Great Walks

         I'm not sure how it started but sometime in the last few years I've gotten this urge/desire to do "great walks" or long hikes. Maybe reading Bill Bryson's "AWalk in the Woods" about hiking the Appalachian Trail got me started. Maybe it was seeing peers write in blogs and post photos about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Perhaps an old friend's sister's blog about riding her bike across the U.S. by herself inspired me.

Whatever it was, Jeff and I will be doing multiple "Great Walks" in Australia. What a great way to view some of the places we'll be! Not to mention a cheaper form of accomodation... On average Hostels are $30+ per person per night and that's for a bunk in a room shared with others. Great walks usually have $5 per camp per night and you're in the wilderness!

Here are some of the walks we are doing:

Great Ocean Walk

Link to Great Ocean Walk info

• We will be doing this walk October 2nd - October 9th and there will be 7 different spots we will camp along the way. The hike is 103 km

Fraser Island Walk

Link to info on Fraser Island Great Walk

• We will be doing this walk from November 8th - November 19th and there are 6 different camp spots. It is an out-and-back type hike so we will stay at some places twice. The walk is 90 km long.

Whitsunday Great Walk

Link to info on Whitsunday Great Walk

• We will be doing this walk from November 3rd - November 5th and there are 2 different camp spots. The walk is 30 km long.

Another link to a great site that mentions more Great Walks, some of them we are considering

          On another note, we have our trip pretty much planned out and have left some spaces open at the end to either redo some things we enjoyed earlier in the trip or do some of the things we didnt get to do previously if we have enough money still. Tasmania looks BEAUTIFUL but is a little expensive so we'll see if we can pull that off in the end. I may be dreaming but I also think it'd be amazing to make a trip over to New Zealand to see some of the film locations for The Hobbit or LOTR. Of course that's a little chunk of change as well but we'll see what happens!

            Here is a link to the blog of the family we will be staying with and helping in Bega Valley a few times throughout the trip. They have built a strawbale house on their land (BEAUTIFUL land I might add) and we are going to help them with landscaping and really anything else they need help with at all. It's one of the things I look forward to most and I love following their blog! 

            And finally, I made an online calendar we will be updating throughout the trip but it has our itinerary so people can follow along with where we're at if they're ever curious. Here it is. 

            Our official countdown from this moment is 31 days, 20 hours and 39 minutes until our flight leaves and I couldn't be more excited! I still can't believe it's actually happening sometimes and that we've managed to pull it off!

            .......And if things ever don't go according to plan I'll refer to a quote from the movie 180 Degrees South... "For me adventure is when everything goes wrong. That is when the adventure starts"