Prelude to the Great South West Walk 2025

 We are about to embark on another epic adventure, life is good in semi retirement.

This adventure was first discussed a couple of years ago after seeing an ABC documentary on the walk.

It has an interesting inception from an idea of the chief district ranger, Sam Bruton and the principal of Portland High School, Bill Golding. It became community project for Grade 10 students at the Portland High School.  The kids were given a choice of continuing a week of work experience or spend the week creating the dream. 

 Four years later ( November 1983) the first 200 kilometres was open and the rest as we say is history.

Stuart was very keen as always but it has taken me a bit longer to jump on board. Too old, too chubby, dodgy knees and whatever else I could think of.

The impetus for us actually, finally going forward was a conversation with friends about our experience on the Great Ocean Walk that we completed in 2023.

We started to think about how fabulous that was, despite it being pretty tough.

 In many ways we were caught out. All the information we had collected for the GOWwas that it would very cool and pleasant, but it wasn’t.  Our packs were quite heavy with warm gear etc. A heavy pack just makes life difficult in so many ways and so much of what we had wasn’t used.

The disconnection from the everyday and being surrounded by beauty, is something that we often seek which is something we discovered whilst walking the Camino over 10 years ago and didn’t know we needed.

I quietly thought to myself maybe we should attempt the GSWW. I had to make sure I was totally comfortable and committed before mentioning it to Stuart as I knew he would commit immediately, and he did.

So now it’s all about preparation, not just us physically but also when to do this.

It is a roughly two week walk (260k) and a lot of the second week is on or near sand and the beach, so tides are a huge issue to make life easier. The walk is a loop essentially, meaning we walk from Portland, leaving the car for our return back to Portland. The halfway point is the small town of Nelson where we have already dropped off the next week’s food supplies. 

So fitting in with Stuart’s work, we settled on the last couple of weeks in October.

This would give us September and most of October to get some miles in the legs.

As we will need to be carrying tent, cooking, sleeping gear plus food, we walked /trained  from the outset with weight. Stuart with a backpack with 10kg of sand in it and I shouted myself a weighted vest weighing in about 9kg. It’s gotta make it easier right?…..

Purchasing the 2 weeks of dehydrated food, porridges, snacks was exciting and fun. We will carry just one week of food ( thank goodness) and pick up the second week of food on arrival in Nelson.

So now the time has come and we are ready for the big drive to Portland and a couple of days there ensuring we are as ready as we will ever be.

Enjoy the journey with us.