Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Wow. I haven’t been this sore since my first day on the Aussie Camino in 2014 when we did 36km from Portland to Cape Bridgewater via Nelson Lighthouse. That’s where I met Sean all those years ago. I also completely buggered up my right knee walking up and down the sand-dunes, and ended up walking the rest of the way to Penola with my knee strapped and braced. Well, by the time we got to Pambula – with still 7 or 8kms to go to Merimbula, my knee was again playing up, and as I was walking up the driveway of the Sapphire Valley Holiday Park just after dark, my right foot was screaming “Blisters!!!”. Thankfully, I think I have dodged that bullet, but only just.

It has been a long day. We have averaged in the past 27-28kms a day, with the longest day we have ever done been our 36km day from Goongerah to Bendoc last year (which included a 700m rise as well). But then we were not carrying 12kg packs on our back. So it was a hard day today. We left Mike and Judy’s place at 8:10am (very thankful for a comfortable and hospitable night), and headed directly for the Nethercote Road. The road was actually quite busy – but at that time it was probably people coming and going for work. We were somewhat discouraged, and tried for a time to take a side track which ran along the road a little down in the valley. However, that track was far too much up and down for our knees, and we soon returned to the road, where the traffic was settling down a bit. I found it slow going to start with. This and that on the backpack needed adjusting, or something from one of the belts were digging in on my hip, or my water bladder was leaking etc etc. Once we got under way, things were great. It was a wonderful sunny crisp morning, with really fresh sea/mountain air.

However before long we ran into a difficulty. Right back at the start of our pilgrimage, on our second day on a hill the other side of Belgrave, Sean and I turned around to find Josh standing at the top of the hill looking down and completely stationary. It was the first time that we discovered that Josh suffered from vertigo and any steep or high trails caused him some difficulty. In fact, he got used to the trail and all was fine for the whole journey to Orbost. We thought he was over it. But when we came to going over the mountain in Easter 2017 from Orbost to Eden via Bombala, Josh pulled out. Turns out the reason was that his vertigo has not come any better. So today, heading out of Eden, we had to climb up to 293m over the mountain before we entered the Nethercote valley, and half way up, Josh froze and said he couldn’t go any further. The solution was to ring Mike and Judy and call upon them to come and take Josh over the hill, which the good people did. So Josh was about half an hour’s walk ahead of us until we caught up with him at the Nethercote hall for lunch.

The Nethercote Valley is much smaller than the Towamba Valley, but equally beautiful. The little community hall was a bit of treasure, and we enjoyed sitting on the veranda at the back and eating our bread, cheese, kransky, and fruit (I missed the usual glass of red wine to wash it down). Josh headed off again on the road to Pambula while Sean and I were still repacking our bags and before we left a local, Karen, turned up to drop some stuff off at the hall. We fell to talking, and she described the work that had to go into renovating the dilapidated hall about 10 years ago (it was built in 1910). “We didn’t so much restore the hall as restore the community in doing so,” she said. I have found that to be true many times on our journey, where the local community hall in small rural settlements has been the focus of community life.

The road from Nethercote to the Princes Highway was much quieter than the main road through the Nethercote Valley. It altered between gravel and bitumen road, but was easy to walk. Along the way today, I was constantly being contacted on the phone by various people interested in our story. Jodie Stewart, from the Eden Magnet, wanted to meet up with us in Pambula. Sandra, the parish secretary in Pambula, rand to offer to open the Church for us. John McLaurin, the editor of the Catholic Voice archdiocesan newspaper rang to ask for some video footage for the morning edition of their roundup. I rang Chris and Ray who live in Nethercote and with whom we had dinner last night. I texted a couple who run a drop in centre in Pambula whom we met at Towamba on Anzac Day last year to see if we could “drop in”. And my Aunty Jan texted to say she was back from her holiday in Cuba and to wish me happy travels. Josh said “Stop playing with your phone all the time,” but I felt I had some obligation to get the news out on what we were doing. And of course, I was tweeting about our journey too (although there was a blank spot in the valley itself). At the same time, it did feel that it was all getting in the road of concentrating on the walking.

At the end of the road, just before we got to the Princes Highway, the Yowaka River which flowed alongside the road from Nethercote suddenly widened out and became a tidal river connected to the Pambula River. It looked so inviting, I would have loved to have gone for a swim – but we didn’t have a spare moment. We came out onto the Princes Highway – by God, that was a shock. After the peace and quiet of the country roads, we were on a busy highway in the bright sun, with constant traffic including semi-trailers and caravans and four-wheel drives towing boats. There was little space on the side of the road to walk, and the traffic was whizzing past just metres away. Take my word for it: for walkers the Princes Highway is a road TO BE AVOIDED.

As we came into South Pambula, I rang Sandra to tell her that we would be at the Church within half an hour. Little did I know that fate had placed a great temptation before us along the way: the first micro-brewery of the journey! I felt we were obligated to get to the Church, but Josh mutinied and insisted on buying us all a beer. We went into the Longstocking Brewery and met the new owners who have been there only three days (the brewery itself is about 3 years old). Josh bought us each a Bohemian Lager, and the staff gave us a free sample of Fatty Arbuckles Dark Ale as well. We were tempted to buy their aluminium “growler” for takeaway tap beer, but at least realised that that would be unwise.

So we were a bit late getting to St Peter’s Church, a beautiful “storybook” building nestled in a little glade on the hill above Pambula near the old Courthouse. The sign on the wall out the front of the Church had a fitting question: Quo Vadis? The Church itself is the oldest continually used church in the Canberra-Goulburn diocese, having been built in 1865. We were met there by Sandra, the parish secretary (who had a stamp to put in our passports), John Liston, a local historian very keen on Mary MacKillop, and Jodie Stewart from the Eden Magent. After singing the Regina Coeli and saying the Lord’s Prayer and a prayer to St Mary in the Church, we sat in the meeting room out the back so Jodie could interview us on our project. We were very interested to learn that she was doing her PhD at University of Wollongong on the cultural significance of the Bundian Way project – so she had a lot of sympathy for our own pilgrimage.

