My Big Day Out: The 2026 Winter Solstice Edition

In 2022, I organised a Tollgate Islands paddle out at sunset followed by dinner and pictures at our house. Nine people paddled out and we had 13 for dinner. I would be lucky to get two mosquitoes and a blowfly now! I had an ignominious failure in 2024 as my plan to walk from sunrise to sunset ended in an emergency pick up when some incipient connective tissue injuries blew up. Last year, was a roaring success as I led an overnight trip for NSW Sea Kayak Club along the Murramarang Coast and culminating in a paddle into the Blue Cave at the Tollgate Islands.

This year, I decided on a multi-sport day. I haven’t done one of these days since 2020 when I did the 50 kilometre project which turned out to be 53.5 kilometres and should have been 57 because then I would have done my age. I decided to complete my age in self-propelled kilometres, hoping to complete the effort in the daylight hours. This would mean 21 kilometres each biking, hiking and sea kayaking. Doug suggested I cycle the nearby paved cycleway which is almost flat but I thought that would be cheating.

Here’s how the day unfolded. I got up about 5:15 am and drank two big mugs of coffee. By 6 a.m. (an hour before sunrise) I was on the bike. I used my climbing helmet instead of my bike helmet because climbing helmets are formatted to hold a headlamp. Familiar trails feel strangely unfamiliar when you are riding up with just a circle of light to guide the way. I wanted to get a photo of the sunrise but our bike trails are in the trees and the best I got was a couple of bleary shots over trees. I was able to turn the headlamp off before I got to the top of the first long ascent which I reached about 7 a.m. It was another race weekend and there were people about even two hours before the event was due to start.

The sun cleared the ridge on my first descent. Then it was ascent, descent, ascent, and the final descent to the trail-head and the short cycle back on roads. At home, I changed into kayaking gear and had a large cup of milky tea. I’m pretty much fuelled by tea (I had an egg and turkey sandwich too) and then trolleyed the kayak down to our local beach for the kayaking leg.

Low tide and a very low swell meant it was an easy launch and paddle south for about 10 kilometres to Jimmies Island. Just as we got to Jimmies Island the forecast southerly blew in and we had a light tail wind for the paddle home. I was 750 metres short of 21 kilometres so while Doug retrieved the trolleys which we leave at the house of a friend who lives right beside the beach, I paddled up and down the bay until my watch ticked over the magic number.

Back at the house I ate three chicken meat patties and a handful of sultanas and had another jug of milky tea! At the last minute, I decided to switch packs and throw in a windbreak (jacket) but within half an hour I was off to walk the Munjip Track. The Munjip Track goes up and down, up and down, the entire length as it climbs over a series of headlands to small sandy bays. I had debated walking north which means I could stroll along long flat beaches instead of following the undulating trail but that felt like cheating too, so I went south, up and down, up and down. I felt slow on the hills and I had a couple of incipient tweaks which meant I had to keep my stride short to make sure my gluteal and quadricep muscles were fully engaged but apart from feeling a bit slow, the walk segment went well. This was, as expected, the slowest segment.

Sunset, also was over trees, so there was no sudden splash of colour just a gradual deepening of the dusk and under the trees I needed my headlamp. At the beach near my house I was again 750 metres short of 21 kilometres so I walked the beach until my watch ticked over 21 kilometres.

It was about 5:45 p.m. when I got home so, overall, just shy of 12 hours, although with breaks and switch overs taken out, my moving time was pretty much spot on 10 hours. I wasn’t sure I could do this without my hip blowing up and I certainly wasn’t going to risk tearing further my already jagged femoral labrum so I was pretty happy to finish in a reasonable time with no real bodily aches or pains.

Here’s what I didn’t do:

• Taper. I did my usual training and activities right up until Sunday except for dropping my usual aerobic activity on Saturday. But, I still did all my usual physiotherapy exercises, core and gluteal work and climbed on my home climbing wall on Saturday.

• Eat any special foods or gels. I did the bike ride fasted, and thereafter I ate regular food with a bit of extra carbohydrate, but, mostly I ate animal protein.

