I was 43, unfit and burnt out at the end of 2025, when my phone pinged from an old friend:
I know this is unlikely but I’m thinking of doing this four-day hike and there are two places available. You stay in huts so there is less gear to carry. Would you like to come?
Taking a long walk as a form of catharsis is a narrative trope – I know this having read The Salt Path, The Dictionary of Lost Words and You Are Here, books in which white women “find themselves” on long walks. I said yes and prepared to become a literal walking cliche.
I’d never been on a multi-day hike. Adult rookies are charming when the stakes are low. Learning the piano at 50 is cute but nobody ever needed to be airlifted by helicopter out of a piano recital. Being a rookie hiker would require preparation if I was going to survive with my dignity intact.
I didn’t know much about multi-day hiking except it required lightweight snacks. An army marches on its stomach but so do middle-class women of a certain age, so I whipped out my dehydrator and dried a bolognese. I wondered about drying wine.
Carrying heavy stuff seemed an unavoidable feature – or perhaps even the appeal – of hiking, so I borrowed a backpack and started practising. To simulate four days’ worth of clothing and kit, I threw a sack of flour and a butternut pumpkin into the backpack and lured my daughter on a “hike” to an ice-cream shop 5km from our house in Melbourne.
I felt ridiculous walking through the city streets with a lurid orange 8kg backpack, and as it started to drizzle – in a useful semblance of the Tasmanian wilderness – I learned a key lesson, which is I should have packed a raincoat. We made it to the ice-cream shop and caught an Uber home, giddy with adventure. I felt like Gina Chick from Alone Australia.
Feet are a big deal in hiking, so that became my next obsession as I only had two, and no backups. A blister on the hike would be my undoing. I required new shoes, and they needed to strike a delicate balance of being tough enough to appear rugged and impress the Tasmanians, yet cheap enough that my partner didn’t phone our bank about suspicious transactions.
Tasmanian law requires all hikers to wear merino, so my internet search history read: MERINO … PLUS SIZE MERINO … CHEAP PLUS SIZE MERINO … CAN YOU GET PAID TO DONATE KIDNEY AUSTRALIA
My new merino top and leggings – in matching black – made me look like a puppeteer or the bank robber in a cartoon.
With hours of practice walking to do, my appetite for podcasts became insatiable. Thanks to the ABC Listen app’s esoteric offerings, I soaked up more information than usual. Did you know cruise ships are manufactured in separate slices then stuck together at the end? That early toothbrushes were just chewed-up twigs? I learned all this while trudging underneath Geelong Road and walking laps of my local oval.
By autumn this year, I was ready for the Three Capes Track. As we set out on our hike my favourite pastime was ogling everyone else. Were their backpacks as large as mine? Did their ankles look more robust? What were they having for dinner? Was that duo siblings or lovers? It is hard to concentrate on majestic coastal scenery when you’re a snoop.
Snacks reveal a lot about the hiker. My friend Kate had diligently allocated herself 14g of dehydrated hummus and six wholegrain crackers per lunch. Meanwhile a group of men in their 60s were lugging goon bags of wine and gaily feasting on fresh dips, cheeses and grapes every night.
Whenever I walked uphill, I would curse myself for overpacking. I had brought too many undies, imagining I would treat myself to a fresh pair whenever the mood struck. I left my backpack unattended at one point, and to my horror discovered a hungry raven had unpacked it and, in its quest for snacks, had draped my underpants all over the hut’s deck.
Tragically, I decided against packing alcohol, on the assumption I’d get high on fresh air and good company. But nothing triggers thirst like climbing a mountain, and every evening I looked enviously at the other hikers sipping their wine and wondered if I could charm them into filling my camping mug. I considered suggesting a swap – in return for a cup of wine, I would give them a clean pair of underpants.
I came home with a sense of achievement, smelly socks and a thousand photos of moss, which thrilled my family. I have found myself. Look, here I am! I am back in the city trudging underneath a motorway, getting ready for the next hike.
