During the pandemic, when the world shrank, many of us walked in the bush. For someone who can’t see, it isn’t necessarily something that I can do independently. But over the years, it is something that has become important to me.
I got my first taste of bushwalking in 2010 with a group of blind and vision-impaired people and volunteers through an organisation called Achilles Australia.
On a warm day, we went wandering through the track that started at Hornsby station in Sydney’s north. The leader of the group lent me a hiking stick engraved with “Kokoda” in letters I could trace. Someone read Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country. Over the next decade, it formed my understanding of the wilderness surrounding Sydney.
The next time I went, about three years later, we walked in the pouring rain. My town shoes were totally inadequate to cross creeks, climb slippery slopes and squelch through the mud. I was soaked right through. Incredibly, instead of being turned off, the experience stayed with me.
The bush is different to the regular, safe environment that I expect in urban spaces. A lot of the tracks require some degrees of adventurousness – ducking under trees, jumping over rocks, crossing creeks and at times, climbing on hands and feet. These aren’t skills I need when moving through the city, even with the ever-changing construction taking hold in Sydney. But doing it makes me a more confident traveller.
With the appropriate equipment and support, the Australian bush is a wonderful place to explore.
Achilles gave me the basics: How to navigate bush tracks, simple commands such as step up, step down, duck and jump. I felt if I could get some guides, I could go to other places. I put out a call through Achilles and went bushwalking through the Royal national park with some British friends who volunteered.
The track was hard going. There were many boulders to jump over, with ankle-rolling tree roots on their other side. At one point, these women helped me jump what felt like a chasm between the rocks. But we managed. We found the Karloo pool, a popular swimming hole where we stayed for a picnic.
It was a day to remember, a precious experiment that can’t be easily repeated. I either had to wait for the next Achilles’ organised bushwalk or rely on volunteers and friends to come with me. It meant constant interruption to conversations to describe the steps I need to take, to wait while I try to find secure footing or handholds. Then the NDIS changed that.
I began receiving my NDIS funding in 2017. It meant I could engage support workers to go with me into the bush.
I wrote an ad on a care platform to find a support worker who could bushwalk with me. Someone who enjoyed nature, who knew a bit about trees and felt comfortable with some manual handling.
I got a reply from Leanne, a freelance support worker who loved walking. We decided to try out on the fire trail going to Uloola falls. For most of the way, the track was easy. Unlike the Karloo walking track, this one required only minimal scrambling – right at the very end where the fire trail ended and the real wilderness began.
It was during this long walk (about 12km there and back) that I began to appreciate the difference between landscapes: the perceptible change from dry sclerophyll forest of gums and banksias to the coastal heath with its masses of knee-to-waist height flowers and cool patches of ferns.
The latter is my personal favourite, with tactile fronds and almost endless repeating patterns. Some, like the bracken ferns and maidenhair, are familiar things in the suburban gardens. Others, like rock ferns in the Blue Mountains are rarer. For the next two years, Leanne and I walked through many ferny slopes and banks within driving distance to Sydney.
I moved to the Blue Mountains during the pandemic, with its myriad walking tracks, to lookouts, along fire trails and into valleys and even hidden waterfalls. I am able to access these places because of another support worker, Trish, who has walked these tracks for several years.
Trish and I met through the local neighbourhood group. It was a chance meeting that turned into adventures – along the steppingstones of Wentworth falls and the fern-lover’s paradise that is the Undercliff track, and the harder terrain in Sassafras gully where the creeks and waterfalls create a magical soundscape of its own. We even found a dog-friendly track where my guide dog could come without his harness.
Nowadays, bushwalking has become an important part of my life. It lets me be in a way I can’t replicate at home, in the gym or just being in the urban environment.
As a friend said to me after I came back from the Karloo pool: “everyone has the right to enjoy the beauty of the Australian bush”. What made it possible were the people and the supports that allowed me to do it.
