A 2-3 day hike on Airlie Beach’s doorstep
The Whitsundays, a vacation spot normally related to the aquamarine waters that ebb and stream round its 74 islands, is widespread with vacationers who line up for boat excursions and reef days spent crusing, paddling, snorkelling and related to all issues blue.
It’s July and I’ve come to Airlie Beach to not sink beneath the blue, however to dive amongst the inexperienced.
Leaving behind the frosty winter mornings of my house in NSW, the concept of wandering by way of Conway National Park, the normal lands of the Ngaro and Gia peoples, the place every day temps have been sitting round 22c, was a seasonal no-brainer.
Unlike most multi-day walks I do, I selected to not spend hours researching different folks’s journeys or falling down rabbit holes of private opinion. Rather than going with solutions, I wished to go together with questions: Why doesn’t the Conway Circuit, a 27 km observe, billed as a 3-day stroll, not fill many widespread Instagram or social media feeds? Why was its title modified from ‘Whitsundays Great Walk’?
And, why (for the pricey love of the mountain climbing gods), is it referred to as Circuit? ‘Cos no matter which way I look at it, this track ain’t wherever close to a loop!
The air is glowing with golden afternoon mild, amplified by the sugar cane fields alongside the 35-minute drive from Proserpine Airport to Airlie Beach. I’m struggling to maintain my eyes on the highway as I’m continually drawn to gaze on the spurs and ridges wearing rainforest coats that lead away to the coast.
‘Ooo! Is that the Conway Circuit?’, I’m wondering in pleasure. My lack of analysis unwraps my first shock, adopted by the subsequent – there’s no Uber in Airlie.
Day 1 – Brandy Creek Road to Repulse Creek Camp (8km)
The following day I’m dropped at the beginning by the native model of Uber (NeedaRideWhitsundays.com) and my driver rapidly turns the dialog to her favorite topic, snakes. Another shock! There are 70 totally different reptiles in Conway National Park. Good to know most are skinks, lizards and turtles… and just some snakes (I didn’t meet any).
The carpark on the finish of Brandy Creek Road is on the prime of a winding Forestry highway and delivers me at 230 metres above sea degree – the very best level for the day. All that’s forward of me is a really leisurely 150 vertical descent over 8 km to the primary campsite at Repulse Creek Camp.
Ten steps alongside the observe and the decision of the Wompoo Pigeon breaks the mild silence. Their delicate name shall be my non-public DJ for the subsequent two days, mingled with just a few different bush noises, however extra on these later.
Underfoot, the secure two-wheel drive gravel mattress makes for a few of the best strolling I’ve ever encountered while on a multi-day observe. The rainforest partitions on both aspect of this former logging observe attain ahead forming a verdant tunnel, whereas big tree ferns stand like towering sentinels, competing for daylight above the darkish, multi-layered cover.
I stroll with my head resting again on my pack, permitting my gaze to be held by the pockets of silver sky above. Last evening’s leftover rain drips onto my face; it appears solely proper and pure that I really feel the rainforest with all my senses.
Four kilometres alongside, as I’m feeling the robust lullaby of straightforward strolling’s easy rhythm, I shake myself out of the soporific samey-samey haze and have to remind myself – that is work. I ought to be searching for digicam angles and pictures that finest inform the story of this observe.
Everywhere I look, I simply see inexperienced. One million shades of inexperienced.
No editor shall be impressed (not to mention the astute Great Walks readership!) if I submit 20 pictures, variably described as ‘Rainforest – Conway Circuit’.
I begin to marvel: if this starvation for the brand new or totally different is what fast-changing multiple-tabs, incessant swiping and doom-scrolling, have been surreptitiously instructing us. Leading us to consider that what’s fixed, what’s the identical, might not solely be what some name, ‘boring’, however maybe not ‘Great.’?
Is this why the Conway Circuit, previously referred to as the Whitsunday’s Great Walk, had a reputation change?
Wait, my coronary heart quickens; right here comes the ford the place the observe crosses Repulse Creek. Something totally different! Quick seize the digicam!
I dance across the creek, so targeted on capturing the ‘new’, that I’m oblivious to the musical layer the water has added to the Wompoo and Silvereye refrain.
It’s solely once I sit all the way down to put my sneakers on and decide the location worthy of an early lunch, that I gradual myself down to absorb what else I see.
My respiratory slows and the quiet unhurried lifetime of the place washes over me. Standing to proceed, I see no cause to fall again into something aside from a strolling meditation; a tempo and presence afforded by the simplicity of the terrain. I really feel no want to take a look at my ft which carry me alongside the multipurpose observe, proof of its numerous audiences of nature lovers: bushwalkers, birdwatchers, mountain bikers, path runners and even (for the primary 4 km) Segway riders. I see none of them on my journey.