• Drink any electrolytes or special energy drinks: Milky tea and water did the job.

• Rest on any of the segments. The key to long endurance efforts is to keep moving. People burn through so much time resting, starting, stopping and generally faffing about. A body in motion stays in motion.

Comfort Through Discomfort

Rescued is back with the story of some poor bugger who, after a misplaced step and fall, completely ruptured both quadriceps tendons. There are a few errors in the podcast, the first being that Ross reports camping at Saltwater Creek on the second night of the three day walk (three day is used loosely as the entire walk is only 32 kilometres long) but this is obviously not correct as Saltwater Creek is only a few kilometres south of Mowarry campsite, where they spent their first night. Additionally, Ross mentions continuing past Heggarty Bay campsite which is a few kilometres south of Saltwater Bay on their second day to make their last walking day shorter. Thus, Ross and his group were obviously camped at Bittangabee Bay, the last campsite on that stretch of coast.

Bittangabee Bay from the Light to Light Track

Unrelated to the story, Ross says that Disaster Bay is “full of reefs” which have historically resulted in shipwrecks – hence the name, Disaster Bay. In fact, Disaster Bay is deep (50 metres shallowing to 16 metres) and sandy bottomed. There have been shipwrecks but these have not been in the middle of Disaster Bay. Prior to construction of the lighthouse, ships did founder off the coast, but this was predominantly on the rocky cliffs either side of Green Cape. There are reefs and a couple of rocky islets immediately off Green Cape – home to a colony of seals – and the sea off Green Cape is often a lively place where the swell rises and steepens suddenly and currents give rough seas but Disaster Bay itself is not overly dangerous.

Disaster Bay

The other error in the podcast is Ross’ assertion that they were “about five hours” from Green Cape (the end of the walk) when the accident occurred. This is possible only if you are a really slow walker but unlikely given the distance from Bittangabee Bay to Green Cape is somewhere between 7 and 8 kilometres. Finally, I think the word “isolated” needs to be either removed from the vocabulary of the host or, at a minimum, redefined. The roughly 20 kilometre stretch of coast from Boyd Tower in the north to Green Cape in the south is crisscrossed by dirt roads, has four campsites, and any number of stairs, trails, and viewing platforms. The bush is thick in parts, but it is still virtually impossible to get any more than four kilometres from a good 2WD gravel road at any point along the coast. That’s not isolated unless you live in a high rise tower in the middle of New York City.

Paddling past Green Cape

Personally, I would rather break a bone than rip both my tendons off the bone. Tendon injuries are hard to heal as the blood supply is limited and tendon does not regenerate nearly as well other tissues. The new collagen that is laid down during tendon repair is generally disorganised and chaotic rather than being parallel and aligned to the direction of force. Tendons require loading to heal in healthily aligned parallel bands and this takes a long, long time and much patient and progressive loading.

Paddling past the red cliffs of Beowa National Park

The best thing, of course, is prevention, but how can you prevent tendon injuries? Tendons do become more prone to injury with age but it’s not clear that this is simply the ageing process not a side effect of the poor metabolic health that frequently accompanies ageing. Unfortunately, with sedentary living and high carbohydrate and fat diets (processed food is the real culprit), poor metabolic health is seen in younger and younger individuals. A simple tape measure gives clues to metabolic health. A waist to height ratio over 0.5 is far more diagnostic than a BMI measure. The classic image that should come to mind and which afflicts a large proportion of Australians, young and old, is the skinny arms and legs along with the protuberant belly. Metabolic dysfunction makes tendons fragile, prone to injury, and significantly impairs healing.

Boyd Tower from the Light to Light Track

Beyond metabolic health, stronger muscles protect joints and tendons so strength training with real weight is a must. Agility training which can be as simple as hopping on one leg or engaging in some easy parkour, and the always avoided explosive impact activities like squat jumps help older people maintain the agility and proprioception to recover from off-balance moves that would otherwise result in falls. Dr Howard Luks does a brilliant job of explaining all these things and providing exercise protocols specifically for older adults to promote healthy ageing.

