OK, I have to admit to NOT being a fair weather bushwalker: my main disincentive there is getting up close and personal with Australia’s delightful and numerous collection of venomous snakes, but I also don’t like walking in the heat – as those who walked in the high 30’s with me on the day before the Kangaroo Island bushfires in December 2019 can attest (!!). But with the right kit, and plenty of layers, autumn and winter walking is my thang! Except for wind. High wind and tall trees are not a great mix in the bush as you can see on our recent winter walking along the Great Ocean Walk after a night of hail and high winds…

Apart from that fairly major consideration, cold mornings and wet conditions make for wonderful conditions for …. leeches (yes, yuk!) …. and also the most amazing funghi along the way, here’s a few from the last couple of stretches walking between Ryan’s Den and Wreck Beach, along the Otway Coast. I have no idea what most of them are, though am currently researching them, so I work on the assumption they are all poisonous (tragically, we’ve had a number of deaths in Victoria in the last decade from people misidentifying and eating mushrooms) and just admire them from a distance. They are always unexpected and quite magical, and a real treat of winter walking.







After all the fantastic funghi, Deb and I have now completed our walking research (the fun part!) for the Great Ocean Walk Guidebook now, though we’re following up on a fascinating lost shipwreck memorial with historian, Alan Maclean, as we pull together the book itself ready to send to our editors. From there it’s a good few months to go through editing, design, cartography before it gets to printing, so we’re aiming for a November release for this one. We’ve loved doing the Great Ocean Walk – it’s wild, woolly, wonderful …. and wet! Hope you’ll enjoy it too when it gets to the shelves.
