Week 19
I don’t think that I was 100% well before I headed off again, but I had definitely had a shift in my mental health from the TMS and R & R over the three weeks I had taken time out at home. My mindset had also shifted, because it was also looping thoughts “if I wait for the right time to be well to do things, I’m never going to go anywhere” but at the same time “if I don’t allow time for my wellness I’m just going to crash and burn and not going to get anywhere either”. For me that was a really important part of recognising on this walk of .. when to pull back…. when to say no…. what are healthy boundaries without being disrespectful. Acknowledging that all you have to do is explain to ppl … why…. you’re blowing off coffee or … why….. you can’t go to somebody’s birthday. More often than not, if you’re very open and honest about why you don’t feel up to doing something ppl get it. I think where my trap lay was that ppl had seen my capacity, they then expected my capacity and that level of function.
But the reality is everyone seems to think that it’s a bit of a miracle that I’m walking the east coast with bipolar anyway and no one was thinking it was insanely realistic that know about the disease, so it was good. It was a really important time and I spent so much time with my dog which I really needed, and I miss her terribly every day.
Without being sad I got all my gear ready and did all the lovely departure things and said my farewells, before I headed North again. This included a special visit to my old primary school.
My beautiful kindergarten teacher, Mrs Sue Gibson is now the Principal. The staff and students at the school had been well primed about my journey before my visit and they made me feel incredibly welcome and asked some really insightful questions.
It was a privilege for me to share my experiences so far with them and I received some of the most gorgeous letters from a Year 1 class.
The keep your mind healthy and “feed your brain” gold coin donation fundraiser was incredibly humbling and raised $800+!!
As I was walking out of my hometown of Caves Beach, I walked with a bunch of family and friends to Merewether (including Mrs Gibson!). It was a truly special day!
A lot of people joined the walking group and peeled off at meeting points along the way, but many ppl walked the full 28kms which is really awesome. It’s obviously not a distance that most people would naturally go for when they go for their walks. It was really amazing that people would go to that effort including my mum who put in the full 28kms which is incredible.
It was also really interesting because of the momentum of when I started again after having three weeks off wasn’t there. That was also an important lesson to learn as well. How do we keep momentum going in our life when we need to rest? How do we keep the embers hot enough that when we come back to our fire that we don’t have to start from scratch and we can just add a few bits of kindling and maybe a log and we’re back with it? That’s something that I am very much trying to figure out still to this day!
I made my way from Merewether into Newcastle and then headed to Stockton where a family friend Leah (who works as an operator at the coal loader at Kooragang Island) took time out of her work day to join me for a couple of hours as I made my way past her workplace. She was dressed in her hi-vis work gear! Very cute!
Walking Stockton Beach is always kind of like being on an alien planet.
There are sand dunes of colossal size and nothing else other than a horizon
The shoreline is a continuous span of torturous sand that slopes away into the gorgeous sea for relentless km after km.
The constant sloping sand into the water makes it really difficult to walk without slipping and sliding.
It is an area prone to gale force winds which I experienced and feels like being hit with tiny shards of glass whipping your legs the whole day while you are walking which was a bit of a nightmare.
I saw the iconic “tin city” but walking on Stockton Beach is a real mind game! It’s 32kms of thick bushland along the horizon with uninterrupted sand and you can’t trust your vision and what is going on along the horizon and headlands because the mirage of being on the beach, up ahead is constantly shifting and evolving. So imagine just having a relentless beach, your own mind, wind, hot sun, and a lot of time. I’ve done it before but I find the mind games on Stockton Beach are particularly harsh.
I pushed onwards to Anna Bay and into Nelson Bay. The water was beautiful and going through Tomaree National Park is always gorgeous but there was quite a large amount of water pooling around trees and the creeks were overflowing from recent flooding in the area.
A ferry service enabled me to get across to Tea Gardens where I continued walking and got a chance to enjoy a soulful coffee at “The Boatshed”.
Crossing the bridge into Hawks Nest led me into spending my time experiencing the Mungo Brush, National Park.
This superb National Park has an abundance of wildlife throughout, but unfortunately, it was raining as I made my way through it over a couple of days so a lot of animals were taking refuge from the weather. However, interestingly, this was the first time that I’d seen evidence of dingos since I’d been walking.
There was a section when I was playing my music and a familiar song when I hear a sound, and I thought to myself “I haven’t noticed that sound in the chorus before” so I played it again. It wasn’t quite a dog howl but a low deep off-putting sound. I heard the sound again, but in a different part of the song, so I turned off my music and listened and I could actually hear the dingoes in the park. They were howling, not too far away. I wasn’t sure what to do if I ever came into contact with a dingo but I have since learned …… it is important to keep eye contact with them; not to run; back away slowly; make yourself as menacing and as large as you can and hope that they avoid you. Funnily enough with dingoes, the female is the alpha and the male hangs around to care for the pups after they are born which is a bit of a natural role reversal in the dingoes as compared to a lot of other species!
With the rain, the bush gets a much more tropical feel to it! Everything seems greener and the smells of the bushland flowers and flora are really heightened because of the water. I also saw more water-loving animals than the usual sun-seekers. Lots of frogs, and water birds.
