Power, Heat And A Shower

The second morning on the Eyre Highway started with me in a hood, in the campervan, holding a bowl of porridge like it was a tiny personal heater.

It was about 10 degrees, which is not exactly Antarctic explorer territory, but it feels fairly rude when you are awake before 5am and trying to convince your body that another 40-plus kilometres is a sensible thing to do. The plan was to be moving by about 5:15 again. I was already thinking about the prize at the other end: Fraser Range Station Caravan Park, which meant power, heat, and a shower.

It is funny how quickly the definition of luxury changes. A few weeks earlier, power and a shower would have been basic accommodation. By Day 23 they sounded like a spa package.

The first part of the day was cold and dark, but it did not stay that way for long. The sky began to lift. Then the fog came through the trees and the sun started pushing orange light into it, and suddenly the early start made complete sense.

That was one of the strange little bargains of walking day after day. The hard part often came first. Waking up in the dark. Putting sore feet back into shoes. Eating because I had to, not because I wanted to. Stepping out before the day looked remotely inviting.

Then, every so often, you got something like that sunrise.

The new routine was settling. We were aiming for steadier days rather than huge efforts followed by rest. The surface was kinder than the earlier tracks and verges, and my body was adapting. Not magically. Not pain-free. Just enough to keep doing it.

Walk. Break. Find the crew. Eat. Keep going. Finish at a reasonable hour if possible. Sleep. Repeat.

It may sound dull. It wasn’t dull to live. Every session involved negotiations with my feet, the weather, traffic, my mood and whatever Ben and Ols were solving in the van. After the chaos of the first three weeks, a day with a shape felt calming.

And then people appeared.

By this stage I was starting to get used to cars pulling over, which is a strange thing to be able to say. On most days of normal life, a random car stopping on the verge would not be a particularly relaxing development. Out there, it often meant someone had seen the signs, worked out what we were doing, and wanted to say hello.

Kris and Gemma were the big surprise of the morning. Kris was a mate from my days going to Perth Glory matches, and he and Gemma were heading east to Melbourne. Sensibly, they had chosen to use a motor vehicle for the trip, and not just as somewhere to sleep after walking all day.

Seeing a familiar face out there gave me a proper lift. It did not have to be a long stop. It did not have to be dramatic. Just someone from another part of my life appearing beside the Eyre Highway, smiling, donating, and reminding me that this odd thing we were doing was still connected to the world I had come from.

A couple called Mike and Wendy stopped too. They pulled in on the verge just to say hello and ask if we were taking donations. Those moments mattered more than I probably knew how to explain at the time. The distance was mine to walk, but HAA never felt like mine alone. Every wave, donation, message, roadside chat, and shared photo helped keep it alive.

The walking itself was still the walking. There was plenty of blue sky, plenty of scrub, plenty of red dirt, and plenty of that particular Eyre Highway repetition where the view changes slowly enough that you can start to wonder whether you are moving at all. Then a sign or a bend or a patch of trees would prove that you were.

By late afternoon I was about 10 kilometres short of Fraser Range Station. We went into the station for the night and would resume from there in the morning.

Fraser Range felt different from the roadhouses. It was a little drive off the highway and had more of a farm feel to it. I wish I could say I took it all in properly, but the truth is that most places at the end of those days arrived through a fog of tiredness. I would get there, shower, eat, do whatever needed doing, and go to sleep.

One day I would like to drive the same route in a more conscious state and pay proper attention to the places where we stayed. Back then, the priority was simpler: get clean, get warm, get fed, get horizontal.

Before that, there was still one last little marker for the day. The Balladonia sign said 100 kilometres.

Naturally, I decided that meant I was just 100 kilometres from the People’s Republic of Balladonia.

Another 46.1 kilometres had gone. Balladonia was now only 100 kilometres away, so naturally I declared it the People’s Republic of Balladonia.

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