f***-wit up ahead..”

I look up and see a car maybe 400-500 metres ahead coming towards me so I

move over to the left side of the road since there's no traffic coming behind me. Then hear “oh… he’s wondering all over the road.”

As they pass, I realise what has just happened and say on channel 01, “Sometimes i am a bit of a f*** witt”

To which I hear them realized 

I have a quick dip (with Dad watching - these crocs are putting the wind up us)  in the beautiful Mary Creek and wash my dacks. Lunch is cooked by Dad, & we have a half hour snooze. Then I’m on the road again. This afternoon I spend going through my own poemish (song) translation from the common ancient Greek (like English is through the world these days), into Ozzie English - of the incredible life of (arguably) the most influential human in history (check the date today).

Just before 3:30pm I am reminded how much further to Lakeland, 

the last turn off to the East coast (Cooktown), from there the road goes left (West) up the peninsula.

We’ll see how far to there we get…

Less than 4 km from Mt.Carbine the man in this camper stopped to offer a lift.. 

He’s heading to Mt Cook. I was sorry to have to say I’m in a walk.. & miss the chance to meet him more. As with so, so many. But the he shoulders of the road were pretty steep, and other vehicles were coming behind, so we said a cheery “Ok” & were on our way. Thank you man. And thanks to the culture and the people who influenced the raising of this man to embody these choices of generosity and thoughtfulness to others.

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Around 4pm a sign advertising XXXX, The Hotel/Motel & Mt. Carbine comes into view:

Gateway to Cape York eh? 

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A text just got through from my wife…

Telling me that Laurie McIntosh the man who mentored (me &) Paul Roe, who were (with their wives, Elvira McIntosh, and Robyn Roe) the founders of the Christian Mission Order ( Cornerstone Community)  of which I am a part and which has spurred me on to be interested in my native land and it's other natives and migrants, and to be open to a new creation coming out of what looks like a dead blackened stump; has been told that he has two weeks to live. I responded to my wife’s text:

Praise God, for a life well lived!

Mistakes no doubt! 

But the one who made no mistakes has either not been given by God those options in this life for learned obedience, or else has cowered back and has not learned the obedience of faithfulness. 

Thanks Laurie for not doing that!

May I so live & die as well!

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The things you get to think about on a walk that's also a pilgrimage!

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And ~4:30pm I come to another welcome sign:

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And I wonder if the big hill behind the city IS Mount Carbine?

Guess I’ll find out!

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At Mt.Carbine the publican Mitch shouted me a cold one, and I drew a picture of his son: 

then they said they said they’d shout us a pizza for dinner too..

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around 6:30pm I walk out towards McLeod Creek 

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Thinking back on the day it's been mostly overcast for most of the day. Many threats of rain but none has come, much wind behind me blowing me along. Beautiful times of coolness. At times I’ve been able to jog with it. t thank creative love that helped me on this journey today.

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Nn

Day 29 (From Charters) Thursday 5/9/’24

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Up before 6am, but raining and filddly things to do. Shoe glue hadn’t worked well. On the road soon after 7am.. I'll try without my backpack today, since I’m toileted & Dad will go ahead only 10km. With a 600ml water in my pocket! Let’s see by trying and looking, and finding out!

Just before 8 

I come across a truck 

standing at a gate, 

The old bloke Clem is one of them

Who's worked with trucks for all his life.

His son's truck’s had the duck -

One tyre’s shredded ‘round the wall 

Waiting for someone else to give Mareeba’s tyre bloke a call.

He shares ‘is lunch 

with a stranger walking

by, towards ‘Molloy’ today. 

And then his mate 

arrives for talking…

Off I go. I’m on my way.

(Sorry that this has missed your head, the truck’s emblem, which I wanted to get, and it’s out of focus- I don’t think I could do a worse job if I tried Clem. And I didn't try. Sorry, just looked at it to put on blog around 5:30pm. Next time, I’ll have to do a pencil drawing)

But just before hand 

that’s when we

shake our mits.

