'The Australia Alps Walking Track (AAWT) is said to be one of the toughest Australian hiking challenges crossing most of our tallest mountains including Mt Howitt, Hotham and Kosciuszko.

It covers  almost 700km of constant assents and descents on uneven, rocky and overgrown trails with a total climb over the journey of more than 27,000 metres (three times Everest).  Try not to contemplate the aches and pains, the discomfort, the uncertainly of completion and probability of bad weather, the search for water, the snakes, leaches, flies and mosquitoes and possibility of getting lost.

 

Yet all of this pales into insignificance when you consider  the heroic and inspiring adventures of men and women like Sir Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen - their companions and contemporaries as they battled to be the first human to reach the magnetic and geographical South Poles early in the 20th century.

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On the Terra Nova expedition Mawson’s two companions, Ninnus and Merts both perished; Ninnus falling down a ‘Bottomless Crevasse’ and Merts due to malnutrition. Scott and his three companions were found frozen in the very position in which they took their last breath under a mound of snow months later by members of Mawsons expedition.

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So … perhaps the Australian Alps Walking Track is not so daunting after all, especially since I will be accompanied by four of our adult children, Sam, Camilla, Peter and Lauren, cousin Sally from Albury and friends Dr McTaggart from Parks Victoria, and Dr Bulfin, Monash University.

 

Much more importantly we aim to raise more than $10,000 in support of the Cathy Freeman foundation whose vision is simple but ambitious: To create an Australia where Indigenous and non-Indigenous children have the same education standards and opportunities in life.

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Your support will be of great value to us and the Cathy Freeman Foundation.'

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Trevor Evans

Operational Fire Fighter

Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board

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