We left there at 4:20, refreshed but eager to be on our way, as the office at the Sapphire Valley Holiday Park closed at 6pm. The Pambula Inspirations drop in centre was already closed when we walked past, so we missed catching up with Pastors Rob and Robyn Nelson. We had to walk along the highway still, but the benifit now was that there was a good sealed walking trail running alongside the road all the way from Pambula to Merimbula. We thought it would be an easy walk, but we were more tired than we thought, and every step was soon an agony. It was dark before we arrived at the Park, and the office called me just as I was walking up their stairs as they were about to shut.

Our room is very nice, a “family room” for $115 a night. We showered and refreshed ourselves and rubbed lotions on our feet and muscles before heading out to the local Club for dinner. I ordered Lambs Fry as I thought I could do with the iron hit, and the other two did the same. A nice glass of Kosciusko Pale Ale washed it down. We then went around to the Woolworths and bought supplies for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. Sean and I wrote up our journals as Josh hit the sack.

It’s now half past eleven, and I desperately need to sleep. So follow me on twitter at @scecclesia – or see the side bar of this blog – and take a look at the pictures for today on Google Photos.

Update on today’s journey: we make it about 32km that we walked from our accommodation to Merimbula via Nethercote. It would have been closer to 34km had we left from the Church, but we did that little bit last night.

Today’s statistics
Planned distance: 31.33km (measured from the Church)
Measured distance by actual route (Gaia maps recording): 32.13km
Distance by iPhone Health data: 33.6km
Steps by iPhone Health data: 42,892 steps
“Flights climbed” by iPhone Health data: 78 floors
Up and Down (Gaia maps recording): 385m (-437m)
Highest altitude: 302m (The highest point on the journey is on first day)
Beach walking? No
Highway walking? Yes, several kms south of Pambula
Hours on the road: 10.5 hours (including stops)
Distance covered from Eden: 33.49km
Distance covered from Fitzroy: 723.49km

Here are the maps of today’s journey. It is fairly straightforward as we followed the road all the way.

It’s on again! Tonight we are back in Eden, NSW, where we finished off the second leg of our pilgrimage last Easter from Orbost in Victoria. To this point we had covered 690km of our overall project to walk from St Mary MacKillop’s birthplace in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, to her tomb and shrine in North Sydney. We are forging a trail that my pilgrim companion Sean Deany has dubbed “The MacKillop-Woods Way”, including in that appellation the name of the cofounder of the Order of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, Fr Julian Tenison-Woods, whose grave we will also visit when we arrive in Sydney. But that’s all for next year – this year our aim is to get to Ulladulla, about 290km to the north from here. We will also do the little bit from Ulladulla to Milton on our last day on Saturday 28 April (Deo Volente, as they say).

We have been very warmly welcomed by the Committee of the Mary MacKillop Hall and Museum. Mike and Judy Sheppard, who put us up last time we were here, are again showing us generous hospitality. Seven other members of the Hall Committee, Ray and Chris, Michael, Hilare and Mary-Lou, Vic and Marie, joined us for dinner at the Great Southern Hotel. It was good to see them all again and to share our plans and hear of their own lives in the twelve months since we were last together.

Josh had flown over from Tassie last night and stayed in Melbourne overnight before meeting Sean at the Southern Cross Station to catch the 7:20am to Bairnsdale. I had a bit of a sleep-in (!) and Cathy drove me to Dandenong where I boarded the train at 8:05am. It was the first time the three of us had been together since Orbost in 2016. Our train was stalled at Warragul because there was a broken down train on the line ahead, but we were going again in half an hour, and the trip was pleasant and uneventful for the rest of the way to Bairnsdale. We boarded the bus for Eden immediately and were soon on our way again.

It was good along the way seeing where we had walked over the past years. Again and again we would be pointing out the window and saying “There’s the trail” or “There’s where such and such happened”, or “Remember the people we met there?”. The last part of the journey, on the other side of Orbost, departed from our trail which we had taken last year to the north via Bombala, and instead followed the Princes Highway around the bend to Eden. As we went, we were confirmed in our wisdom of choosing the other route – the Princes Highway has a lot of traffic on it and there is very little room to walk on the verge. The road is monotonous too. While there are a couple of towns where you could get accomodation at first (Cabbage Creek, Cann River and Genoa are all about a day’s walk apart) after that there is nothing for about 70kms.

Just before we got into Eden at 4:15pm, I was phoned by a journalist from the Eden Magnet for an interview. We were still talking when we arrived at Eden. So all was a bit of confusion as I tried to bundle my gear off the bus, continue the phone interview and greet Mike at the same time! In the end she decided to try and catch up with us in Pambula tomorrow afternoon, when we plan to visit the Pambula Inspirations coffee shop run by pastors Rob and Robyn Nelson of the Pambula Christian community.

Mike took us around to his place, and we were greeted by Judy who had date scones and cups of tea ready for us. After talking and relaxing for a bit, Mike drove us around to the Star of the Sea Church, where we visited the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes and then went into the Church to sing the Regina Coeli, say a prayer to St Mary MacKillop, and pray the Lord’s Prayer. We then set off on the first – very short – section of the pilgrimage: from the Church back to Mike and Judy’s. This way we can start in the morning having cut off 1.5kms of a 30km day!

So now the other two are in bed, and its time I headed there too. Josh is recovering from a cold that he has had for the last week or so, and I am trying NOT to get a cold. Lots of vitamin C, fish oil and echinacea. And finally to bed so we can get up nice and early for the morning.

Today’s statistics
Planned distance: 0km
Measured distance by actual route (Gaia maps recording): 1.36km
“Flights climbed” by iPhone Health data: 13 floors
Up and Down (Gaia maps recording): 39m (-9m)
Highest altitude: 54m
Beach walking? No
Highway walking? No
Hours on the road: 17min
Distance covered from Eden: 1.36km
Distance covered from Fitzroy: 691.36km

You can follow me on Twitter as we go at @scecclesia, and also click here to see today’s photos on Google Photos.

