The incredible, inspiring story of a solo journey through Australia's toughest and most beautiful hiking trail - the Australian Alps Walking Track - for fans of INTO THE WILD by Jon Krakauer or Cheryl Strayed's WILD and anyone who dreams of iconic wilderness walks
At the start of the hellish, fiery Australian summer of 2019/20, Walkley Award-winning journalist and suburban dad Anthony Sharwood set off on a journey. Abandoning his post on a busy news website to clear his mind, he solo-trekked the Australian Alps Walking Track, Australia's most gruelling and breathtakingly beautiful mainland hiking trail, which traverses the entirety of the legendary High Country from Gippsland in Victoria to the outskirts of Canberra.
The journey started in a blizzard and ended in a blaze. Along the way, this lifelong lover of the mountains came to realise that nothing would ever be the same - either for him or for the imperilled Australian Alps, a landscape as fragile and sensitive to the changing climate as the Great Barrier Reef.
| Prologue- Reading the leaves |
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1 | (4) |
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Chapter 1 The boy at the window |
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5 | (16) |
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Chapter 2 Negative and hard and lonely |
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21 | (14) |
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Chapter 3 What the weeds revealed |
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35 | (16) |
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Chapter 4 The insanity of choices |
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51 | (16) |
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67 | (20) |
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Chapter 6 Puddles and Coke |
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87 | (14) |
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Chapter 7 Hunting for happiness |
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101 | (16) |
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Chapter 8 The revelation of pole 214 |
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117 | (16) |
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Chapter 9 Brutal and benign |
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133 | (16) |
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Chapter 10 The kindness of strangers |
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149 | (20) |
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Chapter 11 A wicked problem |
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169 | (18) |
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Chapter 12 The awful, awful thing that Charlie Carter knew |
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187 | (14) |
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Chapter 13 May your boulders be your blessings |
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201 | (14) |
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Chapter 14 Danger, gladly met |
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215 | (18) |
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Chapter 15 The Rolling Ground |
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233 | (18) |
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Chapter 16 Hitting the fan |
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251 | (16) |
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Chapter 17 Too wild to keep, too good to lose |
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267 | (16) |
| Equipment list |
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283 | (6) |
| Author's note on sources |
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289 | (4) |
| Acknowledgements |
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293 | |
Anthony Sharwood is a Walkley Award-winning journalist who has worked in TV, newspapers, magazines and online news sites. Formerly a sportswriter who covered several Olympic Games, he now specialises in the environment, climate and weather. In 2020 he released the acclaimed From Snow to Ash, a love letter to the Australian High Country written after walking the Australian Alps Walking Track and in 2021 he explored the passionate environmental and cultural battle over Australia's wild horses in The Brumby Wars. His books Kosciuszko and Bring Your A Game are both 2024 releases.
