The CrossingTowards Baroota
Heading South
Turning south from Port Augusta made Adelaide feel real, even as the temperature dropped. Simone stopped for a roadside chat, and the HAA virtual event began beyond the campervan.
Port Augusta was the largest town we had seen for some time, and then we were leaving it in the dark.
We’d had a few hours of comfort in Port Augusta. Then the alarm dragged me into the next stretch.
The sign at the edge of town made the change very clear. Port Wakefield and Adelaide one way. Whyalla and Coober Pedy the other. We had already said sorry to Whyalla a couple of times by then, and it was still the wrong direction. The right direction was south.
I posted the obvious Sunday-morning thought: what else was there to do on a Sunday except get up early and go for a long walk?
Adelaide was still about 300 kilometres away. In normal life that is not close. In HAA life, after the Nullarbor, Ceduna, the Eyre Highway, Iron Knob, Nuttbush and Port Augusta, it felt close enough to become the next real target. Look out Adelaide, we would be seeing you on Friday.
That was exciting. We were finally heading towards Adelaide. Then the cold snap started to bite.
I was also measuring the distance in a more sensible unit: parkruns. Just 60 parkruns to go and we could run Torrens parkrun the following Saturday. Only on HAA could that sound encouraging.
Turning south also coincided with winter finding another gear. A cold front had come up from Antarctica to meet us head on, and the Augusta Highway settled quickly into grey, cold, wet, windy, and exposed. The main highway gave very little shelter. If the Nullarbor had been vast and austere, this section had a different edge to it: greener, hillier, more familiar in places, but also bloody cold.
The place names helped the odd English feeling along. Peterborough. Wakefield. Wilmington. No wonder the landscape had been looking a bit English. Then a sign offered Sydney via Peterborough, which was technically an option, but a very long way around.
Somewhere along the way I walked through a lay-by just as a motorbike pulled in. That became a proper little HAA moment. The rider was Simone, heading back to Melbourne from Perth and a marathoner as well. Her original plan had been to ride all the way around Australia, but back problems had forced her to turn back, and the lap might become something completed in sections later.
Meeting other people doing big, strange things no longer felt unusual. On a cold day, stopping to swap a few adventure notes with Simone and accept her generous donation changed the feel of the session.
The day still had 56 kilometres in it. Four sessions took me from Port Augusta to Baroota rest area, and the accumulated total reached 2597.5 kilometres.
Then, after all that, I sat down and posted the announcement I had been hinting at.
During the planning, I had always wanted HAA to have a life beyond September 2015. I wanted it to be part of the no more mr fat guy story, to promote the kind of active lifestyle changes that had helped me, and to do some good beyond the one big walk.
Somewhere on the Nullarbor, the shape of that had clicked: instead of one person walking and running across Australia, why not encourage everyone across Australia to do a bit of walking and running?
So HAA became an annual virtual run/walk/crawl idea. The long-term plan was May each year, linking back to the original start date of 16 May. The first one would be different: a launch version running from 12 July until I crossed the finish line in Brisbane. People could buy a race pack through Oz Virtual Racing, with a shirt, medal, and race bib, then run or walk wherever they were. They could do it alone, with a club, with family, with workmates, at a park, around a track, or anywhere that gave them a reason to move and connect.
The social part was important. An active life was more than training: daft photos, shared posts, post-run barbecues and little circles of encouragement belonged in it too.
The medal was inspired by the Nullarbor crossing we had just completed, and the shirts featured the key HAA sponsor logos. STIX FX had produced the shirts, and Oz Virtual Racing was handling the event pack side of things. After the earlier stress around event shirts, this felt like a proper step forward.
I also included the obvious caveat: I had clocked up 55 kilometres that day, so my brain may have forgotten to explain something properly.
That was probably fair.
The day ended at Baroota rest area. Adelaide was closer, the weather was colder and the first HAA virtual event was open.
Images From The Day
