Stinson Walk

When the going gets tough, camaderie and the legend of a heroic rescue keeps a ragged adventurer going, writes JEREMY DRAKE

As light faded in the rainforest canopy, I flicked on my head torch for the second time that day, 13 hours after I’d switched it off at dawn. That’s the moment I felt my Imaginary Line was fast approaching.

I’d learned about “The Line” through acclaimed Australian mountaineer Michael Groom who would walk alongside me during this year’s annual Stinson Walk in southeast Queensland’s Lamington National Park, an hour-and-a-half drive west of the Gold Coast.

According to Michael, a Lamington Park local, it represents the exact moment you reach the precipice of your ability as well as an unacceptable level of risk. In short, it’s the moment you probably should turn around.

“My job as a climber is not getting to the summit, it’s managing the risk that I’m exposing myself to and if you lose that priority you probably won’t live very long,” he tells me. “As I’m climbing, I’m assessing the risks regularly. How am I feeling? How far have I got to go? Where are the escape routes? Eventually the risk becomes unacceptable. Everyone has a different level of risk they are prepared to accept, but once you get to that Imaginary Line you need to say, ‘it’s time to turn around’.”

Michael reached this point on his first expedition to the Summit of K2 in 1994. Instead of rolling the dice he turned around at his Line, just 40m from the summit, believing his life was at risk if he continued. His decision was the right one and it would lead him to later become the fourth person in the world to climb the four highest peaks without bottled oxygen.

While the Stinson Walk is certainly no Himalaya, according to Michael the annual pilgrimage through the McPherson Ranges is still well known as one of Australia’s most difficult single-day hikes. It is on the bucket list of Australia’s trekking fraternity and draws experienced hikers from all over the country.

Covering 37km in a single day, the walk straddles a narrow ridge line and traverses three steep peaks along the border of NSW and Queensland. However, it’s most famous for retracing the steps of local bushman Bernard O’Reilly, who set off on foot from his homestead in search of the 1937 Stinson plane crash. O’Reilly used his local knowledge of the ranges, after all other search attempts to find the plane had failed, to discover and subsequently rescue the two survivors more than 11 days after it went down in a storm between Brisbane and Sydney. O’Reilly became an overnight national hero and thus the legend of the Stinson was born.

But, unlike Michael Groom or Bernard O’Reilly, I’m no mountaineer nor a trained bushman, just a curious outdoor enthusiast and history buff with a few weeks of training under my belt. When I set off for my Stinson attempt just before 4am, I was certainly thankful Michael was close by.

During our pre-trip briefing at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat, our guide Matt reminds our group of 30 hikers that once we all pushed past the infamous 9km no-turnaround point, we would be fully committed to the Stinson.

He tells us he had been through the trek just a week earlier to mark a new trail with pink ribbons and clear the thick undergrowth.

The first thing I remember after leaving the retreat is the mud. In the darkness you don’t see it, instead you hear the squelch among the silence of the group as it envelopes your boots.

By 9am I felt like I had already walked for a day and the low hanging cloud coupled with morning bird calls added to that already uncomfortable silence. And then much later in they day it happened, exactly as Michael had described it. Dusk arrived and my head torch sprang to life and now, with the extra light, I remember peering down at a pair of muddy, blistered palms and also wincing at the pain in my left knee from an earlier fall.

My Imaginary Line had approached without warning, right at the 32km point. Perhaps I’m overdramatising, but in that exact moment I asked all the questions and still assessed all risks. Should I tell our guide my knee was swollen like a balloon? Would I be safe if I kept going? Why had I said yes to this trip? Why couldn’t I be reviewing a hotel in the Maldives?

I resolved I had come so far already and it was probably safe to progress. But I suspect my decision was not just out of self preservation or the acceptable level of risk, but the occasion itself and the people I was with. Michael’s presence filled me with confidence and Matt was a beacon. Not only attempting a Stinson Walk in double digits, he added kilometres to his own hike by moving between the front and rear of the line regularly checking morale. With us was also O’Reilly’s great niece, Jane.

Once we reached the summit of Mount Throakban, Jane pointed us in the direction of the “burnt tree” that O’Reilly describes so vividly in his book, Green Mountains. O’Reilly talks about seeing an out-of-place tree in the distance which he used to orientate the direction of the lost plane and the two survivors, Joseph Binstead and John Proud.

But once we finally reach the original crash site, the full gravity of our journey sets in. I’m rendered speechless when I realise that parts of the plane’s rusted fuselage and wing still sit on the side of the mountain. Jane reads us the passage from her uncle’s book upon his own discovery of the wreckage. In that tight clearing there wasn’t a dry eye in our group of now hardened trekkers.

The Stinson is not to be underestimated, and a certain level of fitness is required, but our group ranged from 16 to 60 years old. All three ascents of Echo Point, Mount Throakban and Point Lookout are manageable with the right training, but the steep, muddy drop into Christmas Creek after the crash site will challenge your knees. Mine suffered badly.

The infamous wait-a-while vines will also cause havoc to just about any piece of exposed skin, like thousands of tiny knives tearing through an uncooked steak, but I found that whoever was in front of me would always push the vines aside to help me to sneak through unscathed. For me this gesture only added to the magic of the experience. Camaraderie with my fellow hikers played a huge part in pushing me through to the finish line as we were all equally swept up in the rescue story.

As the 17th hour of walking approached, I remember finally trudging across Christmas Creek towards a group of cheerful O’Reilly’s staff perched high on the river bed, buckets of beers and steamy baked potatoes at their feet.

One reached down to offer a hand up the river bank. I politely refused, instead dragging my limp, exhausted body up the final obstacle while thinking of O’Reilly, Proud, Binstead and the hundreds of local rescuers who’d had no choice but to roll the dice in 1937. They likely crossed multiple imaginary lines on a trail far more difficult than the one I’d just completed – exactly the reason why visitors keep returning here, to celebrate the magic of the Stinson.

The writer was a guest of O’Reillys Rainforest Retreat