The CrossingSouthern Cross to Yellowdine

Rivendell Beyond The Flatlands

We left Southern Cross with new fly nets, slightly newer feet and Kalgoorlie 226 kilometres away. Rivendell was still a long way east, but it had finally appeared on a sign.

Date25 May 2015

Journey dayDay 10

Road sign showing Coolgardie 187 kilometres and Kalgoorlie 226 kilometres — That moment when Kalgoorlie was 226 kilometres away and I thought, I can walk that.

Southern Cross gave us beds, showers, a massage, a new van, and fly nets.

The flies had become part of the walking, especially for Ben, whose relationship with them wasn’t improving. The nets made a huge difference and became one of our best purchases. We left with proper protection, a little more experience and, in my case, feet that felt almost new after Julie’s work.

The sign out of town said Coolgardie 187 and Kalgoorlie 226. I remember looking at that number and thinking, oddly calmly, that I could walk it.

The 226 kilometres hadn’t become small. My sense of scale had shifted. A distance that once sounded ridiculous had become four or five working days. Hard days, but still days.

The Lord of the Rings thread was in full swing by then. The Railway Tavern was our Prancing Pony. Kalgoorlie was Rivendell. I am not sure how much Ben and Ols were carrying that particular joke with me, but it amused me. As an avid Tolkien fan, it felt like a good fit for the scale of what we were doing. A big ridiculous story can help you carry a big ridiculous thing, especially when the actual thing is warm, dusty, sore, repetitive, and full of flies.

The upcoming Kalgoorlie-Boulder parkrun gave us another little bit of nonsense to play with. All three HAAmigos were meant to run it that Saturday, and for Ben and Ols it would be their first parkrun. So I turned it into a tiny fundraising hook: make a donation, guess our combined time, and the closest first guess would win a bottle of wine.

“Your job is to predict the TOTAL time of all three of our times added together. Closest guess received first wins a bottle of wine.”

The form guide was not exactly elite sport. Ben and Ols had just packed in smoking and were not runners, although they did have youth on their side. I had been around the 30 to 35 minute mark recently, but by Saturday I would have something like 600 kilometres of walking in my legs. It was not some grand fundraising strategy. It was a fun social hook, a way of turning the next parkrunday into something people could join from wherever they were.

If memory serves, the prize may have been the bottle of wine Apollo gave us when we picked up the campervan. That feels very HAA: a small beginning-of-trip gift becoming bait for a parkrun guessing game before we had even reached Kalgoorlie.

The old campervan made one final cameo, heading back to Perth on a tow truck. Not a happy camper. We had a replacement now, the plan was still alive, and the problem had become another story instead of the thing that stopped us.

The vehicle problem had threatened the rhythm of the trip without stopping the walking. Ben and Ols had dealt with the hire-company mess, moved our entire travelling life and turned the replacement van into home.

By mid-afternoon, Yellowdine Roadhouse was our coffee stop at around 32 kilometres and then our camp for the night. Kalgoorlie had changed from a faraway word into a place on a sign that I could imagine reaching.