Currently our JCMA text reading group is reading Karen Armstrong’s history of Jerusalem. We had quite a lively discussion on this, and will continue it next month after Easter/Passover when we meet on April 10.

Coincidentally, a friend of mine had contacted me on the weekend with a question about a verse that is used as a communion antiphon in the Mass for the 4th Sunday in Lent, a verse that is relevant to our discussion of the significance of Jerusalem for the three Abrahamic Faiths.

The verse in question is Psalm 122 (121) verse 3,which, in the New Revised Standard Version, reads:

Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together. 

My friend is a devotee of the Latin mass, so he was trying to make sense of the text in Latin. That reads:His problem was with the phrase highlighted, which he found hard to translate. I showed it a member of our JCMA text group, whose teaching career was in the Classics, and she too thought it was strange. It is something like “whose sharing/participation is in itself”.

It is worth keeping in mind that Jerome made that translation from the Septuagint (LXX), which is a  Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures done in the 3rd-1st Century BC. The LXX reads:The phrase there appears to something like “whose sharing/participation of it [is] towards/upon the itself”.

Here are a few more current English attempts. The Grail Version of the Psalms (which the Catholic Church uses in its daily prayer and also currently in the Service of the Word at Mass) reads:

Jerusalem, built as a city,
strongly compact.

In the current English translation of the Roman Missal (the book used for Mass), the Communion antiphon (translated from Jerome’s Vulgate) reads:

Jerusalem is built as a city
bonded as one together.

However, Jerome also did a translation from the Hebrew text – as he possessed in the 4^th Century in any case – and that is different again:

Hierusalem quae aedificaris ut civitas
cuius participatio eius simul

You will notice – even if you can’t read Latin – that there is a slight difference from the earlier translation, but the word “participatio”, meaning a communion or a sharing – is still prominent. A translation might be “of whom its participation [is] the same”?

Now, I know you are all asking, what is the “original” Hebrew text? Keeping in mind that the Masoretic text is not necessarily more ancient than either the Vulgate or LXX we have:

My rudimentary Hebrew was not good enough to translate that second phrase, so I asked my friend Rabbi Fred Morgan for his input. He replied that he would translate it as:

“Jerusalem (re)built, in which there is a joining together.” The Hebrew has echoes of groups of associates or companions being brought together once again, following the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple. So it could refer to the gathering together of the tribal groups in social (or national) harmony after the exile. Would be nice today to extend to all religious groups coming together in companionship.

And to which let all the people say: “Amen”.

Sean, Josh and I are currently planning the next section of our MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage (click here for more information), this time from Eden NSW to Ulladulla NSW. Our schedule will be as follows:

Monday 16 April: Travel Melbourne to Eden

We will be staying overnight with parishioners belonging to the Eden Catholic Parish.

Day 1. Tuesday 17 April: Eden to Merimbula (31.33km)

Starting at Our Lady Star of the Sea, Eden and walking to St Peter’s, Pambula, via the Nethercote Road and then to St Joseph’s Church in Merimbula. Staying with local parishioners.

Day 2. Wed 18 April: Merimbula to Tathra (23.95km by Coastal Route)

We will stick fairly close to the coast for this walk (unless prevented by creeks that block our way) going past Wallagoot Lake and arriving at Our Lady Star of the Sea in Tathra by the Kangarutha Track. Staying with members of the local parish.

Day 3: Thursday 19 April: Tathra to Murrah (29.41km)

Following the Tathra-Bermagui road as far as Murrah Hall. Staying the night at Bermagui (we will need a lift!) with local parishioners.

Day 4: Friday 20 April 2018: Murrah to Central Tilba (31.87km) via Bermagui

Starting off again from Murrah Hall and walking back through Bermagui (visiting Our Lady Help of Christians), we will take the Wallaga Lake Road and Bermagui Road to Central Tilba. We are staying at a B&B there.

Day 5: Sat 21 April 2018: Central Tilba to Narooma (20.18km)

We are planning a bit of a rest in Central Tilba in the morning (perhaps visiting the local market) before walking to Our Lady Star of the Sea at Narooma via the Punkalla Tilba Road, Ridge Road, the Old Highway and Wonga Road. The Narooma Parish is helping with accommodation.

Day 6: Sunday 22 April: Narooma to Bodalla (21.84km)

After Mass at Narooma we have a shortish walk along the coast to Dalmeny, a short stretch on the Princes Highway, then through the forest on Mitchell’s Ridge Road and Whittakers Creek Road, before heading back on the Highway and to St Edmund’s Church in Bodalla. We are staying at the Bodalla Arms Hotel overnight.

Day 7: Monday 23 April: Bodalla to Moruya (31.5 km)

Faced with a full day of walking on the Princes Highway, we have decided instead to take “the road less travelled” from Bodalla to Moruya, via Bumbo Road, through the forest on Western Boundary Road and Little Sugarloaf Road, coming out on Wamban Road to Sacred Heart Church, Moruya. The local parish have offered us the use of the Moruya presbytery for the night.

Day 8: Tuesday 24 April 2018: Moruya to Batemans Bay (31.89km to the Church at Batehaven)

We will take a coastal route this time, via Granite Town, Broulee, Bevian and Burri Roads, and Old Grandfather’s Road into Batemans Bay. Members of St Bernard’s Church will put us up there.

Day 9: Wednesday April 25 (Anzac Day Holiday):

A rest day at Batemans Bay.

Day 10: Thursday 26 April: Batemans Bay to Kioloa (29km from Bridge, 34km from church)

We head along the Princes Highway until we pass Durras Lake, and then head in towards the coast on Mount Agony Road and the Old Coast Road to Kioloa, where we are staying at the Kioloa Beach Holiday Park.

