Walking and sketching routes in Australia
Six guides to trails worth the effort, written for people who stop to look at things rather than chasing a time.
One Stroke is a puzzle about drawing a shape without lifting the pen, and it came out of a habit of sketching on walks — badly, quickly, in a notebook that gets rained on. The two activities turn out to suit each other. Drawing forces you to actually look at a ridgeline instead of photographing it and moving on.
These guides cover routes we have walked, with an emphasis on what the landscape does rather than on lap times. Each one has the practical layer too: permits, seasons, water, and the parts where people get into trouble.
The Overland Track
Six days from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair, through country that changes character every few hours and weather that changes faster.
The Great Ocean Walk
A coastal route where half the interest is what the sea has done to the cliffs, and where the tide dictates parts of your day.
Walking in the Blue Mountains
Sandstone plateau cut by deep valleys, an hour and a half from Sydney, with more genuinely good day walks than a person gets through in a year.
The Larapinta Trail
Two hundred and thirty kilometres along a desert range where the walking is defined by water, heat and some of the oldest landscape on earth.
A sketching kit that survives the walk
Everything here fits in a jacket pocket. The constraint is not quality, it is weight, wind and the fact that you have to keep moving.
Walking safely in Australian conditions
The things that actually cause trouble here are heat, water and getting lost. The things people worry about are mostly snakes.