When I was recovering from surgery in February, I set four goals for rehabilitation:

1. Learning to walk properly
2. Hiking the Jatbula track
3. Completing the swim from Palm Beach to Manly and
4. Skiing again in February 2016.

I’ve completed the first and tomorrow I’m off on the last stage of the second goal – walking from Katherine Gorge to Edith Falls along the Jatbula track, in the Northern Territory. It has been a tumultuous couple of months of training and physiotherapy and injury and recovery. The last weeks of July 2015 are encapsulated in this photograph which I took this afternoon while I was packing. My crutches were leaning up against the wall next to my hiking boots and pack. I guess that summarises all the ups and downs of the last couple of weeks. Anyway, I’m flying to Darwin tomorrow and my crutches won’t be coming with me. I’m excited that I wasn’t denied this opportunity right at the end. That would have been very difficult to bear. So it’s into the mystical Outback once again, where the dry season stars wheel overhead and the night birds sing you awake at Picaninny daylight, where the the heat boils out of the spinifex at midday and the sun sets soft in the evening.  It will be good to get away for awhile. I haven’t had any exercise this week. I haven’t walked, haven’t swum and haven’t been to the gym. I didn’t want any chance of injury. It will be all worthwhile if I make it to the other end. The cab is picking me up at 6.40am. I’ve spent the day packing and watching the Wire – again.

Finished reading The Whites, by American crime author Richard Price. Not much good. He wrote Clockers which I read a couple of years ago. Didn’t enjoy that much either. He did write for the Wire though which makes him alright in my estimation.