Day 11: Friday 27 April 2018: Kioloa to Ulladulla (28.91km)

On this day we pass out of the Canberra-Goulburn Archdiocese and enter into the Wollongong Diocese. We walk from Kioloa to Ulladulla by Murramarang Road to the mouth of Willinga Lake, then follow the Willinga Lake Walking Track to the mouth of Reedy Creek, then along the coast to Termeil Creek, and the Tabourie Village Track to the Tabourie Creek when we return to the Princes Highway into Ulladulla. We will be staying at the parish house at Milton on this, our final night on the leg of the pilgrimage, and hope to catch up with parishioners from Ulladulla.

Day 12: Saturday 18 April 2018.

Journey home.

I was asked recently to write an article for a Christian congregation’s monthly newsletter. The editor wanted me to answer the question “How to live best alongside Muslims in Australia?”

Clearly the question isn’t posed in the way that I would have put it, but nevertheless, I had a go at answering it in the limited word space I was allocated. I didn’t have long before the deadline, so what follows here is not the best researched or even the most thoughtful reply that I might have given, and clearly there is a lot more that can and must be said. But I hope it is a start for the conversation we need to have.

I have also since found myself coming back to it – especially to the two Jordan B. Peterson quotes. If there is any need to apologise for quoting Peterson (not once, but twice!), I will simply defend myself by saying that I was thinking about the question set for this article while listening to/reading his material, and these two quotations seemed apposite to the point under discussion.

You can read the article here.

We had our monthly JCMA Text Group meeting today. Sometimes we choose a genre to focus on, and sometimes a theme. Today was on the theme of “Journey”, as a number of members of our group (including myself as SCE blog readers will know) had been travelling. I chose J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem “The Road goes ever on and on”, and included Michael Leunig’s “How to get there”.

Helen brought along a poem that is included in the Union of Progressive Judaism prayer book by Rabbi Alvin Fine, “Birth is a beginning”. It is read in Progressive synagogues at the Yom Kippur evening service. It seemed to encapsulate a great deal of my own reflections on pilgrimage and living life as a pilgrimage. I reproduce it here:

Birth is a beginning
And death a destination.
And life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity
And youth to age;
From innocence to awareness
And ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion
And then, perhaps, to wisdom;

From weakness to strength
Or strength to weakness –
And, often, back again;

From health to sickness
And back, we pray, to health again;

From offense to forgiveness,
From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude,

From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding –
From fear to faith;

From defeat to defeat to defeat –
Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage,
A sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning
And death a destination.
And life is a journey,
A sacred pilgrimage –
To life everlasting.

An Australian pilgrimage trail in honour of St Mary MacKillop and her co-founder Fr Julian Tenison Woods.

For all posts on the MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage and an explanation of the undertaking, click here.

For all posts about the “Aussie Camino” from Portland to Penola, please click here. 

For all posts on the MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage and an explanation of the undertaking, click here.

Distance home to Boronia by car: 538km (6hrs 20min driving)

It is a fact often overlooked that in the centuries before the transport revolution, when people went on pilgrimage, their journey was only half finished when they reached their destination. They then had to turn around and make their way home by the same means by which they had arrived. We, on the other hand, have speedier means of transport to bring us home; nevertheless, it was still a 7.5hour drive (including breaks) for Paul. Seán and I were immensely grateful for his kind willingness to do this. Especially given that we left Eden after a rather full morning.

The day dawned sunny but still very windy. We rose early and breakfasted with the Sheppards before going around to the Hall. We wanted to have a good look at heir collection and displays before mass, as afterwards there was to be a morning tea and we wanted to make a timely start for Melbourne. The parish has made a good set up, with lots of informative displays, especially focusing on Flora MacKillop who died in the shipwreck of the Ly-ee-Moon 30 May 1886 – almost 131 years ago – at Greencape, off the Port of Eden. I was particularly struck by an original portrait of Cardinal Moran, Archbishop of Sydney and Australia’s first Cardinal. Moran visited St Mary in Sydney a few days before she died. When he left, he expressed the opinion that “I consider I have this day assisted at the deathbed of a saint”.

Following our time in the Hall, we went down to the church – Our Lady Star of the Sea – for the 9:30am mass. The altar of the church had been designed to incorporate the prow of a whaling style ship pointing out of the front. Striking indeed, but it struck me as the most effective way to prevent ad orientation celebration of the mass that I had yet encountered! The Vicar General, Fr Tony Percy – and his Labrador dog William the Conqueror – were visiting the parish to fill in for Fr James, the parish priest, who was away at the time of our visit. Fr Tony asked me to say a few words about our pilgrimage before the mass, and then spoke about St Mary during the homily. He also remembered Fr Paul Gardiner SJ, the postulator for St Mary’s cause, who died a few weeks ago. I remembered that Fr Gardiner was the priest at Penola on Palm Sunday 2014 at the end of our first Aussie Camino. On that occasion he blessed the hiking stocks that I still use and have used all the way on this part of the journey.

After the mass everyone present posed for a photo together with us in front of the altar. This is one of my favourite pictures of the whole journey. We also met Hilaire Alba, an artist who had painted a portrait of St Mary MacKillop which was installed in the church, and who had just finished work on an Our Lady of Lourdes grotto outside in the grounds of the Church which is to be consecrated in the next few weeks.  We all went up to the hall for morning tea, and while there, a reporter from the Eden Magnet came to get a more in depth story on our pilgrimage for the next editio of the paper. His name is Zach Hubber, and he is studying to be a teacher at ACU in Canberra. In the meantime he is working part-time as a journalist. He asked very intelligent questions, showing an understanding of what pilgrimage is all about. [His final article can be viewed here. It also turned out, when I returned to Melbourne, that Zach is the nephew of Brenda Hubber, who works next door to my office in the Cardinal Knox Centre as the Archdiocesan officer for Migrants and Refugees.] Zach took photos of us outside the Hall, also with the two Sisters of St Jospeh, Sr Brigid and Sr Bernadette. (Sr Brigid, by the way, grew up in the Towamba Valley, near Burragate. She returned to Eden some years ago to care for her centenarian mother before her death.)

