Week 9

I was flooded with rain over the following days walking to Batemans Bay. I walked through the suburbs and played my favourite game that I like to play to entertain myself with when I get bored. People stare at me a lot, as I walk through towns and suburbs. Maybe because I’m disheveled and covered in dirt, or maybe because of the large pack on my back. Maybe it’s because I‘m in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road, or maybe due to me being out in the rain and elements, or maybe it is option (E). All of the Above!

I was literally having a soggy biscuit moment this particular day when I fell into a puddle while walking in miserable, cold rain.

It wasn’t a good day!!

I continued walking into Batemans Bay looking like something out of “Bunyip’s Creek”.

The game that I enjoy is trying to guess what other people think I’m doing, and what scenario they concoct when they are staring at me and trying to figure me out. I envision all kinds of weird and wonderful things they makeup in their heads and often wonder if any of them guess correctly. It goes without saying on this particular day heading into Batemans Bay after falling in a creek I got lots of stares and the game helped me to deal with how cold, wet and crappy I felt.

Just north of Batemans Bay, I was joined by two young friends, Maggie and Ben, at Maloneys Beach which is a quiet coastal town where a large mob of kangaroos was basking lazily in the winter sun along the grassy shoreline. My little enthusiastic explorers joined me along some of the bush trails near Maloney’s Beach.

After parting ways with these guys, the next landmark from Maloneys Beach that I was aiming for, was Ulladulla. I made my way a bit inland through the Murramarang National Park and I’m so glad that I did because I found a lyrebird feather while I was walking on one of the bush tracks. I nearly missed it. It was sticking out of a puddle, but something about it caught my eye.

It’s really beautiful and lyrebirds are one of my favourite birds. Fun fact, some people think they are called lyrebirds because they mimic the sounds around them. But they are actually spelled l.y.r.e and that’s for the lyre harp because when they were first discovered, the explorers recognised that the feathers look very similar to the strings of the lyre harp. Btw…. that fact is courtesy of ‘Scott Seamer’ Caves Beach bird expert, and dad fact # 2497!

I kept walking through there, past Pebbly Beach, and made it to a place called Kioloa. It’s a beautiful place. It really really is truly stunning. I climbed Mount Durras while I was there, which is a little bit of a burn, I’m not going to lie, and from there I got to Lake Tabourie where I was joined by the beautiful Bernadette’s daughter Eva who walked with me from Lake Tabourie to her place at Dolphin Point. She was gorgeous enough to let me stay with her and her partner Adam and similar to her mum Bernadette, Eva has got a very green thumb and is extremely environmentally conscious. When we got to her place, after walking the best portion of the day, I mentioned to her that I had to go to the shops. She was like “how are you going to get there?”, “Are you going to walk?” and I said to her “Of course”, “How else am I going to get there?” She offered me her car. I remember how much of a surreal feeling that was. Enjoying the radiating heat that cars get when they’ve been warming in the winter sun when I got into it. I also distinctly remember feeling this is so weird! It was a strange sensation just gripping the steering wheel, sensing the texture of the leather on my hands. I drove ‘like Miss Daisy’ …… terrible….. about 10km under the speed limit. It was awesome though!! It’s a different type of freedom you get from driving. Passing by houses at such a speed, you can go anywhere you want, without the time constraints that I’d become used to. It was a really cool feeling! I had lots of fun with Eva and we had a good laugh and she made the best halloumi and lemon fettucini ever!! OMG….it was to die for!! So yummy and it was really lovely to stay with them.

I ended up walking north into Ulladulla which again is a beautiful coastal town where I met up with the mental health group called ‘Flourish’. They were beautiful enough to invite me to their lunch session and I was just overwhelmed by their kindness. There was a big “Go Bailey” sign set up for #Wandering Minds and it was just so special. Nobody needed to do that for me, nor did I ask them to do that for me, but for people to recognise what I’m doing and want to support it to that extent, is truly beautiful.

I continued walking and later that afternoon I got to Narrawallee Inlet. On my maps, it indicated it was a small water crossing and I thought ‘sweet’, ‘it’ll be shallow’, ‘not a problem, I’ll just walk across it’. But….. when I got there it was a giant and I thought ‘Damn it!’ ‘This is so much bigger than I thought!’ I was waiting for an ABC radio interview and tried to time it so that I was there just on low tied to cross the inlet. However, it spanned 30-40 metres, and you can’t really see what’s there. I tried to go out with a stick ahead of me trying to figure out the depths but the bottom would just drop off in spots, and my feet were sinking with my pack. I hadn’t seen any boats or watercraft around because it was low-tied. I was trying to work out what I was going to do, and then I saw this tinny full of kids (around 12-year-olds) with 3-4 canoes tied to the tinny, and they were being kids, making heaps of noise, enjoying the river, fishing lines off the back of their boat. Chaos! Complete chaos! I was thinking, this might be my only opportunity, so I flagged them down. I called out “Boys”, “Oi!” and they were really suspicious of why an older ‘yetti looking lady’ was trying to get their attention. I called out to them “Guys, I need a hand” and they called back “What?” I explained to them that I was about to get a call from the radio and I wouldn’t be able to talk to them during it, but I needed my pack taken across. I said to them “I can swim, but I need my pack taken across so that I can keep walking up to Lake Conjola”. They said “we can do it if you give us a shout-out on the radio” and I affirmed, “Done!” I was running down the sand dune trying to orchestrate them taking my pack, and just I was doing that, of course, the universe would think, that’s a good time for a phone call. So the radio calls me, and I’m on the phone. I’m out of breath, I’ve got kids running around with my pack and if they were to drop it or sink it I would be tanked!! I would be in so much trouble, so I was trying to keep an eye on my pack while I was being interviewed by the announcer with a thousand chaotic things going on around me at the time (btw, the fear was irrational because they were the best ‘salt of the earth’ kids). I’m being questioned and saying things like “oh mental health is good, I mean bad, I mean good” and then screeching “Oi …. Boys, put that down” (because one of them had tried to carry the pack and I know how heavy it is and I was worried they might throw out their back). Amongst the mayhem, I did the radio call, and afterward, the boys doubled back and took me over in their tinny. They then proceeded to ask “so where are you going?” to which I replied, “I’m going to Cape”. They quaffed stating that was a bit far and I loved the recognition that what I was doing was “absolutely batsh#t crazy! They were genuinely interested in what I was doing and asked me lots of questions. Once they dropped me off I rang the radio station back to apologise to them off-air, how sorry I was that it was so chaotic when they had called. They assured me was all OK, and the interview had turned out alright.

