One year ago I said me and my friends had BEGUN the Aussie 'Great North Walk'.  well we've finished it now!  This bushwalk  (http://www.thegreatnorthwalk.com) connects New South Wales’ two largest cities from the obelisk in Australia’s first planned town square to the wharf from which its oldest home-built steamship still sails in over 250 kilometres of history, mystery and fascination. The trail only just turned 21 in 2009 although some paths are many tens of thousands of years old; it has been completed in 66 hours and is walked over decades; its story impinges on diverse faiths passing Australia’s largest provincial Anglican cathedral while the walk’s highest peak – Mt Warrawolong (641 m) – is the site of Aboriginal ceremonies; be amazed to walk right beside examples of the oldest rock engravings in the world and modern street art; cross dramatic and beautiful waterways by means as diverse as the world’s widest steel-arch bridge to its oldest operating river postman’s boat; be puzzled by en route mysteries including more than a dozen murders, disappearances and inexplicable deaths; wind past the southern hemisphere’s largest salt-water swimming pool,  the park dedicated to our longest-lived cartoon character, the site of the first coal mine and see where the first Brooklyn Railway Bridge (1890) was erected on the deepest pier then plumbed (49.4 m).  I do hope you'll forgive me if I say walking it was DAM hard!

I've just heard of a new novel called The Great North Walk Companion: in celebration of the 21^st birthday of the Great North Walk, this ramblers’ novel recounts a family mystery as the identity of Billie’s walking ‘companion’ is revealed.  Readers walking this track for the first time and those recapturing an earlier encounter will enjoy this literary, historical and environmental treasure hunt along Australia’s most accessible wilderness trail. More about the mysterious “Companion” can be found at  http://www.thegreatnorthwalk.com/companion