One of the iconic walks on many Australian bucket lists is the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. Running for 96 km (60 mi) overland (60 km (37 mi) in a straight line) through the Owen Stanley Range in Papua New Guinea, the track is renowned as the location of the World War II battle between Japanese and Australian forces in 1942.
Frank’s uncle, Bob Melville, was up and down the track a couple of times before he was 19 years old. It has a strong place in the Australian psyche as a small force of undertrained and equipped troops fought the most desperate and viscious battle encountered by Australian troops in the Second World War.
This article is about a group of people Frank has worked with at Uecomm, a large Australian broadband supplier and their shared common goal to hike the Kokoda Track. Some of them did it for the challenge, some for the fitness regime and some out of respect of our Aussie Soldiers.
In this article we share Part One of their journey, the preparation and fitness campaign!
We have been following a terrific journal by Leigh McAdam from Hike Bike Travel about her recent stroll along The Cumbria Way in the Lake District of England. Leigh, a Canadian, completed the walk in June / July 2010 as part of a walking holiday in the UK. Leigh had a terrific adventure. She has written several articles we would highly recommend whether you are planning the walk, or just want to enjoy a great yarn.
In order of the journey:
The Cumbria Way, Lake District, England
Magnificence, Motrin, Moleskin, Markers & Misery on the Cumbria Way, England
Some of the Best Lake District Walking – Keswick to Caldbeck
Finally a great “tips” article that draws on her experience of walking in England and Scotland. There is a terrific blister photograph for any ghouls among us AND a great new blister product Leigh discovered, it’s well worth a read.
Just a quicky to let you know we had a couple of articles featured in a Tripbase “inspirational” travel secrets eBook.
Our three articles are in the Destination book. They highlight places we love to visit.
What you ask? A set of free travel eBooks?
This eBook series is the result of a unique collaborative project, the first of its kind to take place on the Internet.
Starting with just one blog post back in November 2009, the Travel Secrets project spread quickly with 200 amazing travel bloggers revealing their most closely guarded travel secrets.
The secrets were too good not to share! So we’ve compiled all 500 of them into a series of inspirational travel eBooks, available for free download right now!
Continuing our series of interviews with interesting outdoor people, let us introduce Andy Reynolds.
Andy, is an Outdoor Educator with many years experience exploring some fantastic parts of Australia.
He walks, climbs and loves snow sports. His latest venture is Soulfree Adventures , a company that “specialise in providing high quality walking tours for the walking traveller”. While Andy is keen to promote his business (and who wouldn’t be), he also has a huge amount of experience in the outdoors and some fantastic yarns he has shared.
We hope you enjoy Andy Reynolds’ story.
O.K. Let ’s keep it simple. How about a bit of background on yourself. Where do you live? Where do you work?
I live in beautiful downtown Buninyong, a small rural village whose key claims to fame I suppose are being Victoria’s first proclaimed inland settlement (Wiki) and the home of the Scody Australian Road Cycling Championships, on our notoriously gruelling hilly course on the slopes of Mount Buninyong, an extinct volcano.
It’s also a pretty nice place to live. I run my own walking company Soulfree Adventures from my home office on Buninyong. This gives me the freedom to work as long as I want (!) and is a great base for work and play.
Let’s get into your early bushwalking experiences. How did you first get into bushwalking? Any particular mentor or group?
I first got into bushwalking as a student at a well known Melbourne private school. Back in the 70’s we still had 3 term school years and each school holidays our loosely described bushwalking group would head for Breakfast Creek, north of Licola in the heart of Victorian Alps.
This quote tells it all:
As I looked into my brother’s eyes, I could see that he thought we were going to die, and I telepathically agreed. I thought to myself, “This is how those stupid people you read about in newspapers die in the wilderness.”
Sometimes we THINK we are brave and adverturous.
Sometimes we really have adventures, like being caught in a flood
But generally we are pretty conservative, there for a good time, rather than a hard time.
Let us therefore introduce you to Hank and Brian Leukart. They like an adventure, they love a challenge and, if the truth be known, they must be slightly , well…..totally mad.
Over at Hank’s inspiring site, without baggage , you can read about a hiking adventure in the Denali National Park in Alaska.