Now it was time to say goodbye. It was just after 11am, and we thought we might catch an early lunch at the famous Boydtown landmark, the Seahorse Inn. Back in November 2014, when I first travelled through this area on my motorcycle with my brother and a mate from the Christian Motorcycle Association gathering in Stanwell Tops, we stayed at Boydtown Caravan park. We asked the proprietor whether there was somewhere to eat nearby and he said that there was a hotel down the road which we could reach by walking out onto the beach and turning right. We followed these directions, but when we got onto the beach, there were no signs of civilisation. Strongly doubting that we had heard correctly, we none-the-less turned right and walked about 200m down the beach – to come face-to-face with the most incredible country pub I have ever seen. You can read about the history of the Seahorse Inn here.

So the Inn was always on my list to visit when we were in Eden again, and I was glad to find that Seán shared this desire. I believe that Paul had been there before with his wife Frances, but was agreeable to the visit. We entered the bar and inquired about getting a light lunch, but the kitchen was not to be opened until 12noon, which was a bit of a wait and we were eager to get on the move. However, they had Grand Ridge Pale Ale – from Mirboo North – on tap, and neither Seán nor I could pass this up, despite the early hour of the day, so we each had a schooner (Paul, as our driver, was restricted to a coffee). We then headed back out to the car to get under way. But as we did, Seán spotted the old ruined Anglican Church on the hill – a feature about which I was completely ignorant until then, but for which Seán had been on the lookout. The ruins were on the top of – yes, you guessed it – another bloody hill, and a big one at that, and Seán was half way up it already. Well, it looked like we had another bit of sight-seeing to do yet. In truth, I needed little encouragement. Paul resigned himself and followed after us. It was quite a struggle to get to the top of the hill on which the red brick ruins were perched. From what I can gather, the church was never actually used, and burned down in bushfires in 1926.  The surviving ruin has a rather picturesque and gothic appearance, although the effect is rather spoiled by the wire mesh fence erected around it.

By the time we finished photographing the church, it was after 12 o’clock, and Paul decided that since we were still here we might as well return to the Inn and have lunch. I am very glad that we did. Seán and I both ordered the mussels in broth for $17, expecting that we would probably get half a dozen each. Instead we each received a mound of mussels in their shells – I counted about 2 dozen each. They were fresh and delicious. As a result of this generous lunch, I found myself falling asleep in the back seat of the car for the first hour of our journey home, waking only when we arrived in Orbost. From here on we were driving driving past places where we had walked last year. It was a strange experience knowing that we were covering in one day the distance that had taken us 25 days to walk. We stopped in Nowa Nowa at the Mingling Waters Cafe (a great spot to stop – it is a tourist attraction in its own right apart from the excellent food) for afternoon tea, and in Sale at MacDonalds for dinner. I mentioned that I had been listening to John Cleese’s autobiography – read by the author – and Paul suggested that I put it on for us all to listen to as we were travelling. It provided good humour and also an interesting accompaniment on the long journey home.  We got into Melbourne at about 8:30pm, and dropped Seán at the train station, before heading around to my place to unpack. I thanked and farewelled Paul – who is leaving next Wednesday for Italy and his 6-week bike tour from Sicily to Lake Como – and that was the end of the pilgrimage for 2017.

Personally, arriving home is one of my favourite parts of going on pilgrimage. The familiar, seen through eyes grown accustomed to the unfamiliar, is immensely comforting. Nevertheless, no matter what level of nirvana or spiritual enlightenment one may have achieved on pilgrimage, day-to-day concerns instantly impinge themselves back into your life. In my case, I arrived back to find that my wife had gone to be with a friend whose husband had had a heart-attack, my youngest daughter was out with friends, and – of course – remembering that my oldest daughter had recently moved out of home. As a result, my homecoming was like that of the man in the fairy-tale: the first one to welcome me home was the dog.

Later, I tweeted: “Well, I’m back”. I thought I was quoting Bilbo Baggins from the ending of The Hobbit, but a quick bit of research proved that the quote comes from Sam Gamgee upon his return from seeing Frodo off at Grey Havens. But in The Hobbit, I found the following verse from Bilbo:

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

All photos for today’s journey can be found in my Google Photos by clicking this link!

For all posts on the MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage and an explanation of the undertaking, click here.

MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage 2017: Day Nine (26 April) – Towamba to Eden NSW

Distance: 30.84km. Total Distance from Orbost: 252.34km. Total Distance from Fitzroy: 690km.

I woke before dawn on the last day of the 2017 leg of the MacKillop-Woods Way to make a visit to the facilities outside. Coming back into the hall, I thought I saw large spiders on the door, but they were in fact moths. Back inside I crawled into my sleeping bag again, but heard rustling from the others which indicated that they were both awake too, so we switched on the lights and began to get packing. There was a sense of excitement about completing the walk, but also a kind of resignation: aches and pains had to be borne and overcome just for this one more push over the mountain.

And the walk into Eden from Towamba is one of the longer days on the Way, and also one of the more challenging, as there is a rise of over 300m to climb up to Nullica Hill before coming down the other side. My small blisters from the day before had been reabsorbed on my toes but the little one on my right heel was still there, so I bandaged my feet up with sticking plaster to be on the safe side and determined to walk in my shoes rather than change to my sandals half way through the day as had been my practice so far (I think it was my sandals that gave me the blisters yesterday).

The morning was fine – no sign of the predicted rain or wind – and we were packed and on our way at 7:45am. Paul dropped us at the Towamba turnoff on the other side of the river and headed off toward Eden for a day of cycling. The school bus passed us on the road, as NSW was back to school today following the Easter Holidays and Anzac Day. Within five minutes Paul was heading back in our direction, waving the key to the hall at us as an explanation for his unexpected return.

