Wild South Coast Way

I don’t think there are many things more humbling than hiking with a 2-time marathon runner. It definitely helps if they’re a coolawesomeamazingsmartbeautiful woman though.

On our way to a conference in Adelaide, Oak and I decided to hike the Wild South Coast Way on the Heysen Trail, a 75km stretch of (supposedly) relaxing rugged coastline. It turned out to be quite a lot steeper than we’d anticipated, and I managed to get lost twice, but it was still one of the most seamless hikes either of us has done.

The campgrounds were incredible. The views were gorgeous. We don’t need to talk about the endless cow paddocks on the third day. I’ve mostly erased them from my memory anyway.

We saw shinglebacks and western greys and echidnas. We talked about ethics and boyfriends and sustainability, and I learned about r/hikervoguetrash and Dungeon Crawler Carl. Oak is a tech wizard (and also just generally brilliant), and this website was her idea, so if you’re reading this please say “thank you Oak”.

I think we both had low expectations going into this hike. Our original plans for Flinders Ranges and Kangaroo Island had been thwarted by exclusionary $600 buses, so we weren’t exactly optimistic. But we were both genuinely impressed with this trail. Most of these hikes I’d consider Type II fun, but this was a legitimately awesome trail and deserves way more hype.