Well a man needs a hobby.

Ok, so Lee-Anne and I had, after a bit of a barny, agreed to compromise on what we were doing on day two, of our three day break, at Tathra. We agreed to go for a walk in Mimosa National Park together. I would then drop her back to the cottage we had rented, so that her and Bethy could have a day of “doing things”, while I went out for another, probably longer, walk.

 I drove us to Mimosa NP. Or rather I didn’t, as I got us lost and we ended up in Bega. Never the less we eventually ended up in the Tourist Information place at Bega, and asked for (a) directions to Mimosa national Park, and (b) ideas for longer walks in the area. The woman gave us directions, a couple of leaflets and sent us on our less than merry way. She did tell us that the walk from Turingal Head to Kianinny Bay was “9 kilometres and very difficult”. What a stupid thing to say to me?

So I drove us back to where we had started from, and then another four K down the opposite direction, and we found ourselves in Mimosa.

Nice little park, we saw some rather spectacular scenery there, and the most cute little bush tailed wallaby you can imagine. No I don’t have photographs of any of these things, as “someone who shall remain nameless” had forgotten to pack my camera, for which I had sulked all the first night. The air was alive with the call of bellbirds too, which have a call … ok….

Anyway, we’d soon exhausted the possibilities of this place, even, believe it or not, got bored with the nudist beach. (Hardly surprising as it was pissing down and there was no one on it.)

We dropped back into the cottage, and had a cuppa, then Lee-Anne drove us to the walking track that starts at the Wallagoot Lake Boat Club. I thought this was the start of the 9 K “very difficult” walk.

It wasn’t.

But let me digress here.

In order to truly screw up a good walk, you need to prepare properly for it. Not only do you need to wear totally unfit clothes for the day, (I had chosen my ill-fitting shorts which need a belt to hold them up, a pair of “hiking sandals”, a t-shirt, and my “non-waterproof” waterproof coat for this cock up), but also it’s essential to leave things like food and water behind at the digs, and to have no sustenance, nor any money to get any, throughout the walk.

Also, just to be completely stupid, I had no map, and was relying on the A4 guide of walks in the area given out at the information office. (Instructions; Start at Turingal Head, walk to Kianinny Bay via the coast: 9 kilometres, very difficult.) But to be fair it did have a small 1/8 page map on it, with feature like “start of walk” and “end of walk” printed on the indistinct outline of the coast. Never mind, as long as I kept the sea on my right I couldn’t go far wrong. Could I?

Oh, and for a memorable cock up, leave leaving as late as you can possibly manage. Seeing as it’s now autumn, I thought a 2.12 pm start for this walk was sufficient, seeing as it would be dark by 5.15 pm. (“9 K? I’ll piss through that in no time,” as someone stupid once said.)

I did have the sense to take my mobile phone with me, more on this later.

So off I set. It was overcast and generally miserable with the threat of rain. But at least it wasn’t the burning sunshine which has shortened so may of my walks here. The path, following the edge of Wallagoot Lake, was flat, but boggy, and made for slow going. But I was optimistic, and set up a reasonable pace, and felt like I was covering a fair amount of ground.

I was.

In fact after covering quite a fair amount of ground I came across a picnic area, with some people enjoying a light lunch there. There were, handily, a few information signs there. One of the information signs said it was only 1 K to the start of the 9 K “very difficult walk from Turingal Head to Kianinny Bay via the coast”. Neat. So I had, for no discernable reason, added the 2 K walk along Wallagoot Lake onto my journey, and was only another 1 K from the actual start of the bloody walk I was supposed to have already started doing. I tried to ring Lee-Anne to let he know of this, and to tell her I may be a little later than predicted, no signal.

On I pressed.

The beginning of the walk was on high ground along the cliff top, with no sign of the sea as there was dense bush all along the path. This bush formed a total canopy over me, and was like walking in a maze, luckily the path was good at this point. In the middle of this dense bush, to my considerable joy, I startled a lyre bird, which ran off down the path ahead of me. Rather nice that, I’ve not seen one of those before. I was setting up quite a collection of spider webs in my hair and on my face too, until I nearly ate a massive big bugger with a black body and yellow bands on it. No exaggeration, this one was about the size of my face. I walked a damn sight more carefully after that.

