IN SEARCH OF PARADISE
“It’s gone up to three now”, Laura says, doing an excellent impression of the world’s least enthusiastic auctioneer. She’s giving me the weather forecast while we pack for a six-day hike on Fraser Island, and in an hour it’s gone from one mm of rain to three. Soon her phone will update the prognosis to five mills. Then ten. The groans grow louder.
Laura is a far more accomplished hiker than me, and no stranger to adverse conditions. She’s a lean, determined woman who walked the length of New Zealand on the Te Araroa trail. Her book Bewildered tells the story of that 3000km journey and the challenges she encountered along the way, but this trip was supposed to be a pleasant escape from winter in the southern states. She planned to do the hike last year, but it was closed due to fire danger and neither of us was anticipating a rain-soaked trip. Perhaps the fact that it’s the only place in the world where a rainforest grows from sand should have given us a hint. On the plus side, at least the track won’t turn to mud.
A short ferry ride takes us across the sheltered Sandy Strait, and then we’re off. We make excellent time, covering almost 25km in the first hour as a