I walked up through the National Park into Lake Conjola and it was exquisite. It was right on sunset and there were all these beautiful sun-rays streaming through the gumtrees. It is a very magical time of the day for me when all the trees are turning that dull colour but there is light illuminating from behind and it is really still, peaceful, in the bush. I love observing the subtle transition of animals from day animals trying to find refuge from the nocturnal ones that were just starting to wake up and the change of the surrounding sounds.

I was feeling a lot calmer by this stage and walked into a little general store in Lake Conjola. Like most times when I’m wearing my pack, I get this…. “what are you doing love?” by a beautiful woman by the name of Carla. Soul food type of human! It was an incredible and unexpected encounter. She was genuinely interested in what I was doing and donated my food. She got my number and still texts me occasionally to check in that I’m going OK. When I tell people what I’m doing it seems to go one of two ways. Either “You’re Incredible” or “You’re Nuts” and there doesn’t seem to be any in between on that spectrum. That night I stayed in a gorgeous cabin at Conjola Holiday Park that had also been donated by Ingenia Holidays and was so graciously appreciative!

The next day I caught up with an incredible woman named Gabe. She is from Condo and reached out when I was previously near that area but she was working at the time I went through and she really wanted to catch up with me. She met me at Lake Conjola with her stand-up paddle board and, paddled me across the lake. She is an absolute legend and does aerial yoga called “Invert You” and she wanted to go for a walk with me and also offer me some aerial yoga sessions because she suggested it would be really good for my joints. She was absolutely right!

We stayed with her friend at Berrarra that night (another fellow yogi) and the next day Gabe and I walked onward to Sussex where one of the gorgeous ladies I had met at ‘Flourish’ in Ulladulla, had organised to kayak me across Sussex inlet. Once I had reached her at Sussex though, she had instead lined up a boat with some fantastic blokes from Penrith to drop me across where I was able to walk up the beach and cut across the Booderee Botanics and National Park toward Jervis Bay. Walking that stretch there I was so lucky to have had these pearler days of sunshine and it was just like nothing else! The water was incredible and the sanctuary zones you get where everything is heavily protected and people can’t take shells and do things to the surroundings is just so precious. Unfortunately, I did have to pick up a few water bottles and stuff along the beach, which I wasn’t happy about (but sadly that is just kind of the world we live in at the moment, anyway, that’s a different subject and a battle for another day).

I was camping at Green Patch that evening with Gabe, and so I walked into a general store at Jervis Bay to get some supplies. I met up with a gentleman named Damien and again with my pack it always starts the questions like “Where are you from?”, “Where are you going?” upon which I answered, “I’m Bailey and I’m doing this walk for the Black Dog Institute”. He responded with "Wow, that’s a really worthy cause” and then he pointed to a picture frame on the wall behind him of this beautiful young girl. Long hair, a big smile, and a stunning, happy-looking kid, and told me that is his daughter. She is 13 in that photo and she had committed suicide 4 years ago. It’s just the hardest thing to hear! What do you say? “I’m so sorry for your loss” does not encompass the absolute devastation that the family would have gone through and continue to live through with that. It doesn’t even scratch the surface. If anything, I find it kind of an insult that you could summarise an experience of that magnitude with a comment or statement like that. Damien was really interested in my story because I was so desperately unwell at a similar age as his daughter was when they lost her. It was hard! It was really hard to talk to him about it, but it needs to be talked about and that’s the reason he has that photo up on his wall in his shop. He said people ask and he said there is a need for the conversation to be started. That was exceptionally powerful!

It’s so hard seeing these families, meeting these families, that will never be the same after something like that. Major depression is such a horrific illness that can affect children. It does! It kills kids! Preventable or not it is one of the most devastating experiences a parent, partner, friend, family member, or work colleague can endure.

I went back to camp and cried. Not there with Damien. I didn’t think it was the right place to do it there because it’s not my journey. I just felt I was privileged to have been there for him to tell stories of his precious daughter. Positive ones, you know memories of how they used to have breath-holding competitions, and how athletic she used to be. I hope I can give that to families. An opportunity to talk about and remember the little things that they like about their children, friends, siblings, and partners without always talking about the suicide incident itself and instead talking with them about the people they were before it.

Gabe was awesome. She’d set up the camp and the silks for aerial yoga and that afternoon we hung out and I talked to her about my conversation with Damien. Gabe was a really skilled listener and I sincerely admire her for a batch of qualities she has. Like all of us, Gabe has her own story, and she had her own lived trauma, but she was a genuinely calm and composed person and a beautiful soul. Gabe and I did some aerial yoga together. The perfect way to wind down after a physically, mentally, and emotionally challenging day.

Later that night my friend Sean arrived to shoot some content in Jervis Bay for me the next morning. Sean and I woke up before sunrise to take shots of Hyams Beach as the sun came up. It was breathtaking! Big pods of dolphins coming through, uninterrupted sunrise, the water quality being unlike anything else. Just magnificent!