A Rest Day With An Edge

Day 79 did not move us any closer to Brisbane.

That was fine. It was a full rest day, and by that stage a full rest day could still contain quite a lot.

We started with breakfast at a cafe near the hotel, once again with Kirby and her family. After everything they had done for us over the Melbourne weekend, I managed to slip away from the table and settle the bill before anyone else could. It was a small thing compared with the accommodation, the organising, the lunch, the driving, and the general looking-after-us, but it felt important to do something.

Then we headed into Melbourne.

The previous day had already given us Albert Melbourne parkrun, TV cameras, the MCG, trams, St Kilda, and Chinese food. Sunday was slower. Wandering. Looking around. Letting Melbourne be Melbourne for a few hours without having to measure it in kilometres.

There was still room for an HAA-style interruption.

At some point on a tram, ticket inspectors found that Ben’s Myki card had not tagged on properly. I had seen him tag on, which made it funnier and more awkward. The cards were brand new, so it was fairly obvious we were not trying to dodge a fare. The problem was that Ben was a UK resident and they wanted his address in Australia.

At that moment in time, his home, like all three of ours, was the campervan.

In the end I gave them an address back in Perth in case anyone needed to follow up. That evening we theorised that common sense would prevail if it progressed up the chain. Nothing ever came of it, so we may have been right. Part of me still likes to imagine the conversation later: two inspectors reporting that they had stopped a bloke on a tram whose explanation involved someone walking from Perth to Brisbane.

Melbourne also gave us Eureka Skydeck 88.

That had not been on the radar for the weekend, but it turned into one of the best things we did. The view was brilliant, but The Edge was the thing. A glass box that slides out from the building on level 88, letting you look around, up, and straight down.

Ben really wanted to do it. He was also, by his own body language if nothing else, not entirely delighted by the idea of standing in a glass box high above Melbourne. He was facing a fear of heights, so it was genuinely scary for him. That made it even more memorable when he pushed through it and did it.

I may have helped a little.

By late afternoon the sightseeing was done and we were heading west again. We drove all the way back to Ballarat and stayed at BIG4 Ballarat Goldfields, ready to restart the walking the next morning. That felt strange. We had just spent a weekend in Melbourne, but I still had to reach Melbourne on foot. The city had appeared as a weekend, a media opportunity, a parkrun, and a rest stop before it became an official walking milestone.

That night I sat down with the schedule for the rest of the journey.

The theory was simple enough: there were a certain number of kilometres left, a certain number of days left, and a couple of parkruns we wanted to make along the way. The reality was harder. The key places did not line up neatly. Canberra would involve driving forward for Gungahlin parkrun. Sydney would involve a drive back for St Peters parkrun. There was no real spare room, only big weeks, a carefully managed final stretch, Southbank parkrun, the campervan going back, and the Twilight Bay Half Marathon sitting just beyond the finish.

I remember calling it a rough schedule, and that was accurate. It was the kind of planning that looked tidy only if you ignored the feet, the weather, the body, the support crew, the traffic, the sleep, and everything else that had already made HAA what it was.

Still, it gave us a shape.

After the adventure was done, I wrote, the fellowship of the HAAmigos would come to an end, and I would probably start to realise the magnitude of what we had just done.

At the time, there was no room to feel all of that.

There was only the next morning, Ballarat, and the gear going back on.

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