Category Archives: essay

Men and Mountains

The federation of new south wales bushwalking clubs published “The Bushwalker” This is by B Thompson (c.m-w) from edition number 6. 1942 To all of us in whom the love of mountains and nature is so deeply rooted, it is difficult to realise that mountains were once regarded as objects of dread. Greek and RomanContinue reading “Men and Mountains”

Essay: On Going A Journey

I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey, and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to ‘take one’s ease at one’s inn’!

Essay: Walking Tours

“In the course of a day’s walk, you see, there is much variance in the mood. From the exhilaration of the start, to the happy phlegm of the arrival, the change is certainly great. As the day goes on, the traveller moves from the one extreme towards the other. He becomes more and more incorporated with the material landscape, and the open-air drunkenness grows upon him with great strides, until he posts along the road, and sees everything about him, as in a cheerful dream. The first is certainly brighter, but the second stage is the more peaceful. A man does not make so many articles towards the end, nor does he laugh aloud; but the purely animal pleasures, the sense of physical wellbeing, the delight of every inhalation, of every time the muscles tighten down the thigh, console him for the absence of the others, and bring him to his destination still content.”

Essay: Why I Walk

By Ben Kilbourne, Backpacking Light As part of your formation with the Order of Walkers, there are questions you must pose to gain insight and promote growth. Ponder the age old “Why I walk”?  A simple question but a difficult answer to articulate. There are no wrong answers. It’s a  big sky and your essayContinue reading “Essay: Why I Walk”

If You Know Bourke You Know Australia

I WAS in Bourke, New South Wales – the outback, that most powerful of Australian words – the edge of the world, where the unknown begins. I was having a break from writing Cold Light and I had my backpack and gear with me, intending to do a trek in that hard country, maybe to look at a geological oddity called Mount Gunderbooka, about sixty kilometres south-west of the dwindling township of Bourke. The mountain name carried within it the word ‘book’.

Why do we walk?

This question sits with the Order of Walkers. Even after a most difficult walk and the passage of time, we are drawn to a new invitation to wander. I am presenting a response by Norman Richards of the Melbourne Bushwalkers in the 1953 edition no 4 of the “Walk” magazine. Not much has changed. ThisContinue reading “Why do we walk?”