Going the Distance in Australia

Cape York (photo: Government of Queensland)

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how big Australia is. It's around the size of the lower 48 states in the US, but with less than 10% of the population. That sure leaves a lot of room to go "walkabout"!

There are already some pretty long walks available around Aussie. There's the Bubbulmun Track, which covers nearly 1000km from the outskirts of Perth to the southern coast. There's also the Larapinta Trail, just 225km long but starting in the outback town of Alice Springs and heading through some of the hottest desert conditions you could ever hope to encounter.

Now there's a new trail in the works, and it will encompass some very different scenery and climate than the existing trails. Up at the tippy top of Queensland near Cape York, there is a plan to create The Dreaming Trails. (The Dreaming is the aboriginal Australian creation mythology, which encorporates features of the landscape into tales of how the earth was formed.)

Rather than a single route, The Dreaming Trails are meant to incorporate a 2,000km network of walking tracks. This approach may give them much more flexiblity to offer different levels of difficulty, different scenery and conditions, and different types of facilities to cater to a wide range of visitors.

It all sounds very lovely, and they're looking for input to figure out what kinds of things hikers and bushwalkers are looking for in these trails. So if you're keen, go to their website and take 5 minutes to go through their survey. Who knows, they may end up creating the trail of your dreams!