HISTORY’S FOOTSTEPS

HUNDREDS of flying foxes are hanging from trees everywhere above my head, their deafening shrieks drilling into my skull. I’ve lost the path in this smelly, claustrophobic mess of creepy vines and pointy wings. There’s a rush of air behind me, something clammy brushes against my arm. Spooked, I hunt for the exit.

I have just completed a 175km walk in the spirit of explorer Clement Hodgkinson (1818-1893). But it is only at the finish line, when I dip into the lowland rainforest on Bellingen Island, that I understand how much harder the journey was for Hodgkinson.

Only 21 years old, newly qualified as a civil engineer and with an inheritance in his pocket, Clement Hodgkinson arrived in Sydney in 1839. Heading north, he worked as a contract surveyor and ran cattle at Yarra-Bandini on the Macleay River, just beyond the edge of colonial settlement in NSW. Rumours of giant red