"How do you describe the most amazing, disgusting, tiring, mind blowing thing you have ever done in your life?"
Laura Snyders, a participant from Victoria tries to explain the emotions and feelings behind her Award experience and what it meant to her...
How do you describe the most amazing, disgusting, tiring, mind blowing thing you have ever done in your life? How can you capture the feelings and experiences of the most unbelievable adventure into words? It’s like a huge collage of sounds and pictures, and trying to describe them all in one go is almost impossible. Notice how I said almost impossible.
You have no idea what you’re up against until you are standing at the top of the highest point on the map, looking down at where you have come from, and then turning around to see that you have so much further to go to your campsite, where you can lie down and rest your battered feet.
You would think that, being in a desert, everyday would be hot and dry, and that there would be very few trees to shelter under. But you would be wrong. Most days involved bush bashing through gum trees and prickly bushes which scratched your legs to pieces, claws reaching out to rip me to shreds, like witches out of fairy tales. However, in other places there were hardly any trees at all, it was just orange dirt, reaching out to infinity.
The weather was almost perfect during the day. It was never scorching hot, it was just ……right! However, the nights were a different thing altogether. Some nights were so cold that I woke up shivering, even though I was wearing thermals, a thick jumper, a beanie and I was inside my sleeping bag. And even when I put on another layer, I still couldn’t stop shaking. It was just unbelievably cold.
The most amazing thing happened on the last, full day. It rained! Though, let me tell you, when rain interrupts your solo time and you then have to walk to your campsite and thenset up your bivvy, it’s not as great as it sounds. But, it was so much fun when we were out of the rain. No one in our group could be bothered to cook, so we all just feasted upon Vita Wheats, carrots, wraps and raw pasta. It’s not what you would call gourmet, but we had fun. Also, the sleeping arrangement that night wasn’t that fantastic either. We were packed into that bivvy like sardines in a tin, heads at one end and packs at our feet, with hardly any room to move.
Though, don’t get me wrong, not all nights were like that. The most memorable night for me was the night after we had spent all day canoeing down the Murray River. I loved lying back and looking at the stars and listening to people trying to find all the different constellations. But that’s not what made it memorable. That night we decided to have a “last word”, and Alex just had to pick cheese grater. So, just say someone said “Hey, where’s the Southern Cross?”, you would hear someone else say “cheese grater”, and that happened ever time someone talked. Its okay if you don’t get the joke, it was funny at the time.
I will never forget when a kangaroo jumped across the track in front of us or when we saw the group of emus just a couple of hundred metres in front of us. The sunrises and sunsets were a spectacular start and end to the day, and I know I will never see anything like it down where I live. But the one thing which will stay with me forever is, on the last day, standing on an enormous hill and looking down at the path behind me, winding through the scrub, and thinking thank god its almost over, but at the same time not wanting it to end.
By Laura Snyders, VIC