Walking the Australian Alps alone

Australian Alps Walking Trail, Hiking, Our trails

From Canberra to Walhalla, I walked 730 kilometres alone on the Australian Alps Walking Trail, chasing wild country and testing my limits.

Resilience meets wonder on a 35-day crossing of Australia’s majestic alps

All I knew was, I wanted to walk. I wanted to walk a long way, on my own, in the wild. I wanted to test myself.

Exactly where was a secondary thought.

At first, Western Australia’s 1,000km Bibbulmun Trail beckoned, but in September 2024 my mind became fixated on a territory far from the steamy Top End I found myself in.

I’d never heard of the Australian Alps Walking Trail (AAWT). Growing up in dry South Australia, ‘alpine’ in itself was a vague concept that evoked few images in my mind.

But I was swept up in the idea of this wild trail — its remote mountains called me. And in less than six months, it would become my sole occupation for 35 days.

The lead-up to my April 2025 start was intense, and far from customary.

A three-month stint sweating it out as a holiday park housekeeper on the Queensland coast with my wife served as my core training.

Meanwhile, final logistics planning was wedged between caravan repairs and catch-ups with loved ones during a month-long return to our home state of South Australia in March.

And as we neared Canberra — the start of my adventure — and the start clock ticked louder, our caravan was transformed into a dehydrated food workshop, dried goods of all varieties being stuffed into sandwich bags.

With just 24 hours until crunch time, I closed the zipper of my bulging pack for the first time and cuddled my wife for the last time.

After 18 months exploring Australia in our tiny caravan, we would part ways momentarily, no longer two peas in a pod.

On 5 April, I kissed Jane goodbye at Tharwa and followed trail markers deep into the bush with everything needed to survive crammed into my 18.5-kilogram pack — tears trickling down flushed cheeks.

Everything is an idea, until it’s not. The AAWT had transformed from an intense daydream into a searing reality that would see me cross three states and some of the country’s most spectacular and remote wilderness over five weeks.

That first night hit hard. Camped among crowds at Honeysuckle Creek in my 650-gram Dyneema home, loneliness stung like a wild bee.

I felt far from the little van I had shared with my wife. The world had become much bigger, and I had shrunk.

While a 730-kilometre walk, averaging 25 kilometres each day over rugged and rolling terrain, is undeniably a test of the body, the challenge it presented to my mind was great.\

As the crowds slipped away and the track became less distinct, I slipped deeper into trail life.

Daily routines became rituals — the source of security in a place where so little was known.

A morning coffee and oats in darkness, texting brief check-ins to my wife by satellite phone, drying a tent dripping with condensation, walking, walking, walking, fetching water from streams, observing for traces of animals, getting lost and unlost, musing outloud to myself, and enjoying fireside dinners in alpine huts, sometimes with fellow trekkers.

These rustic structures quickly became a source of physical and emotional warmth, offering momentary shelter from the icy conditions and unending wilderness.

They pushed me forward when the trail swallowed me up with its fiercely overgrown tracks and unapologetic inclines.

Days varied from magic moments standing atop towering peaks, gazing out — heart thumping and eyes wide — over rolling ranges that stretched into nothingness, to hour-by-hour battles to keep my head and body moving forward as fatigue set in and the longing for my wife and ‘home’ intensified.

But all days ended the same — me nestled beneath a doona inside my little tent under the stars, grateful for the warmth and listening to animals roam and wind shake the trees.

Each day was a new mission, requiring its own tactics to move ahead safely.

Plans were hatched each night over trail notes and maps illuminated by headlamp as the pot for my brew boiled.

Carving off days, mountains and states one by one, I followed brumby hoofprints along the spectacular high country, walked barefoot across the Murrumbidgee River, searched for non-existent footpads across the vast Rolling Grounds, and traversed the narrow rise of Quartz Ridge, mountain ranges spilling out before me.

I joined a long-weekend, pilgrimage-style march to Dibbins Hut, watched the sun rise over misty clouds from the towering Main Range, exchanged tales with weekend warriors by glowing fires, pulled my body up the steep rocky ridge of The Viking, scoured the ground for any signs of human presence, bush-bashed my way back to the track, and lugged water across long, dry stretches.

The journey was punctuated with food drops hand-delivered by my wife, two of them combined with zero days — beautiful reunions and a chance to recharge my soul for the next leg.

I counted down to these mini-milestones like a child crossing off the days until Christmas.

On the eve of my 30-day marker and final food drop, as I chatted aloud about the unusually wonderful trail conditions, I tripped on a stump and was overcome by searing pain — ears ringing and ankle swelling.

I strapped my ankle, swallowed some painkillers, and proceeded on tiptoes up Mount Sunday — my camp for the night.

It was clear I had done some serious damage, but with just five days remaining, I wasn’t ready to call it quits.

So I followed steep tracks under the canopy of towering trees and climbed gingerly up the longest incline of the trail, using music and painkillers to ease the struggle.

The situation intensified on night 33. As the pain reached nausea point, I pushed snow off my tent at hourly intervals and tried in vain to dry wet clothes on a makeshift line strung between hiking poles.

After toying with the idea of pulling out, I hatched one last plan in the dark early hours of the morning — for my wife to meet me at St Gwinear with painkillers, more strapping tape, and dry clothes.

I limped through a sparkling-white landscape beneath snow gums coated in powder, eyes beaming and smile wide, towards my trail angel.

After a warm breakfast cooked on the tailgate, clothes dried before the car’s rumbling heater, and fresh strapping tape applied, I walked on towards the finish line.

Morning 35 — the last day — arrived with bittersweet emotion. I packed up my home one final time, fighting back happy tears, threw my pack over my shoulders and followed the trail as it wound along the rushing Thomson River and valley walls towards Walhalla.

As the drone of car engines grew louder and the historic township flickered through the trees, I heard a familiar voice call out — “You did it, baby.”

I locked eyes on Jane, tossed my hiking sticks into the air, threw my hands to my head in disbelief, and was swallowed into her embrace.

Under blue skies and a glistening sun, we walked the final kilometre together.

Thirty-five days. Three states. 730 kilometres.

It had pushed me far further than I thought I could go.

I had walked alone through the wilderness on one of the country’s greatest trails — and I had finished.