The road begins climbing out of the Towamba River valley almost immediately. There are some lovely last views of the valley on the way up the hill. The road alternates between sealed and gravel, but everywhere is wide enough for two cars to pass. The traffic was quite light, despite the fact that we were back walking on a business day. The road serves only as an access road from Eden to Towamba – there are no other places along the way, so everyone coming and going are locals. It is about 30kms to Eden, and after 7km from Towamba at Mitchells Creek until about 11km at Ben Boyd Road the road does the whole 300m climb in one constant hit. It isn’t as steep as Big Jack Mountain Road, but it is steeper than the Bonang Highway at any point. So we really felt it in my knees by the time we got to the top. Then the road levels off for a while as the road goes along a ridge in which it is possible to see views on both sides of the road. To the south is the very large Mount Imlay at over 800m.

Early on going up the hill, you pass a track called The Snake Track; we had considered it as an alternative route that would take us down to Boydtown on the highway (where there is a caravan park at which we originally thought we might stay until we found out how expensive the cabin was). It is 5km further to the highway than along the Towamba Road, and while both tracks have an overall descent of about 100m, Snake Track has 594m of climb to 691m of descent, whereas the main road is 361m climb to 469m descent. In other words, don’t be tempted to take it. In any case, just the name of it should be enough to put you off taking that route. Out of interest, we didn’t see one live snake on the whole trip, although Paul claims he drove over one on the Bonang Highway on the first day.

We stopped for a rest where Ben Boyd Road joins the Eden Road from the North (it exits the Eden Road again toward the South a kilometre or so further down the road). I checked my feet and all seemed well blister-wise – the bandages were working. I noticed that we were back within phone range, so I rang Cathy, Josh and my parents (in that order) to check in with them after the three days that we had been out of contact. Michael Sheppard, our host for our stay in Eden, also rang to ask if we were still on target for 5pm, which I confirmed.

After eating some fruit, we got going again. The temperature began to drop and the sky darkened quite suddenly – much like it had a few days earlier on our way to Bombala. So I stopped again to put on my wet weather gear – and it almost instantly brightened up again. That’s how wet weather gear keeps you dry when you are walking: after you go to all the trouble of putting it on, the sun comes out.

I took so long putting on my gear that I became separated from Seán by quite some distance. As I came up to the point where the road passes Nullica Hill (about 2kms from where we had stopped earlier on), Paul drove up the road. He was bringing an offering of coffee (a large flat white for me and a large double shot latte for Seán) and cake which he had picked up from a cafe in Eden. But had he not passed Seán further up the road? No. How odd. So I rang him and found that he had stopped too, and I must have walked right past him. This was the second time on the road that we become separated, and then walked right past one another when we were trying to catch up again (the other time was just before we got to The Gap on Day 3). It happens very easily, and if you don’t have phone contact can be a worry. I thought about this later and realised that one piece of equipment we should have brought along is a whistle each for us to blow to locate each other. Paul in fact confirmed that when he goes bush walking with his friends, they each take a whistle. Good idea.

Anyway, Paul went off to collect Seán and when he got back we sat down to our coffee and cake and the rest of our lunch which Paul had brought with him. It felt a little like cheating to be drinking a coffee brought up from our destination before we got there, but what the heck! I was surprised that it was still quite hot, despite having been made 10 miles away. We ate quickly because it was now starting to rain lightly. After packing our leftovers back into the car, Paul drove off and we resumed our walk. Almost immediately we noticed that we were on the other side of the hill, and caught a glimpse of what we thought might just have been Eden through the trees. In accordance with tradition, we stopped to pray and give thanks to God that we could see our pilgrimage destination. But we might have been mistaken.

About 7km from the Princes Highway the sealed road began again and we continued our slow descent down the hill. After a while we came to another turn off, this time for the Nullica Short Cut Road. It is a short cut to Boydtown, not to Eden (if you are heading to Eden it will increase your walk by 1.6km including a good stretch of the Princes Highway), but it does avoid a very big hill after crossing Nullica River. At this stage the phrase “Not another bloody hill” was becoming well and truly entrenched in my conversational repertoire. There comes a point when you really can’t face another degree of “up”.

Finally, finally we made it to the highway. In fact, we were making very good time – it was 3pm, and by my reckoning we had only 4kms to go (I was wrong on this – even by the main road we had 5.5kms), and so I rang Michael Sheppard and texted Paul saying that we would be at the Mary MacKillop Hall in about an hour’s time at 4pm. As it turned out, I was quite wrong about this. The main reason was that we wanted to do the last few kilometres into Eden on the Bundian Way, which we had located on the map along the foreshore around the bay into Eden.

So we were now on the Princes Highway, and in case we had forgotten why we chose to walk the long way around from Orbost to Eden, we were now definitively reminded: traffic. Lots and lots of traffic and very little room to walk on the side of the road. The bridge over the Shadrachs Creek – single lane in each direction – had no space for pedestrians. This was somewhat surprising given that the bridge is the only way to cross the Creek from the Eden Beachfront Caravan Park (where we caught our first glimpse of the Tasman Sea) to the township of Eden. When you walk a lot, you become aware how very little consideration road-makers and town planners ever give to pedestrians. Having successfully crossed the bridge without being hit by passing cars and trucks, we walked in the bush for a bit to avoid the road. It was then that we came to a track which I thought was a driveway, but which seemed to be leading somewhere. In fact, it led down towards the shorefront, and became a rough track through the bush down to the beach of Quarantine Bay. I think we had found a section of the Bundian Way which had not yet been developed or signposted. When we walked down onto the beach, I dipped my hand into the waves and made the sign of the cross. We had made it from Melbourne to the Eastern shoreline of New South Wales.