Saltwater Bay

It’s easy to drift into older age with gradually declining function. Everyone around you is doing it and flowing downhill along the tidal drift of age is so much easier than attempting, like Moses, to hold back the waters. It takes time, effort and you have to prioritise your training and nutrition over just about everything else. There are myriad reasons why we allow ourselves to gradually decline and the only reason to dissect and understand these is if they will actually change your behaviour. You could navel gaze endlessly and fruitlessly, or you could just take action today.

Heggarty Bay

I’ll leave you with a passage from Mark Twight:

Every day I look around me and I’m saddened by examples of people who …. gave up early, or never learned the comfort that derives from self-imposed discomfort, from wanting and working for more.

If there is one lesson I would teach someone half my age it would be that [sic]: work harder than you think you need to, and take care of the mind and body that you are stuck with for the rest of your life. “Take care” doesn’t mean avoid, it means think ahead, weigh the cost of what you want now against what you might want in ten years, or twenty. You will probably live longer than you think. The habits and scars you create now will sink their roots. If you don’t keep enough resilience to combat those roots they will eventually hold you down.

We’re Not That Different, It Just Seems That Way

In 2025, the Institute of Public Affairs contracted an independent research firm to poll Australians on attitudes to climate change and net zero targets. This was the third poll in three years, other polls were conducted in 2022 and 2024. The results were revealing. Only 21% of respondents thought the main focus of the federal government’s energy policy should be reaching net zero emissions by 2050. This was down from 28% in 2022, but essentially the same as 19% in 2024. Slightly more women than men were concerned with energy affordability (58% versus 53%) and slightly less women than men thought reaching the net zero target was important (19% for women, 22% for men).

The revealing statistic, of course, is how much people were personally prepared to pay each year to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Keep in mind that Australia is pursuing a relatively aggressive transition to net zero, particularly within our energy grid, and our publicly funded broadcaster (the ABC) publishes, during an average week in text media alone, between 10 and 25 articles on climate change. Across all ABC media (radio, TV, text) that number can be as high as 100 pieces of content every week! The climate change agenda is inescapable in Australia and it has been pursued by both our major political parties, and virtually all independents for as long as I have been in Australia.

You would think then, that Australians are obsessed with climate change and willing to pay whatever it takes to address our greenhouse gas emissions. The data, however, says otherwise. The overwhelming majority of Australians (93% in 2025) are willing to pay – at most - $2 per week or less to reach net zero by 2050. In fact, $2 a week is high. Almost 50% of people are not willing to pay anything to reach net zero by 2050, and just a quarter would pay a buck a week.

This isn’t a left-right issue, although the media presents it that way. Across the political divide, no-one actually wants to pay to reduce our emissions. Mike Newman, on a recent podcast with Chris Joye, when asked about climate change noted that “the best indicator of people’s individual concerns about climate change are their personal consumption habits.” He continued to note that the demand for global air travel continues to rise, and if “people are truly concerned [about climate] why are they flying?” Why indeed? Why are we across all age groups, the sex binary (sex is binary), and political stripes so unwilling to forego just one cup of coffee a week (about $7 in Australia which equates to $364 per year) to combat climate change?

If we are all either rabid unwashed leftists (as the right wing media would have us believe) or cretinous, selfish, halfwits (as the left wing media posits) there should not be such broad agreement. In fact, there is unlikely a single issue in Australia today where you could find such broad agreement (given we’ve got “feminists” telling us men can become women). Virtually none of us are willing to pay to address climate change.

The truth, I suspect, is murky, confused, and not explainable by a single theory; although humans, the original story tellers, love a single narrative. There is credible research to suggest that the more a person talks about a thing (this is called social proof) and acquires the social trappings of a thing (for example, an electric car) the more they come to believe that they encapsulate the thing. In Australia, we have a large cadre of (very) loud voices who proselytise about climate change, buy electric vehicles (in recent times using taxpayer subsidised programs to get cash rebates, subsidies or other tax benefits), get solar panels and batteries for their houses (also using taxpayer subsidies) and then declare themselves climate warriors. Perhaps these are the 2% of Australians who are willing to pay over $500 a year to reduce our net omissions. If so, the minority of Australians are having an outsize influence on the other 98%.

