By Kath Gannaway
A COUPLE who have travelled the more than 5000 kilometre length of the National Bicentennial Trail finished their five-year journey in Healesville on Saturday.
Craig Landy and Shirley Marr were greeted by family and friends at Donnelly’s Weir at the point which marks, for them, the end of the trail.
“Healesville has been our Holy Grail since we set out from the Atherton Tablelands,” Craig said.
The trail starts in Cooktown but Craig joked that he, Shirley and their team-mates, horses Wally, Raisin, Slim, Crabpot, Ben, Dave and Max the dog started a bit further down the trail.
“If we had started at Cooktown we would have gone past home and might have been tempted to stop,” he joked.
They started the journey in a gypsy-style horse-drawn caravan and then rode, each leading two pack horses. Craig said the biggest challenge had been the weather and the forces of Mother Nature.
“Queensland is long, flat and hot. New South Wales is wilderness and very remote, then you get into Canberra and you’re going around in circles. Victoria is short and steep. It’s all of the above,” he said.
The highlights were the people they met along the way as they worked six months of the year and travelled the other six.
Camping out in the magnificent national parks, including a couple of weeks with the brumbies of Kosciusko and Guy Fawkes national parks were among their most memorable moments in the bush.
The couple stayed with local NBT co-ordinator Jo Kasch and at the Black Spur Inn in Narbethong before riding, accompanied by local trail riders Graeme ‘Smokey’ Dawson from Launching Place and Norm Carter from South Belgrave, on the last leg.
Craig said the welcome was mindblowing. “It was unbelievable … the faces we saw, people we know and care for and many people we have not seen for a long time,” he said. Friends from Khancoban, Rockhampton and Gladstone were among them.
In a heart-felt speech Craig paid tribute to Shirley for her courage, grit and humour, to the horses who he said conquered everything put before them with ultimate trust and Max who he said had learned to dodge baits, dingoes and rangers along the way.
Casey MP Tony Smith gave an official welcome saying the couple was inspirational.
“I can’t think of anything more Australian to do,” he said.
The couple is writing a book of their experiences on the National Bicentennial Trail which will be called The Flight of the Black Cockatoos.