On the other side of Quarantine Bay Road, we found the proper start of the recently developed initial section of the Bundian Way. We could tell that the development was recent, because the fresh wooden information boards had no information on them yet. The track was well marked though, and there were seats along the way and many well situated lookouts over the bay. Also a circular stepped structure which appeared to have been designed for indigenous educators to tell stories to school students and other visitors. Seán called it “The Dreamtime Globe Theatre”. This little section of the Bundian Way is winding and interesting with many good views of the bays (you can see the Seahorse Inn at Boydtown from one lookout) and of Eden itself. Discounting our earlier possible sighting of Eden from Nullica Hill, we now knelt down and said an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be in thanksgiving. I am actually very glad that we could finish our pilgrimage on the Bundian Way. This trail is obviously of great significance to the local community and the original custodians of the land. It is far more ancient than any Christian pilgrimage path anywhere in the world. We might have been the first people to ever walk this section of the MacKillop-Woods Way, but thousands of generations of aboriginal people had walked this trail from the coast to the highest mountain on the Australian mainland.

We came out onto Bungo Beach at the bottom of Ida Road Drive. Which. Is. A. Hill. A very big hill. “Not another bloody hill,” I exclaimed. From the beach it is a 60m climb over 0.75km up to Mitchell Street, the main road into Eden. The sun was setting as we walked down the street entering into Eden. We passed the National Timber Workers Memorial to our left, took note of the location of the VLine bus stop which we will make use of next year, and took a selfie outside the Halfway Hotel. Seán then spotted the Tourist Information office, and suggested that we should go inside to get a stamp in our pilgrim passports. The wind had been blowing hard against us as and it was with some relief that we entered the shelter of the office. When we explained who we were, the lady behind the counter recognised us from the newspaper story in the Magnet and happily obliged with giving us a nice Eden whale stamp. Another visitor to the office also recognised us and made the usual expected exclamations about how far we had come and gave words of encouragement. I bought two souvenir magnets for the fridge at home – one had a map of Victoria with Eden on the far right and the other matching one was a map of southern NSW with Eden on the bottom. They may a good pair, covering all our journey, and I decided to get three extra sets, one each for the other pilgrims, including Josh.

I now received a text from Paul saying “Where are you? There are people waiting”. Our final journey into town had taken us more than twice as long as I had anticipated, but it was just after 5pm when we struggled up (yes) another hill on Calle Calle Street until we could see the white spire of the Church in the distance. On the way we passed the Catholic Primary School – but oddly with a big “sold” sign outside. I wondered what the story behind that was? Just past the War Memorial we saw the open doors of Mary MacKillop Hall, the official pilgrimage destination for St Mary of the Canberra-Goulburn Archdiocese.

Inside, waiting for us out of wind, was our driver and fellow pilgrim Paul, Michael Sheppard and other members of the Mary MacKillop Hall Committee and two resident members of St Mary MacKillop’s order of the Sisters of St Joseph, Sr Bernadette and Brigid. Tea and scones and cake too! All were very welcoming. The hall was clearly filled with a great deal of information about St Mary’s life, but at this point we were too exhausted to take it in. After the refreshments we said goodbye to the Sisters until tomorrow (when we would return to the Hall for a closer investigation and to the Church for Mass) and Michael took us around to his home where we would be staying the night. Michael and Judy’s home was well set up for welcoming us – we each had beds and a bathroom to share downstairs in their home. We showered and changed into fresh clothes and, feeling somewhat restored, we went upstairs to sit and relax and talk with Judy and Michael for a bit. They then drove us around to the Great Southern Hotel for dinner. Other members of the Mary MacKillop Hall Committee joined us – Michael and Bernadette, Ray and Chris, and (just to make it easier for us to remember names) another Michael! The locals also gave us a lot of helpful information for the next section of the journey and asked us to keep in touch with them as our plans took shape so that they could assist us further. It was really wonderful how they all welcomed us and we had great conversation, laughter and food for the evening. We were one of the first to arrive in the bistro and the last to leave.

Back at the Sheppard’s home, we did not stay up but went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

All photos for today’s journey can be found in my Google Photos by clicking this link!

For all posts on the MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage and an explanation of the undertaking, click here.

MacKillop-Woods Way Pilgrimage 2017: Day Eight (25 April) – Other side of Burragate to Towamba

Distance: 16.58km Total: 221.15km

I woke just a bit before dawn and went outside to see pink skies. Red in the morning… and all that. I had slept fairly well, but Seán said he hadn’t got any sleep at all because his air mattress was too thin.

We all got going quite quickly, so that after a quick breakfast and a cup of tea Paul was driving us back to the point 15kms from the Towamba turn-off the other side of Burragate. Seán was feeling a little seedy – he blamed it on mixing beer with wine last night, and so was moving fairly slowly. I was keen to move as fast as possible to avoid the rain. A few spots began to fall just as Paul dropped us off, and so to save bother I pulled on my wet weather gear trousers and poncho, and put my iphone inside its waterproof protective cover (a snap-lock plastic bag!). As usual, this worked like a charm to ward of the rain. Interestingly, as we walked back to Towamba, we noticed puddles in the potholes on the road, and were told that over one millimetre of rain had fallen to the south of us. However, despite a few drops, we were completely clear of rain for the rest of the journey, getting into Towamba just after noon.

Or rather I did. Seán was quite some distance behind me. After the end of Big Jack Mountain Road in Burragate (a village which had a number of interesting features to divert the avid photographer – such as the line of novelty post boxes) we became separated once more. I moved along at a nice pace, but after a little while one of my toes began to hurt, so I stopped for some footcare. I wore my sandals only on today’s walk, on the idea that if it rained, they could easily dry out (much more easily than my shoes). However, I think this, in addition to the strain on my toes coming down the mountain yesterday, led to a small blister on one of my smaller toes on my right foot and another small blister beginning to form on my heel on the same foot. After applying bandaids to the affected areas and putting on an extra sock, I set off again.

There was still a lot of mist around in the valley which actually hung around all day. I couldn’t quite work out why, as it was quite warm and also rained a little. About 7kms from Towamba, Paul road past on his bike. We took some pictures of each other, and then he road on to Rocky Hall while I kept on toward Towamba. It was a welcome sight to come over the hill and see Towamba in the misty valley ahead.