It could be however, that we are all equally unwilling to pay any amount of money to reach net zero if that money both comes out of our own pockets and does not garner approbation from our peers. If signalling your adherence to net zero zealotry was completely invisible or even a bit demeaning (for example, you rode a bicycle and took public transit rather than driving a flashy new EV), and cost a significant amount of money week after week, year after year, how many of the loud 2% would continue to dominate the discourse? Very few, I suspect, because, despite what the media and the clamorous 2% avow, we are much more alike than we are different.

The Old Lady and Her Bike

It’s hard to believe but a new syndrome that I hadn’t even heard of has dropped: Invisible Woman Syndrome (IWS). As a vertically challenged, stocky, old lady with short grey hair (bit of a mannish cut honestly), obviously I will be completely traumatised by IWS. Because this is necessarily true, I was surprised that riding the Mogo trails yesterday (Kings Birthday weekend) not only could other riders see me but they were close to effusive in their praise.

It was both a lovely day out and busy on the trails. The busiest weekend I’ve seen, which was honestly a bit of a surprise given it is June and cool down on the south coast. The trails were riding extremely well, a bit dusty in places, but dry and wide open. Vehicles everywhere because hardly anyone rides uphill anymore even young blokes with electric bikes. Southbound Escapes was running regular shuttles, and, there were even a few people riding uphill, and some were on an analog bikes!

As usual, the women were outnumbered about four to one by men, but there were some women, lots of families, and, notably, very few vertically challenged, stocky, old ladies with short grey hair on a bog standard analog bike with no fancy padding or equipment and a K Mart bicycle helmet. As I was expecting to suffer IWS, I was quite surprised to finish up my ride having got accolades and encouragement from at least a dozen riders.

All joking aside, it was kind of weird because riders kept saying things like “you made it,” “you’re awesome,” “keep going, you can do it.” At no time did I feel like I couldn’t do what I was doing although I admit I was breathing like a dragon on crack cocaine, and there may have been occasional expletives directed at my quads (it was the day after leg day).

Taming The Mob

Growing up one of my cousins had autism. S was a nice kid, but pretty much non-verbal, had great difficulty with social interaction, and engaged in repetitive behaviours that are typical of autistic people. S loved any kind of machine that made a noise and/or vibrated, and was delighted if he found a machine that did both. At the time, my Mum had a big bulky vacuum cleaner typical of the 1960’s and S would turn the vacuum on and stand on it for hours and hours uninterrupted. Before my Mum lost her memory to age, she would fondly remember S and his penchant for her vacuum cleaner with great affection. My Dad too, when he was alive, also remembered S with deep and abiding love. When S came to visit, Mum would get the vacuum out and Dad would go through his entire tool shed trying to find another machine that would make noise and vibrate. Dad never stopped trying to interact with S but never in a way that was forceful or difficult for S. At the time, we were all a bit bamboozled by S but we all knew that he was one of those precious people that we keep close and treat with extra tenderness.

But S and his family had a tough life. S was never able to live alone, get a job, meet a partner, get married, have children; he required constant care and missed out on all the things that we neurotypicals (and in fact most people who now call themselves neurodivergent) enjoy in life, both simple things, like sunrise in the morning, and complex activities, like graduating from university. Of course, the entire family was affected because there were three children and S required such a high level of care from his parents that the two normal children, by necessity, received less attention. When his parents (my aunt and uncle) were too old to be the primary caregivers for S, his siblings had to step up. S was never, in his entire life, able to live independently.

If you have some first hand experience with true autism, it is impossible not to greet the almost innumerable people (frequently young women) who claim a diagnosis of autism or neurodivergence and yet who live fulfilling and by all outward appearances completely normal and often privileged lives without some kind of scepticism. At least I do. Both because I am a sceptic and because I recognise in myself so many traits that neurodivergent people claim represent them. To prove the point, I took this online test and discovered that my “score is typical for many people with autism spectrum disorder.”

