JUBILEE PILGRIMAGE TO THE TOP

It was Cathy at the old Morton Telegraph Station on the Wenlock River who showed me the page in her Lonely Planet Guide to Outback Australia which contained the statement that "less people have walked to Cape York than have climbed Mt Everest!"

Somehow that statement helped me to clarify a response for those people who were asking me "Why, why are you doing it?" This year, apart from being the Jubilee Year 2000, was also the year I turned 50 and walking from Mareeba to Cape York at the top of Australia was to be a type of pilgrimage, a challenge that was both physical and spiritual.

The distance from Mareeba to the top of Cape York is just under 1000 kilometres (934 kilometres as near as I can figure it) and there were five weeks in which I could take to do it. That meant having to walk at least 2000 kilometres a week or about 30 kilometres a day. A week or so before I left Ralph Madigan, a Mareeba parishioner, and myself drove 200 kilometres up the road I would follow marking off 30 kilometre stages on the may so that, by the end of the first week, I would have some idea as to how I was going. Another friend of mine, Bob Shailer from Ravenshoe, undertook to put out caches of water for me along the road over this initial stage.

Then on Monday 10 July at 3.40am I simply shouldered my pack, walked out the front door of the house and took the road north. In the pack there was a bed-roll, six pairs of socks, a clean shirt, four collapsible water-bottles each with a capacity of a little over two litres, a quart pot and a supply of rice, dried fruit and muesli bars which was to be the staple diet on the way. The weight of the pack was anything up to 25 kilograms depending on how much water was being carried.

The road I travelled took me up through Mount Molloy across the Palmer River and over the Byers Town Range to Lakeland. After Lakeland it was a dirt road heading on through Laura and the Hann River and Musgrave Roadhouses before coming to Coen. Coen was about half way and I had a rest day there spending two nights at the Homestead Guest House run by Mrs Irene Taylor. After Coen it was on to the Archer River Roadhouse then a long day stage to the old Moreton Telegraph Station. From there it was straight up the Telegraph Road, across the Jardine River at the ferry, through Bamaga and on the Pajinka (the top of Cape York).

To cover that distance in the time available it was necessary to stick to a fairly disciplined and relentless programme, usually starting walking each day before first light and going on until close to dark. The longest distance covered in any one day was 52 kilometres and the average daily distance over the whole journey was 33.4 kilometres. Every hour or so the walking was broken by a rest stop of 10 to 15 minutes with generally a longer break during the hottest part of the day. During these breaks my practice was to walk a short distance off the track, lie on my back in whatever shade I could find and look up at the sky through the trees. The walking itself, in the heat and the dust, was often very tiring and monotonous but the breaks during the day and the evening camp were always special times of quiet peacefulness and a sort of exhausted feeling of well-being. The physical effort of the journey made no real demands on the mind but rather allowed it to unwind and my thoughts to go where they please. Moving at walking pace through that vast area of wilderness lent itself easily to reflecting on the presence of God in this ancient land and to a sort of spirituality of endurance - the endurance of God, the endurance of the land and my own endurance. There was also very much the sense of being on the road, on "the way", and the idea of life itself as a journey leading us from birth through death to the fulness of life. The rosary, too, was a great companion. It proved to be an ideal pilgrim prayer and the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries were part of each day's routine.

As I walked a verse from one or another of the psalms would come to mind at various times. For example, walking up through the escarpment country around Laura there was:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains:
from where shall come my help?
My help shall come from the Lord
who made heaven and earth.

Through some of the long dry stages, camping upon many a dry creek bed, I felt deeply the meaning of:

Like the deer that yearns
for running streams,
so my soul is yearning
for you my God.

Along some of the lonlier parts of the journey there was comfort to be had from one of the hymns from the Church's Morning Prayer:

Alone with none but thee, my God,
I journey on my way;
What need I fear, when thou art near,
O King of night and day?

Looking up into the wonder of the clear night sky there was:

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
The moon and the stars which you arranged,
who are we that you should keep us in mind,
mortal beings that you care for us?

Over the final stages with the end of the pilgrimage drawing closed I could feel the anticipation of:

They are happy, whose strength is in you,
in whose hearts are the roads to Sion.
They walk with ever growing strength,
they will see the God of gods in Sion.

Verses from other songs and poems came to mind as well. Of all these, perhaps the lines I could identify with most of all came from my old favorite Henry Lawson. In one of his lesser known poems he writes of:

A long dry stretch of thirty miles I've tramped this broilin' day,
The sinews in my legs seem drawn, red-hot -'n that's the truth;
I seem to weigh a ton, and ache like one tremendous tooth;
I'm stung between my shoulder-blades - my blessed back seems broke;
I'm too knocked out to eat a bite - I'm too knocked up to smoke.

Often enough, after a long days walk, I knew exactly what poor old Henry had gone through.

The walk was very much a solo venture but along the way I would wave to any vehicle that passed me, either from the north or the south, mainly to reassure them that I was not in need of any help. Many still stopped, however, to ask how I was going or if I required water or some other assistance and some were very kind and generous.

Surprisingly, perhaps, for tropical Far North Queensland the country itself was mostly dry open bushland with little wildlife to be seen. Birds and insects (especially flys and ants) were fairly abundant and there were various types of kangaroos, wild pigs, dingoes and lizards and I managed to see just one emu, one snake and one feral cat. But each morning, as the first light of day dawned, the numerous tracks evident in the dust of the road spoke of a much greater unseen movement of wildlife.

In all, the journey took 28 days to complete. On the second last day I camped just nine kilometres short of the top. Then on the final day I arrived at my destination at 8.30am and spent an hour there on the rocky point looking out onto York and Eborac Island, listening to the wind and the sea. It was 6 August, the feast of the transfiguration and while, after 28 days on the road, my clothes were anything but "dazzling white" there was, as I stood there on the top of Australia, a deep sense of gratitude and of God's great love and care for me.

Fr Robert Greenup OSA.
The Catholic Leader, 10th September 2000, Pg 12.

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