Beta
Hard time through COVID
This goes back to 2020, which was a difficult year for all of us. A few things I think made it particularly difficult for me. One was that I was working in the health care sector at the time. So I was very early aware of the potential impact of COVID and how it had to be managed.
At the same time I've got two daughters, one who was living with me at the time and the other one lived in Northern New South Wales, who both had medical emergencies. My daughter who was living here had to go to Melbourne for treatment that was only available there.
While she was in Melbourne, I ended up having to go up to Northern New South Wales to care for my other daughter up there and her kids. I flew back into Tasmania on one of the last flights back in. The flight crew were talking about the fact that they wouldn't have jobs tomorrow.
So it was sort of an accumulation of things that were happening.
And I came back into being in my house on my own, and the mountain had always been a place for me that I could walk to and be at peace in nature. But the park was closed. I couldn't walk there.
Project: walk every trail
When the park reopened in May and we could go back on the mountain again, I decided on a project of walking every trail in the mountain park. I didn't quite realize how many there were when I started it.
For the rest of that year, after a very difficult time, that project gave me a lot of time in nature which was great in itself, but it also gave me a purpose.
It was something I was working towards, and I did walk every trail except the ones which come in from private property and have no access. I took this map with me each time I walked, and as I walked every time I marked off the tracks that I'd walked on. So if you open the map out you'll see all of the trails on the mountain marked where I walked that year.
800 km of walking
It ended up being nearly 800 kilometres of walking. Obviously there's a lot of duplication in that, there’s not quite that many tracks in the mountain park. It was something that, out of a very difficult time in life, gave me a focus, gave me a purpose, and gave me that time just out there, decompressing, walking, and experiencing this incredible park.
We look up at that mountain and we think that what we see there is the mountain park. And yes there are lots of trails up that side of the mountain, but you get over the top and head out the other direction and you're basically connected right through into the Southwest Wilderness.
It's a totally different area, it's wild, it's remote and that's one of the amazing things about the mountain.
Just this incredible variety of landscape that you get. So even from here, if you walk up the mountain you go through a whole series of different environments, and it just keeps going.
It just has so much to offer as an incredible piece of nature. And it's right here. You literally can walk to the top of the mountain from the city and back in a day.
David Day
Hard time through COVID
This goes back to 2020, which was a difficult year for all of us. A few things I think made it particularly difficult for me. One was that I was working in the health care sector at the time. So I was very early aware of the potential impact of COVID and how it had to be managed.
At the same time I've got two daughters, one who was living with me at the time and the other one lived in Northern New South Wales, who both had medical emergencies. My daughter who was living here had to go to Melbourne for treatment that was only available there.
While she was in Melbourne, I ended up having to go up to Northern New South Wales to care for my other daughter up there and her kids. I flew back into Tasmania on one of the last flights back in. The flight crew were talking about the fact that they wouldn't have jobs tomorrow.
So it was sort of an accumulation of things that were happening.
And I came back into being in my house on my own, and the mountain had always been a place for me that I could walk to and be at peace in nature. But the park was closed. I couldn't walk there.
Project: walk every trail
When the park reopened in May and we could go back on the mountain again, I decided on a project of walking every trail in the mountain park. I didn't quite realize how many there were when I started it.
For the rest of that year, after a very difficult time, that project gave me a lot of time in nature which was great in itself, but it also gave me a purpose.
It was something I was working towards, and I did walk every trail except the ones which come in from private property and have no access. I took this map with me each time I walked, and as I walked every time I marked off the tracks that I'd walked on. So if you open the map out you'll see all of the trails on the mountain marked where I walked that year.
800 km of walking
It ended up being nearly 800 kilometres of walking. Obviously there's a lot of duplication in that, there’s not quite that many tracks in the mountain park. It was something that, out of a very difficult time in life, gave me a focus, gave me a purpose, and gave me that time just out there, decompressing, walking, and experiencing this incredible park.
We look up at that mountain and we think that what we see there is the mountain park. And yes there are lots of trails up that side of the mountain, but you get over the top and head out the other direction and you're basically connected right through into the Southwest Wilderness.
It's a totally different area, it's wild, it's remote and that's one of the amazing things about the mountain.
Just this incredible variety of landscape that you get. So even from here, if you walk up the mountain you go through a whole series of different environments, and it just keeps going.
It just has so much to offer as an incredible piece of nature. And it's right here. You literally can walk to the top of the mountain from the city and back in a day.
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