But, I don’t think I have autism or neurodivergence or ASD or any other psycho-social diagnoses. I think I’m a bit different to other people but, with modifications to my behaviour and some degree of social (and intellectual) intelligence, I can function in society even if I never feel like I really fit in. I don’t need a label and, in fact, a label would inhibit me from learning to deal with things in appropriate and responsible ways. We grow from difficulties not from having society or family or friends or even paid caregivers cater to our every whim. Fitting in (masking as the neurodivergent call it) is part of life as an adult. If you want adult privileges you must meet adult responsibilities.

In a controversial move – at least in highly politicised circles – the ABC (at great cost because everything the ABC does seems very costly) is producing a series of podcasts called “Autistic AF with Grace Tame.” These four episodes of the “Ladies We Need to Talk Podcast” seek to connect “with other neurodivergent women to get a better understanding of what life is like as an autistic person, beyond the stereotypes.” Now I’m not going to listen to these podcasts. That’s above and beyond what I will do for a simple and rarely read blog. In all honesty, I would rather eat cane toads for a week than listen to a podcast that is entitled “Ladies We Need to Talk” because I don’t fit in with 99% of women. I am much more comfortable around men not only because I do not understand female ways of connecting but also because some of these women are – at least in my opinion - insufferable.

Tame, who was the darling of both the left and the centre, became a target for criticism after a highly emotional speech at a Palestinian rally where she gave the mobilising cry “From Gadigal to Gaza globalise the Intifada,” which was followed up with an interview on ABC radio where she made the statement that sexual assault of women by Hamas on October 7^th had been “debunked” and was “propaganda.” As an aside, if you haven’t seen Tame’s Globalise the Intifada speech it is worth watching because Tame is really, really good at delivering speeches. Whether you agree with the slogan or the rally or are just an average human and plain horrified by the Israel-Palestine conflict you have to recognise that Tame is a consummate speaker. She is so good at giving speeches that you might be mistaken for thinking that she is actually really good at connecting with people (not a common trait among autistic people).

In an interview with Rebel News, outside of the ABC studios where a motley gang of folk were protesting the four episodes of the podcast featuring Tame (not something that I could be arsed doing but something I support in a democratic society), Charlie Pickering spoke a few sentences, barely a paragraph that, in my neurotypical or is it neurodiverse way of thinking was pretty banal all things considered. These are his exact words: “I do actually think it’s problematic, that’s my personal opinion. As you would understand, and as a Jewish Australian, there’s a complete misunderstanding of a lot of the words that are said and what [the] true meanings of them are. A lot of people are using words and phrases that have meaning well beyond what they think they do. I think you could argue that a lot of people who jump on protest bandwagons are ignorant a lot of the time.”

I might be wrong, because I may not be completely normal, but I don’t think the average Australian is offended by this. Certainly, the average Australian should NOT be offended by it because Pickering preferences all he says with the words “that’s my personal opinion.” A personal opinion was something we were all entitled to until we invented micro-aggressions and lateral trauma, and suddenly discovered we were all victims. A society of victims, what could possibly go wrong? But, of course, the left has lost it’s mind and has engaged, as it so often does, in a full scale social media lynching. Left wing media outlets were aghast when the NSW government floated a proposal to ban the words “Globalise the Intifada,” and yet, the same people who insist on protections for free speech have roundly condemned Charlie Pickering and would happily see him taken off the air. Free speech is never free I guess.

I haven’t watched or listened to Charlie Pickering since the Covid years when it became obvious, at least to me, that a segment of society was becoming increasingly authoritarian and coercive. I might be forced to live under regulations which I considered antithetical to basic human rights (Covid was never like Ebola, an infection that needed draconian social policy to manage) but I didn’t have to make things worse by being listening to Orwellian level propaganda. But I would, if pushed, be inclined to agree with Pickering. 

We have immature 20 and 30 something neurodiverse people speaking with complete confidence and authority about issues which are complex, historically and culturally deeply rooted, and, are, at their most basic level, so far outside their area of expertise, personal knowledge or even thoughtful reflection, that it would be akin to me giving a lecture on string theory to Stephen Hawking. I would look a fool, as do the young women (and men) who confidently proclaim authority on world affairs. Hubris is the burden of youth which unfortunately gets inflicted on an entire society when the protagonists are elevated beyond their level of intelligence because they meet an idealised version of the oppressed (who frequently turns around and becomes the oppressor).

