Grief, sorrow, fear – of course those things weave into your conscious and unconscious mind, robbing you of your balance & your sleep. But something physical, to do with aging, to do with the treatments, I never quite pinned it down, but there was a combination of things interfering with my sleep. I really couldn’t go more than 2 hours without having to get up and do a wee or at a minimum stare at the ceiling for a bit.

The chance to do a bit of laundry in Maclean meant my clothes weren’t too bad (later in the walk, I laughed off this kind of discomfort), but I had slept quite poorly – weather had hit overnight and there was a cold breeze along the river – but worse, the tarp had a few little micro-leaks, and I was unlucky with position, a cold trickle of water dribbling down my back. (And in the driving rain you just have to tolerate it.

Almost immediately, got hit with more on-again-off-again rain. I was only a few kilometres out of Ulmarra, so my plan was to walk into town, get a bite of food, and do a bit of a stock-take, figure out how far to Grafton, a rough plan on the day’s end-goal and where I’d look to camp.

You see, the BIG WALK was about rebuilding myself. A pilgrimage where I unplugged everything in my life, stripped it all back to the raw basics, and processed all the congealed stuff (grief, sorrow, anger, confusion, pain, guilt, remorse). In doing this, I had this opportunity to mindfully rebuild – to CHOOSE who I wanted to be, going forward.

So from time to time I’d have these little ethical moments where I’d genuinely have to stop and consider something – in many cases a simple thing, something you may have learned as a child, and either accept, modify or reject/discard.

My encounter with the Johns & Di from the night before raised a couple of these with me, mostly themed around intolerance.

We spoke about this new prison, geared toward rehabilitation, and I was realising there’s not much forgiveness in me .. at least I apply that standard to myself as well as others. Not that I specifically judge or concoct horrible punishments in my mind – I think I’m a compassionate person. But if you’ve committed a violent crime, your rehabilitation is my least concern. Protecting innocent people, making sure you are not a threat to society with your stealing, breaking, hurting and taking – that matters more. It’s just my view, an old man who should be kinder, I guess.

The other is how one of the Johns, who heads the RFB, really struck me as having self-doubt and PTSD after going through the bushfires. He’d suffered abuse and criticism from keyboard warriors, I think because the focus was on saving lives as a priority over property – so there was this “you could have done better!” reproach. I guess I had that percolating in the back of my mind too – that we should honour people who do (or even try to do) the right thing. As individuals we can shine, we are gorgeous – but as groups we really can misbehave, it’s almost like in a group we allow our individual ethics and compassion to drop to the lowest common denominator. I guess I felt a fuming kind of intolerance for that mistreatment as well – the way we can treat each other sometimes .. the idea of bullying.

Oh crap. Incoherent old man ramble.

Sorry.

Let’s chuck up some pictures of the walk to Grafton, before I get started again 🙂

Actually first, a quick anecdote from Ulmarra – after the livestream I popped into the local petrol station to buy a sausage roll for breakfast, and the woman serving stared at me like I’d just landed from Mars (haha). It’s a sensation I’ve become quite used to, even in my post-walk life. For winter my wife brought me this bright pink scarf (as a joke) which I now insist on wearing around, along with a bracelet this lovely little girl (Phoebe) in Traralgon made for me (it’s very girly). The other day in Coles this old dude outright stared at me, with an expression of mild disgust on his face. If I could get a photo of him and the Ulmarra service station lady and overlap them, I’m sure the expressions are identical, haha.

My personal take-away: save your outrage for the injustices of the world, let the little stuff go. If somebody isn’t hurting you or anyone else, leave them the eff alone and give them the space to be who they want to be.

Now, to Grafton !

It’s easy to dismiss a lot of righteous acts, good deeds, because they seem contrived or self serving.

Like, for example, celebrities who support charities because there’s an element of personal contact. (Example “my auntie has diabetes, so I’m passionate about diabetes research”). So we (me included) judge that and say “c’mon, selfish obsessed narcissistic so and so”

Or then you have the theatrical stuff, I guess like what I did. “I’m going to walk here, do this, do that, fart the national anthem”. Is it to serve a charity, or glorify self ?

I think the important thing to keep sight of is: that doesn’t really matter.

Yes, the underlying motivation is significant, but at the end of the day, a good deed is constructive and worthwhile even if it’s somehow selfish underneath. It’s still positive. Damn better than stealing, breaking and taking !

Uh oh. Old man ramble.

For the record, I’ve looked long and hard, and I think my goals were fairly pure. Captain Australia has never been about somehow glorifying me (haha, although there are people who read it as me thinking I’m Batman). It’s been my way of saying that we can and should all lift ourselves up. Try and be heroes. Hold ourselves to higher ethical standards. I’m innately shy by nature, I don’t want the attention, and there have been times walking around as Cap that I’ve felt intensely uncomfortable (especially when doing some of the daily donor dares of doom). But I knew it could help the charity, help me, help us. So I did it.

I suppose also, just a little bit, it’s my way of thumbing my nose at society. To say “no, I won’t play those crazy games that the world asks of us” (I like my own crazy games better).

I loved these guys, they had such generosity, honesty, kindness. Lovely lovely people.

And I’ll be honest, I’ve struggled with how to describe them here. First and foremost this is for my kids, so I’m driven to tell it as straight and true as I can ..but I don’t want to run the risk of making these decent, lovely people come across kooky. These days, if we don’t share the same opinions on certain topics, we feel entitled to crucify or parody the opposition, instead of finding ways for our opinions to co-exist.

You see, Q&T fed me, chatted to me, entertained me, showed me great hospitality. We were up talking until past midnight, when I went to sleep in a room Taki had set up for her daughter (pink bedding, hah, pretty little Captain).

But in the chat, they had some incredibly strong opinions on a range of topics, including government, vaccination, religion – some of the viewpoints incredibly stark and vigorously held.

I’m well able to love them and contrast their views with my own without condemning them if there are differences — objective reality may not exist, we may be living a dream, who knows ? I dislike this tendency to argue the right and wrong of opinions (theirs touching on conspiracy stuff, the apocalypse). Part of me wants to share the detail of it, because I found (and still find) it fascinating, and I think we, you/me/we finding ways to let competing viewpoints co-exist is absolutely KEY to our success as a neo-society.

But as type this, I think I’ll just paraphrase and say we had a long (hours and hours) talk, and I was engrossed and fascinated. I snuck out early the following morning (about 6am) not wanting to wake them – but I will be forever grateful for their kindness and hospitality.

Oh and check out the diminished gut in the bottom photo. 🙂