We’ll see. We’ll see.

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Thanks Clem. For a bit of breaky. Lovely -  that ham and mustard!

I see Clem passing me in his truck with good tyres, an hour or so later, and then again after that. He flashes his lights, & I wave G'day!

I make it to Mt. Molloy, 

get a drink and some food at the cafe, where Dad joins me, & I head off again.

A great camping site (Ruffle Creek - donation box and strictly 48hr max.). After that…

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At 5:17pm two cops stop to check I've got water & provisions, and a plan for safety on the road…

Chris, & Merinda; Thanks for your consideration, concern & checking. How “lucky” are we in Oz, to have such a network of friendly people, and even professionals checking on the welfare of our people! All the best you two on the rest of your day too.

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Day 28 (from Charters) Wed 4th Sept ‘24

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I joined in a gathering of people honouring the creator of this Universe (ideal for the purposes of this walk), looked around some of their property, woke Dad, accepted in principle an invitation to a shared meal tonight at Jeff’s place called a “circle”, & Dad dropped me out to the spot he droppede up from last night at 11am. Off I go with a walking stick for each hand. A cooler day today, almost ideal for walking.

Wow, half a dozen black cockatoos - some with red under the wings and it looks like some with yellow, 

start squarking and flying from the trees on either side of the road as I walk near. (Rats! I didn't get my phone camera out quick enough to catch them closer.)

Around 11:45am I come to this welcome sign:

Pronounced “By-boor-a”, a servo, & a school, & a few hundred people with acreage blocks live around here. And, would you believe it, in the middle of “the scrub” here (well, beside the servo),  this is what I found…

Kirsten, shouted me a coffee and we  talked for a while…

She told me about a free camping spot just past Mt.Milloy, “Just watch for the crocks - fair-dinkum!” She says, “I’m not kidding. … You don’t swim in the creeks… there are salties even here.” Well, it has started! 

Beware! They are! - Don’t be where they are. 

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Well, I walk on… thinking of what beckoned or drove on that fellow who split human history in two, acting as truth teller, bridge builder,  & whom  millions of people would gladly claim as leader of humanity… then two blokes carting big bales of hay [Luke (left) & Mark (right); cousins, from Mt. Molloy] pulled up to give me a ride to Mt.Molloy. 

we stopped and chatted for 20 min, and they offered a place to park just past Mt Molloy tomorrow night. See how we go. Thanks heaps men. How thoughtful in stopping, & tuning in. Thanks too, to those who have influenced our culture such that there are blokes like this still around. Not just disembodied “motives”, but enactments that display & exhibit them.

They said there's a truck weighing area coming up on the right where people sometimes camp, but don't get tempted to camp near the lagoon after that because they've lost more than 10 horses to crocs in that Lagoon. Backs up Kirsten’s advice around lunch time.

My daughter, with my newest grandchild en utero, rang to say G’day, then Dad arrived, and we talked about me walking on to the truck weighing area. . I don’t think I will suggest we camp next to the lagoon tonight.

I walked to here..

Then left my walking sticks beside the monument:

Dad picked me up & I tried to fix our shoes, which were starting (today, for mine) to ail. So got to Jeff’s place for dinner late. Lovely time with a VERY DIVERSE GROUP!

Bevan, Annie, Jeff, Mick, Vicki, 

Graham, Lynette, Jeff, Ian (? Is that right,?), and Maia missed the photo. Rats! - & sorry.

How good is this! At the end, we were then showered with Annie’s lovely cake and Jeff & Vicki’s mandarines, and Joboticaba fruit! We filled the van with water & headed back to where I made it walking during the day, so I could take off first thing in the morning. 

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Day 27 ( From Charters) Tue 3-8-24

 

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Hoping to make the 17km to the turn off in Mareeba on this day.