But back to podcasts about autism. I can’t really comment because, as I said previously, I’m not going to actually listen to the podcast, but I certainly feel that the true experience of autism is unlikely to be communicated in the “Ladies We Need to Talk” podcast, because, the true experience of severe autism is not something that is easy to confront. The type of autism my cousin had is deeply distressing, exhausting to manage, and requires unrequited commitment in the face of zero positive feedback. It is not conducive to quirky social media posts or $20K per engagement speaking fees. It is the life long sorrow of something that could have been but was not. Human potential never truly realised, the greatest loss we all are forced to witness.

For an interesting analysis of the explosion of autism and ADHD diagnoses read Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan's book The Age of Diagnosis.

Big swell, Little Wind, Strong Wind, Little Swell

Finally the winter westerlies are here. Today we had a strong wind warning but a relatively low swell (HS about 0.70 metres, and Hmax around 1.4 metres). We noodled along the coast, in and out of all the bays, through the gauntlets, are far south as Mosquito Bay. The wind was up early, northwesterly not pure westerly, and pushing us along as we paddled south around headlands. Coming back, the wind was in our faces and it was nice to be out again paddling into the wind. I haven’t done that since the Furneaux Group circumnavigation.

The week before, we had a big swell (HS of 2 metres and Hmax of 4 metres) but no wind. We went north, out to North Head and as far north as Richmond Beach. The sea surface was almost glassy as there was no wind but the surface conditions were lumpy, bumpy with a secondary swell on top of the big ground swell. It was almost possible to catch runners back to our home bay but the swell was moving too fast to get onto.

Bonnum Pic

It’s a short drive between Bonnum Pic and Mount Jellore, both in Nattai National Park, so why would you not do both bush-walks while you are in the area? Accessed via a public road through private property (leave the gates as you find them) we parked just before the fire trail goes downhill into the Wollondilly Valley and becomes Wanganderry Pass Trail.

A short distance down the fire trail, an old burnt NPWS (National Parks and Wildlife Service) sign marks the start of the trail. There’s scant sign of maintenance here (scant in this case really equals none) but the foot pad is clear enough and a few of the old signs (many burnt in 2020) are still viable so you can follow the track relatively easily up and down two gullies. On the way out, we lost the track coming out of the second gully but if you head roughly straight uphill after crossing the little creek, you will come out into a big fire break beside private property.

The next few kilometres is pretty simple. Walk along the fire break until you it ends and a piece of old blue rope wrapped about a tree marks a very old road that heads roughly north along the plateau. The track is clear enough until you approach the cliff line (Wanganderry Walls) although the regrowth on either side is so thick you could be walking anywhere. There is one short section of heath where the regrowth is open, but most of the way you walk in a tunnel of acacia.

After about five kilometres the trail approaches the north south running cliff line and travels over some nice open sandstone slabs and pagodas. There are views down into the Wollondilly valley. It’s still worth keeping track of the foot pad as between the sandstone slabs the scrub is thick and the further north you go, towards the Pic of Bonnum Pic, the thicker the scrub becomes and the vaguer the foot-pad.

The last one to two kilometres is slow. It is really easy to lose the foot-pad as there seem to be decoy cairns in places and the ridge gains and loses 10 to 30 metres of elevation through thickening scrub. It’s worth searching out the foot pad each time you come down off a sandstone slab to avoid unnecessary bushwhacking. The foot pad, however, is for the most part, a tunnel here, and only visible when you are right up against it.

We ran out of both time and patience with the scrub about 300 metres from the very end, but we hadn’t brought a short rope in any event to do the “slide of death.” The view, unfortunately, is getting obscured as the scrub grows up but there are still spots where you get good views.

Our return was perhaps a bit quicker than the way out although we spent as much time searching for the foot pad on the way back as we did on the way out. I had mistakenly thought that we would recognise the various spots where we had dropped off the slabs into the bush but it turns out that thick brush scrub looks the same in both directions.