So on I travelled. I was hitting a good pace and then came across, according to my map and general sense of direction, “White Rock” . This was 2/3 of the way along, and so I was still on course to finish the walk before dusk. Feeling rather pleased with myself, and congratulating myself for my general fitness, I pushed on.

Just a few hundred yards further on, came an almost vertical drop down a mudslide into a nice little, if rather deep sided, sandy cove. And so I followed the path down, and slipped and slided my way up the steep ascent of the other side. Then it was flat for about a hundred yards, then…..

Yes you guessed it, the coast from here on in was riven with little bays, all steep sided, all slippery after the recent rain. So it became a case of walk a hundred yards, virtually ski down one side of a ravine, slog through the sand, slip and slither up a vertical mud chute, repeat. This went on for some time….

So I tried to ring Lee-Anne to let he know that it was a bloody sight harder than I had though it would be, and to tell her I may be a little late. Still no signal.

Then I descended into “Boulder Bay”, a change from the sandy bays as it was floored with small rocks, and therefore even less pleasant to walk across. But on reaching the other side I found, or rather I didn’t find, the start of the path. “That’s bloody odd,” I thought, but then realised that the path had been getting more and more faint as there were probably less idiots willing to bother walking out this far. I spied what looked like an easy way up the cliff on the edge of the bay and scrambled up. This got progressively steeper, as is the nature of such things, and I found myself having to traverse a sheer hundred foot high cliff to get to safety. (Ok, it probably was more like 30 foot, and probably not that sheer.)

So I got to the top, “safe at last” I thought. Wrongly of course. You remember I was saying that, at the start of the walk, I couldn’t see the sea for the dense bush? Well guess which side of that bush I now was? Yup, the wrong side. I pushed my way through, figuring that if I kept heading uphill, I’d eventually hit the path. The trouble is is that this bush is dense, I mean severely dense, almost as dense as I must be to be walking, or rather pushing, my way though it. But eventually after being scraped raw, and picking up a world beating collection of splinters and spiders, I found the path again. At this point I was wishing I had my faithful mutt, Barnum, with me. I could have eaten him.

So it was back to the “down ravine, cross the beach, up ravine”, walking again. It was getting dark by now, so just to make it a little less pleasant, it decided to rain too. One thing that did brighten up the slog at this point was the amount of wildlife and flora on the path. Obviously it doesn’t get disturbed by humans very often. I saw several large lizards, a few more of those small wallabies, a snake, (a small one, but I avoided it, I’m not totally stupid,) any number of birds, and to my profound joy, I shared a few yards of path with a couple of wombats. These ambled along ahead of me, until they realised I was there, then belligerently shuffled off.

Then I stumbled into a little bay, which had no sand in it. Instead it had a car park and a small jetty with a few lads fishing off it. I had reached Kianinny Bay, the end of the route. I was ever so glad I’d made it, as it was now dark and pissing down, and I was very, very tired and sore. It was then I had a revelation. And of course it was not a pleasant one.

Remember the name of the bay I had just arrived at?

Remember the name of the village we were staying at?

Not the same are they?

Ok, so I ask the fishermen, which way and how far to Tathra. “It’s about a kilometre by road, or two by the coast path” said one of them.“ “Ha! Brainwave” I thought, “why not use your bloody mobile to ask Lee-Anne to come and pick you up?” Well the answer should be obvious, no signal still.

So it was a toss up, but I knew that the coast path, even though longer, would bring me out to Tathra headland, and the old Warf, and surely to god there’d be a signal there? In any case, walking the road route would mean a steep uphill climb, then down the steep, winding, hazardous, road into Tathra, which would be a bloody unpleasant walk to end up on.

So I stomped off swearing loudly to myself, and after pushing through two k of steep, wet, grass and shrubs, I eventually got to the old Warf, where there was still no bloody signal. I considered throwing my mobile in the sea at this point.

So, I had no option but to take the walk back to the main road and go down the steep, winding, hazardous, road into Tathra, the one which I had been trying to avoid in the first place.

I got to the end of this and was squelching along the road, soaked from head to foot, sore and very, very, dischuffed, when our car pulled up and Lee-Anne wound down the window. To be fair to her she didn’t give me a bollocking for being so many hours late, and she did let me in the car even though I was a walking puddle.

So there you have it, how to turn a 9 k pleasant stroll, into a 14 k nightmare without even trying.