Day 198 Goulburn

 NSW Day 56 (198) 21km Wednesday 8th December, 2021

4020.2 - 1078.7km

And just like that it's over?

That's a question not a statement. I've been pondering my hip problem all night and tried to come up with a solution. The one I will try is using my beanie as padding and see if I can walk more than 10 minutes without discomfort. I've managed to aggravate the area enough to form a haematoma and when I now do up the pack the lump aches.

I set off ok with the beanie and I thought it would work but within a half hour I was in pain. I tried some other things but I'm down to about 5 minutes before I adjust.

I have 1 more night provided I do about 28 kilometres today then I will be in Taralga and I can then work out what I'm going to do.

However the days notes say I should turn off the road down a fire trail 1.2 kilometres from the hut and with all the farting about with the waist belt I miss it. At about the 2.5 hour mark I get the shits and throw the pack on the ground. Never a good sign as breaking the pack won't help.

The road I shouldn't have seen

It's while I'm sitting there trying to come up with a solution I work out I've spent 2 hours walking the wrong way. The fuckity fuck fucks could be heard in Sydney. On an already long day I've added over 12 kilometres if I walk back to the turn off I should have taken. I can keep walking down the road and take another fire trail which will still add the 12 extra kilometres. More swearing ensues. I could add an extra night but I've only got one and a bit nights food left.

So one extra day will mean I will be a little hungry.

I decide to walk down the road. More swearing. About 600 metres before the fire trail I'm going to take the pain in the hip gives me the poops and the pack gets another kicking.

I sit on the side of the road and am feeling very sorry for myself. So at 10.33 am I decide I've had enough and I'm going home. I send Belinda a message but note that I haven't seen a car for 3 days so waiting for one to magically appear is a bit of a stretch.

I've got about 5.5 kilometres to go to Limeburner's camp site. I decided I need to get there hopefully around lunch and relax for the rest of the day ................. then magically a car appears.

Now to put this magic thing into perspective. If I had gone down the correct trail I would have passed a vehicle barrier and no cars would pass. I'm pretty sure my hip would have played up just as much on the correct path. Also when I decided to chuck the pack off and have a tanty I was 600 metres from turning off down another fire trail that also had a vehicle barrier.

Darryl and Val who did stop had a Ute but a king cab Ute that meant I could fit in. Plus they stopped and also offered me a lift. Trail magic at its finest. Thanks to their generosity I was thrown a lifeline.

I decided initially to get a lift to Taralga. But the hip isn't going to get better overnight so when Darryl and Val offered a lift all the way to Goulburn - I took it. Val was comfortable enough with this smelly bum squashed in the seat behind her to sleep most of the way. I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't Darryl. They have a Hema GPS HN7 who they call Ken. So it seems all roads lead to me.

So the plan now is to get to Goulburn take the train to Wallerawang. Get my car. Take a few days off. Hopefully preparing the Canberra to Healesville section. Taking a week or so to do all that and hopefully letting the hip recover. I need to massage the lump to get it to dissipate and hopefully let the aggravation settle.

At this stage I'm not in the mood to continue. If I could drive home I probably would. Bloody McGowan still has the borders locked tight. To drive home, I have to spend 14 days in the NT, QLD or SA before I even apply for a G2G pass into WA. Then I have to quarantine for 14 days in either Ceduna or Kununurra before they let me drive home. To get to South Australia I have to roll up with a negative covid test only 72 hours old, get tested again on entering and get tested again 6 days after entering. When filling out the forms they all ask the address you've spent the most time at within the last 14 days. In most cases the longest I spend is 2 nights in a town the other 12 in the bush. But that's meaningless to the bureaucrats as all they look at is the State. So apparently Covid exists everywhere.

Enough ranting. Gets me nowhere. This could be my last day walking. The next couple of days will tell.

Taralga

Taralga

The hip. The dark brown bit above the waist
band is scarring from constant rubbing. Over the
years it fades a bit till my next walk. The bruising is above that.