Managing my expectations, I don’t anticipate the hypnotic tempo and groomed gravel to final perpetually. Rumour has it that this green-graded mountain bike observe turns into a difficult black-level route pretty quickly after tonight’s campsite at Repulse Creek Camp.
Crossing Repulse Creek, I spy an overgrown slender observe main south-east, that dives headlong into the verdant jungle. Forever the curious navigator, the QTopo map appears to recommend it leads up a 200 m excessive knoll and I’m wondering if it goes. A hunch tells me, ‘not anymore’, because it betrays the historical past of the Conway Circuit from selective logging that passed off on these ridges up till 1993.
Today, it’s not solely my schedule that retains me on observe however the sight of a Giant Stinging Tree; they at all times give me the ‘none shall pass’ shivers.
Emerging from the rainforest tunnel, I’m birthed into the Repulse Creek Campsite. It’s laborious to work out if the trimmed grass underneath unusually open skies is as a result of work of the rangers I handed as they headed in direction of the trailhead in an ATV or hungry mammals.
Wandering up a ramp to the composting lavatory, I begin to marvel if this website was constructed for a fair higher variety of customers, making it accessible to TrailRider wheelchair customers.
If publicity to this a lot sky was an excessive amount of of a shock, I might have chosen certainly one of a handful of rainforest campsites, set amongst the forest like a Bower Bird’s walled-haven. All of the campsites function a timber platform for conserving gear (not tents) off the bottom and are helpful for cooking or stress-free on.
Day 2 – Repulse Creek Camp to Airlie Beach (19 km)
Throughout the evening, I think about the pitter-patter rain on my tent because it begins the lengthy journey to the coast and the Great Barrier Reef. As I set off within the morning, the mild tinkle coming from the creeks I had heard yesterday, is changed with a refrain of decided stream – in moist season this mild melody can be a full orchestra.
About half a kilometre after leaving camp, a beneficiant rock-rimmed swimming gap in Little Repulse Creek revealed itself by way of the bushes. If this was a hotter day, it could solely take a minute for me to indulge within the first of many jungle swims.
There have been extra causes than simply the climate that was urging me to maintain my tempo up: Rather than taking 3 days for the 30 km-ish observe, I used to be fairly satisfied after wanting on the contours of the map, that it was achievable in two.
Had I made a poor selection, pulling up stumps after a brief and straightforward day one, quite than pushing on to the second campsite at Bloodwood Camp and getting the 400 metres of vertical ascent out of the best way? Maybe.
It didn’t take lengthy for the harder terrain to look on the inevitable ascent in direction of Mount Hayward after Parks Queensland’s tell-tale signal. The path rapidly turned technical 4WD terrain because the partitions closed in in direction of a cosier single-track. Gravel gave technique to clay, the place proof of pig digging signalled one of many challenges that Queensland Parks face on this space. I startled a few porkers, who answered my calls of, ‘Hey, Bacon!’, (as I paid homage to TV’s US Alone sequence common name of ‘Hey, Bear!’) with grunts and snorts as they ran off into the forest.
Arriving on the Hayward Lookout, I’m afforded a small window out to the islands of Tancred and South Molle. Mildly underwhelmed, I’m startled by the vivid blue distinction of a tragic Ulysees Butterfly that lays useless at my ft; reminding me of components of the color spectrum that I’m lacking.
Recovering my jaunty gait after summitting Mount Hayward, my thoughts went to a type of essential questions that solely seem when strolling solo for days: do pigs have knees? I attempted to think about a stumpy-legged porcine making an attempt in useless to climb steep terrain and puzzled if that explains why the observe was so good from this excessive level onwards.
Loping all the way down to Bloodwood Camp, I answered the burning query of my campsite selection. Happy to have chosen the open skies of Repulse Creek camp, Bloodwood’s nest-like areas within the rainforest, with safe meals bins, ran a detailed second and the close by lookout gained hands-down for nice lunch spots with views over Airlie Beach.
Views proved tantalisingly unrealised, because the observe hugged what I knew was the sting of the escarpment, to the junction of Honeyeater Lookout observe. The rainforest re-focusing me as soon as once more to the wonder to be discovered inside her embrace.
This junction marks the brink of widespread day stroll territory and the multiday Conway Circuit that I used to be taking. From right here, the well-formed and maintained observe braces me for the disco-knee wobbles that the 350-metre descent into the vacationer vibes of Airlie Beach brings. On the best way down I go 5 teams of hikers puffing their technique to the highest; I haven’t seen anybody till now and their perfumed cloud jogs my memory that I have to stink.
My muddy sneakers (and socks betraying a lone leech chew) carry me straight to a chilly beer on the waterfront, the place throughout me is motion, color, and sounds. Everywhere I look there’s something new to gaze upon.
I shut my eyes and relaxation, taking my thoughts again to the inexperienced seemingly sameness of the Conway Circuit figuring out that each footstep in nature is totally different, new and there to shock.