Up at 6, but still took till 6:45 before I got going. Dad sent me off with a blessing & a cup of tea in the little thermos which Emily in Charters Towers gave me.

Doing a walk that has a pilgrimage aspect to it has got me thinking about things that are normally considered fringe kind of stuff. Like blessings - and curses. Who has time, capacity, & even an excuse to think about fringe stuff in normal life? Anyway I feel like another piece of the puzzle came together for me this morning as Dad & I parted. It was pulling together bits of that book on the left and right brain hemispheres and what Dad and I had been talking about. So I went back 20 steps and told him what seemed to impress on me as  important. I guess it made me crystallize my thinking a bit more. That might be the use of doing pilgrimages with friends - you bounce off each other and talk about the things you think you're seeing and here their thoughts too. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Around 7am Chris Vella, whose farm we had camped on the edge of, drove by, doing his rounds, waved, and called out to wish me “All the best” on my journey.

All the best on yours too Chis. Thanks for being such a friendly, open human being.

I see a little more each day, why in the Judeao- Christian Scriptures, Genesis chapter One, it says 7 times.. “ “And God saw that it was…good”. “Good” can apparently include baby-ish, immature, still developing, & lacking. Yee Har! - that’s ‘me’. 

“Creative love, please oversee this ecosystem which I call “Me”, in that way too.

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A little sign tells me something…

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But the small hill it is on its not as high as the next hill after it, and mountains tower around us….  So…?

I can see the back of another sign. When I look at the front it tells me about what I have just passed through:

Interesting stuff, where the water flows…

The road has small shoulders at times, but no trolley and much of the time not a lot of traffic, makes it still very do-able.

The bloke in this truck asked where I was going, and said he could drop me off at “the corner” (probably of this road, and the highway at Northern Mareeba). What a lovely offer.

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I explained my situation, needing to walk it. He wished me all the best for my trip, I did the same for his getting back to work for the day, and off we went. Thanks bloke, for your thoughtful offer. And thanks also to thoughtful spurr-of-the-moment, though considered offers, being expressed through this fellow this day!

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Interesting, & beautiful country up here: farms; coffee, mangos, avocados, sugar-cane, tree-lined farms & avenues, orchard perimeters, palm trees.. banana trees, figs, pointsianas, water-chanels, dams, isolated hills, big mountains.. tall white palm-tree-like structures on the side of ranges..

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Before an appointment to meet a friend of a friend, I made it to this sign:

Then Dad picked me up 200m down the road and off we went to do a tiny bit of shopping and meet Jeff at 2pm. We met up for an hour with Jeff & heard some of his amazing story. 

He gave us a spot to stay for the night, a chance to join a time of prayer tomorrow morning at 7:30am, with a group called “The Royals” (I didn’t ask, but I don’t think they were thinking of royalty with respect to King Charles III, but viewing that Jewish carpenter who split history in two, as the incumbent Monarch of all of humanity, to whom all the government's of the world will have to give account. And I am 100% with that idea, and that claim!) That would be ideal for a pilgrimage like this one! We’ll see how it goes.

At 5pm Dad drops me back at the spot just past the Welcome to Mareeba sign, and I cross the railway line & hit the Mulligan Highway before 6pm, and turn left, Northwards, at the North of Mareeba.

At 6pm I come to this sign indicating conditions of roads from here on:

I expect Dad to pick me up in the next half an hour.

At 6:20pm I reach this sign North of Mareeba:

And  by 6:30pm I look back to see this Northern sign:

So, though the plan is to take up Jeff’s offer tonight, for sleeping, I'll start up again in the morning wherever I leave off tonight.

6:35pm the sun has set. I’ll put my head torch on shortly, this is a cool time to walk, (& reminds me of that story about “going for a walk in the cool of the evening”), but I expect Dad any time now.

Oops he just missed me & went sailing past. I ring him and wait at this sign on the right (where there is also a street turning off at the left): [21 km walked on the way today.]

