Walking the Cape to Cape

135KM ALONG THE LEEUWIN- NATURALISTE RIDGE IN THE SOUTH WEST OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

It was the year of dead pets. The year my little brother began driving, the year I stopped getting asked for ID at the bottle-o. The year I realised the adults in my life I’d always looked up to, had made no more sense of the world than I had. The year I noticed I was no longer impatient for the future and instead was longing to slow time down.

So I swapped the Pacific for the Indian. I crossed the country from one edge to another. I decided to walk the coast with the boy who’d always helped carry The Big Feelings. A boy who I also knew I could count on to carry the heaviest of our 8 day supply of food.

We spent would-have-been-day-one in Dunsborough bakery, hiding from a cyclone ripping up the beach outside. ‘Probably best if we wait a day, see if the weather calms down’ we decided after every local shopkeeper balked at us in horror as we trudged around town in our hiking boots.

The next morning we zipped our raincoats up to our chins, tucked the rain-guards over our 15kg backpacks and began to walk with our backs to

Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse.We walked into wind and stinging rain, we squatted against rocks to find enough shelter to light the JetBoil. We warmed our cold fingers around mugs of Cup-A-Soup and kept walking until we could no longer see the lighthouse behind us and Yallingup welcomed us. We bought out all the muffins the bakery had left and despite being stale from sitting out on the counter and soggy from being zapped in the microwave, nothing had ever tasted so delicious.

The next day we did it again, in better weather. We walked until all we could think of was moving our feet. We walked until The Big Feelings dissolved and we felt human again, buoyant again. We walked with pauses to watch wallabies who were clearly so unused to seeing humans they watched us back. We ate baked beans for lunch and snacked on Snickers bars with a new appreciation. We held hands, balanced on cliff edges above a roaring ocean and strolled barefoot along the shore of gentle bays.

On the second night, we stumbled into the clearing of brush relieved to find our campsite as it had just gotten dark.

Crowded around a fire we eyeballed our fellow hikers, the first people we had seen on the trail so far. Two Irish blokes who worked out on an oil rig, a professional boxer from Perth who was lugging around a backpack pantry filled with loaves of bread, beers and tins of steak and onion, and a shy Polish mother and her massage therapist sister.

For the moment we were all cautious of each other, all trying to preserve how isolated we felt. Trying to preserve the way the trail with its sweeping natural landscapes and ocean as far as the eye could see made civilization disappear. Over the next couple of days however we grew familiar, as we followed one another’s footsteps where the map left us confused and remembered to draw arrows in the sand for each other where the track seemed to disappear. We were all experiencing the power of The Walk and this brought about an innate sense of comradery between us as we ate around the fire each night, discussing hikes, backpack weight and hints of life outside this National Park.

On the second night, we stumbled into the clearing of brush relieved to find our campsite as it had just gotten dark. Crowded around a fire we eyeballed our fellow hikers, the first people we had seen on the trail so far. Two Irish blokes who worked out on an oil rig, a professional boxer from Perth who was lugging around a backpack pantry filled with loaves of bread, beers and tins of steak and onion, and a shy Polish mother and her massage therapist sister.

For the moment we were all cautious of each other, all trying to preserve how isolated we felt. Trying to preserve the way the trail with its sweeping natural landscapes and ocean as far as the eye could see made civilization disappear. Over the next couple of days however we grew familiar, as we followed one another’s footsteps where the map left us confused and remembered to draw arrows in the sand for each other where the track seemed to disappear.

On day 4 at Ellensbrook we gave them our rubbish and accepted their bags of leftover trail mix saying good-bye as each of them prepared to finish their walk at Margaret River. We weren’t even halfway finished. Other than a confused Italian couple walking the wrong way and a group of retired ladies on a tour we didn’t come across anyone else for the remainder of our hike.

We walked slower after that, with nobody to beat for the best tentsite and no campfire already built to welcome us home for the night. We dawdled through our approximate 20 kilometers each day. We stretched out our lunch breaks, and swam nude in the ocean. We napped on the beaches at noon waiting for the sun to get a little lower and snacked on the overpriced Snickers we had restocked our supplies with at Gracetown.

Running out of conversation we began dramatic reenactments to entertain ourselves on the gruelling stretches of soft sand. When the wind was pushing us back, sand spitting against our skin, our feet sinking with each step and our calves burning, it took hours to cover 10 kilometres whilst the four wheel drives covered the space beside us, up and down in minutes. We distracted ourselves reciting the 1987 film Moonstruck, playing the parts of Cher and Nicholas Cage, pausing and rewinding in our heads until we perfected each scene. We exchanged enthusiastic performances of Dr Who and Seinfeld episodes, each of us shocked at the amount of detail we could recall. We sang entire albums making up any lyrics we forgot and danced to Florence and the Machine, wasting precious phone battery to sync up our Spotify.

Each day didn’t feel done until we had performed our familiar dance of stretching tent tarps over poles and rolling out our sleeping bags whilst the water boiled for tea. Then as we lay under the protection of our little green tent I could feel the rhythm of The Walk. My feet felt my hiking boots and phantom footsteps even when I was lying still. We were consumed by it.

And each morning, as we woke up stiff and sore we knew it was the walking that would undo us, that would relieve the tensions and bring back the way our thoughts traveled far, unobstructed by the anxieties and responsibilities we’d left behind.