Fences

27th May : I've walked a fair way to find that this country has too many fences. I feel better after half a day's rest in Coffs Harbour where I set out along beaches and headlands. Tonight I'm making camp at Emerald Beach.

First Letter

This morning I was faced with a choice between a beach route, a highway route or an alternate quiet highway route to Grafton. In the end I chose to have a half rest day to decide. I'll be interested to see which I choose.

Over the trip I've noticed my moods and the simple factors which seem to cause them. It often comes down to taking care of myself. There are three main factors which make me grumpy; haven't slept well, haven't eaten or haven't been to the toilet. It's rather simple to recognise what my moods have come from and I've even grown to expect some grumpiness when I can't get what I need. It's like heavenly bliss and the whole universe is rosy when relief comes.

Second Letter

At Coffs I finally decided to take the beach walk. By late afternoon any lethargy I'd had earlier had disappeared and I bounced over beach and headland. The path was difficult to find after dusk and it ended up spitting me out, kicking and screaming, onto the Pacific Highway. With trucks blowing their roadkill breath in my face, I postulated a theory on beepers. That's people who beep their horn as they drive by at unfathomable speeds. There are those that beep out of excitement and those that beep out of fright (they are either poor drivers who have no confidence in their ability to control a hurtling tonne of fuel and alloy, and the ones that beep if you're on 'their' road). To wonder which is which is a complete waste of time as motorists rarely take the time to chat.

Ahead of me in the night lay a path, strangled to death with fences. To be decidedly inconvenient, someone had put them right where the shortcuts should be. But what kind of propostorous world would it be if people could just walk freely from place to place?