Along the way, I had been listening to the piano music of Dustin O’Halloran and Joel Beving, which really suited the countryside and the misty/rainy weather. I have a little rechargeable bluetooth speaker which connects to my iPhone, and on which I can play my music out loud as if I had a soundtrack going to my walk (I was always rather keen on the idea from the Amy McBeal show about everyone having their own soundtrack to their lives). Yesterday I listened to Penguin Cafe Orchestra walking through Rocky Hall and Andrei Krylov in the forest coming down the mountain. On Sunday I had listened to the hymns of Katherine Jenkins and Maddy Prior. (Other artists on my pilgrim playlist over the last week have been Loreena McKennit, Iron & Wine, the Bryan Ferry (Jazz) Orchestra, Lenka and Angèle Dubeau.)

Around 11:30am I crossed the river into the village of Towamba and climbed up the hill to the Hall. On the way, I passed the Anglican Church (now used ecumenically) and a little cottage next to it (which had just been sold – although no one I spoke to knows how much for). At this point, Tony and Joy Ovington drove past in their ute and stopped to say hullo. The Anzac Day march had gone off well, marching from the Church to the Hall. Many of the folk were just finishing up there with morning tea and scones, so if I hurried I could share in these bounties. Also, they warned, the weekly spinning group is up there under the verandah. That was intriguing.

Walking up the hill I met a man and his son walking down from the Hall. The son was wearing his great-grandfathers medals from the Second World War. We stopped and chatted a little and then I kept climbing up the hill. I passed a little cottage with a sign out the front “free tea and coffee”. I thought “I bet Seán can’t resist that.” I pushed on up the road, and walked up the drive to the hall to find it all as Tony and Joy had said. The next hour or so was spent happily chatting to the locals and all who had come from the march and for the spinning group. Among the people we met were a pentecostal pastor-couple from Pambula, Rob and Robyn Nelson. We fell to talking and exchanging information about the area and possible places to stay along the MWW which we had missed (including: The old school house in Craigie, The Old Nurses Home in Delegate, and the Rocky Hall Preschool – which is used five days a fortnight and is available as accomodation on the other days). We swapped information and plan to catch up again next year as we head north from Eden.

Also among the folk there was Kaye, who was working in the “library” in the hall, sorting donated books. After an hour or so, it began to rain in earnest, and I thought it strange that Seán had not yet arrived. I expressed some concern and Kaye offered to drive me off to look for him. Just as we were heading past the little cottage with the “free tea and coffee” sign, Kaye said “Is that him?”. I looked back to see Seán exiting the house with a large something under his arm. “Yes, it is”, I answered and we turned around and bade him get in out of the rain. He had been to visit Vickie, the resident of the little cottage, and she had loaned him a fold up foam mattress to use as a bed. “And she is an artist and she has invited us to come back at 3pm for a cup of tea”, he announced. Of course, had we been just a minute earlier, we would have driven passed and missed him and then been totally mystified as to his whereabouts.

Back at the hall, one of the spinning ladies kindly offered us her lunch which she didn’t feel like eating – corned beef and veggies! Seán and I heated this up in the microwave – it was delicious. Seán then had a bit of a lie down on his new bed and caught some sleep while I worked out our finances for the journey. In all to this point it has cost us around $1000 in total, which is about $50 a day for Seán and me each, or $33 a day if you count all three of us. Not bad – but due to a lot of generosity in terms of accomodation.

At 3pm Seán and I went as promised to visit Vickie. She is an artist who is currently working on several portraits of aboriginal subjects. She has not been painting portraits for long, but she has a real knack for it. Her studio was warm, light and comfortable with a couple of hanging swing chairs to sit in as we watched her work on her current project. We then went inside for a cup of tea and an Anzac Plus biscuit, that is, a traditional oat Anzac biscuit with added nuts and fruit. The house itself is an original hand split timber building of two main rooms which has been extended over the years. She has peeled back the coverings of the walls to expose the original timbers – and often the original wall paper too. She has many of her artworks on the walls, but honestly I was more interested in the walls themselves which was a part of the history of the town. She is an authentically artistic spirit – even her cupboard of preserves and biscuit tins was arranged in an artistically pleasing way! Vickie was keen to talk about a number of spiritualist topics – angels and Kabbala mainly and her own philosophy which she has written up in a book (a copy of which she gave to Seán). I think I disappointed her a little, in being to conventional in my thinking. As we were leaving, she called us back to show us her sheep in the back yard. But as she did so, once again my attention was diverted to a new work of art – God’s sunset over the valley. The light was again utterly sublime and lighted up everything from the trees to the face of the mountain on the other side of the river. My heart lifted at the sight in just the same way as it did when I saw the rainbow over Florence a few weeks ago.

Back at the Hall again, Paul was already cooking up the beef curry. We spent an hour or so talking, drinking beer, and (at least in my case) writing up my blog before we had dinner. Just as we were finishing dinner and talking over the last half bottle of wine, there was a knock at the door and we had a visitor. I had met “Arch” (his surname is, apparently, Bishop, hence the nickname) at the morning tea after the march this morning. Living nearby, he had decided to come around for a chat. We shared our last glass of wine with him (the camino spirit?), and told him what we were doing. In return, he offered to demonstrate his own line of business: story telling and recitations of Australian poems. So he delighted and amused us with four renditions, including the Dyslexic Cinderella, the man who went to see the Pope, The Three Christmas Visitors, and a love poem of his own composition. It reminded me of the time on my third Aussie Camino when the husband of the director of the Mary MacKillop Centre in Penola recited The Man From Snowy River and other poems at the final dinner. We also looked at the map of Eden together and have discovered a short section of the end of the Bunian Way which will bring us into Eden by a more pleasant route than the main A1 Princes Highway.
It was ten o’clock when Arch left, and it was time for us to hit the sack. Tomorrow is the last day of this leg of the journey. My little blisters need rest and we need to get up early in the morning. One more day…

All photos for today’s journey can be found in my Google Photos by clicking this link!