Heysen Trail – “Thru hiking” end to ender tips.

So this is my attempt to share what I learnt with other people who want to walking the Heysen Trail in one go. I had a hard time finding much useful info when I was researching, and trying to read people’s blogs was so boring and yielded so little that I gave up after an hour or two. So here’s everything I can think of that may help in one post so you don’t have to wade through all the rest of that waffle I wrote!

First of all, I started mid September, walking south into summer. I’d reccommend starting at the beginning of September so it’s slightly cooler, but take a warm sleeping bag cos it gets down to near freezing point at night. Some people start at Cape Jervis and go north, the old guide books are even written that way. I like my way better, the sun is on my back more. Plus when would you start walking? In Autumn? Everything would be dry and I’d be worried about the rainwater tank levels.

Water: 
Contact The Friends of the Heysen Trail before you start to see how the rainwater tanks are going. I had no problems, although one tank was low. Apparently it was a good year for rain.
Usually no more than 20km apart, but maybe 4 or 5 times it was closer to 30km. There are often dams in between, but don’t even bother with the creeks on the map! Don’t rely on bores either, sometimes there’s no way to access them. Having said that I did use them a few times, but a couple of times I was disappointed.

Flies:
Bring a headnet for the flies! In livestock country (which there is a LOT of), you will be surrounded by flies constantly. Seriously they LOVE you. Either you learn to accept them or you go crazy. I’m not big on flies so this was actually the biggest struggle of the whole trail for me. I found a creme in Quorn, it was Rosemary and cedarwood by Nature’s Botanicals. It was expensive but  somewhat effective.

Trail Overview:
I’d estimate there is at least 600km of pastures and crops on the trail. It’s still nice walking. Think  of it as meditation or something. I confess I listened to a lot of audio books.
Physically the trail is mostly quite easy, although it gets quite hot and dry later in spring. It is also quite isolated. You can easily go a few days without seeing anyone at all. For me that’s part of the appeal of it.

Navigation:
It’s usually fairly well marked, they do a good job of that for the most part. Sometimes I got a bit confused though and sometimes the markers are overgrown with weeds, so it’s a good idea to keep track of where you are.
I also have a terrible sense of direction and saved myself many hours of grief by using a GPS app on my phone. The trail can be downloaded for gps on the website. I have an android phone and the app was “gps essentials”, it’s free.  I just used it to see where I was in relation to the trail then used the paper map from there.

Other Walkers:
On the whole trail, I met 5 other people doing the whole thing. 2 were going north, 2 were a couple and they were only doing 10km a day, and then Chris started the same day as me and had a similar pace. It’s a popular trail to section hike over a few years.

Resupply:
Well just look at the maps! You don’t need food parcels unless you want a healthier diet. I got lucky when Chris pulled out at Crystal Brook; he gave me the locations of all his food parcels. There’s more than enough towns with shops along the way though. I can’t comment on gas cannisters though, I’ve only ever used metho. You can always find metho.
That’s all I can think of for now. If you have any specific questions, feel free to write a comment and I’ll help you if I can 🙂