Douglas Gepp Leane, Honorary Member of the Friends of the Heysen Trail, and long time maintenance Section Leader, passed away on 16th December, 2008 at the age of 82.
Finally we have completed it with our final day’s walk into the car park at Cape Jervis. It was a journey that started years ago, but became a project when, one hot Australian Day, Marie and I were walking along Semaphore beach to the breakwater at North Haven and it occurred to me that, with a little extra effort, we could walk along the coast to the Murray Mouth.
No, I would never walk the whole Heysen Trail! Think of all those long boring road sections! Yes, I had said that several times. So how is it that I have just completed the very last step of the 1200km Trail?
The catch-up chatting began in the bus, which picked up many walkers from outside the Heysen office, in Pitt Street, on the way to the first stop in Port Augusta. Walking gear and food filled the storage area under the bus but left just enough space for a large addition, no names mentioned, in Snowtown.
The ‘Heysen Trail’ has become our obsession and biggest personal challenge to complete in August 2008. When we first started walking on some End-to-End 1 days and catch ups we thought, okay just for the fun of it, we will do the odd day. We were told that we should just do the easy bits but this made us determined to tackle the whole 1200km!
In July, 2002 Stuart wrote an excellent and detailed account of the origins of the Heysen Trail and has granted me the privilege of re-counting events below, as they occurred at the time. Stuart’s detailed account is entitled “The Heysen Trail – The First Steps”.
With a background of working in the outdoors Terry arrived in Australia and worked for the National Fitness Council in […]