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Day 26 (from Charters) walking from Dimbulah

 

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Monday, 2 Sept 2024  after resting… I’ll try for an early start at 6 am .. then rest feet two or three times in the day, to try to minimise blisters.

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Yup up at 6, dressed, about to head off, bit I can’t find my hat!! Looked everywhere I could , borrowed Dad’s cap & left a note asking him to look as he packs & if he can’t find it, to buy one if he can. Off at 6:45. Lovely morning about 16°, but due to have a high of 31°C today. Thank you to the maker of days!

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Less than 50km to …

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Some progress..

Danny from Vanuatu, (& an older mate, maybe his old Dad) stopped in this car and offered me a ride to Mareeba. 

I thanked him very much. Explained my situation and we smiled back into our days.

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Walking by the road reminds you of your own mortality in many ways.. Helps put the model worlds (made up in our heads) that we live in, back into perspective with a harder, or maybe less comfortable, though ultimately “realer” world. Seen many, many times on the side off the road in N.Qld:

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There is a village which marks 11km for me  - according to Google

Might call in for a breaky cuppa, & put my feet up - right foot is a bit tender..

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John P. saw me walking on his way to work in Atherton (from Dimbulah), & did a U-ey, to offer me a lift to Mareeba.. 

what a legend! I explained my situation, but thanked him very much. Thanks John! - and thanks to those who helped influence the raising of John P., & humans like him!

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Soon after 11am David, also from Tonga, stopped to see if I’d appreciate a lift to Mareeba. 

What a legend! I explained I need to walk it.. but… Thanks David. And the community who helped raise this man.

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Some things come up that reminds one of home… they often come from left field, and someone else might not even recognise the link, like this Street sign…

I live on Algona Cr. In Orange, NSW. Thanks for the way reminders (& our brains) work!

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Rob Allen also did a U-ey to give me a lift to Mareeba, on his way to an eye Dr.’s appointment in Cairns. 

I explained like I normally do, and he told me he had travelled extensively up around Cape York… Rob warned me this was the wrong time to be heading up to the Cape. We said our Goodbyes, glad to be sharing the world with thoughtful interesting humans, with a blessing of “safe travels”. He did another U-ey, we waved, & we were off again.

I’m starting to get the picture that it might be wise to stop at the end of the bitumen. Have to check out how far that is… from the Mareeba Golf Club house - (which I should be able to leave from on Wednesday am), 264km to Laura, () & 184km to Lakeland () … 

Some good time on the phone with a friend of a friend who rang to bounce ideas off me. A lot of fun connecting. Thanks Bill.

~5pm - Antonio & Seth (Fijian - Taveuni Island  boys) stopped to offer me a lift. 

Have you noticed anything about the folk who have offered a lift to a stranger walking by the side of the road? Any patterns? Any thoughts/ suggestions?

~5:20pm, Vaimelie Afu from Vava’u in Tonga, passed me, did a U-turn & pulled up to pick me up & take me to Mareeba.

I declined his very generous offer, but asked him to please keep infecting our country with that islander community or brotherly- looking-out-for- others that Aussies are losing, from fear, or anxiety, or incapacity. It is too beautiful to lose from this large island.

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At 5:45pm… I have an indication of how far out of Mareeba I am…

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We park the motorhome on the edge of a sugar cane farm, then talk with the owner who it turned out grew up very close to my Dad, but the next generation, around the Childers/Bundaberg area. 

Chris Bella was fine with us parking there but after 30 min of talking I am sure we made him late for his rounds of the irrigation before sunset.  He owns farms on one(, or both) side(s) of the road for 11km. Amazingly the thin sugar cane now has double the sugar content of the old days when my Dad was a boy.

Dad cooked dinner while I put my feet up and showered. Then we washed and  talked, & hit the sack before 11pm…

28km walked on the way today.

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