Dan Watson walking from Perth to Sydney passed through Narooma
LOCAL readers may have seen the young man pushing a cart emblazoned with ‘Every Step for Cancer’ walking along the verge of the road heading north.
He is 34-year-old Dan Watson and he is nearing the end of his self-set task to walk from Perth to Sydney in order to raise money for SANE and the Cancer Council NSW.
On October 20 last year Dan left Perth heading for Sydney hoping to arrive in Bondi by Saturday March 7 in time to resume his post graduate MBA (Master of Business Administration) at Sydney University on March 10.
Dan’s family are spread around the world. His mother lives in Ireland, his father in England and his brother in Germany.
“I initially started the 5,000km trek to clear my head, reclaim my self-esteem and learn the lessons I needed to be a better adjusted human.
“But the motivations for my walk have changed since I first began.
“When I first started, it was basically about me and my mum,” Dan said.
“I was very depressed, really unhappy with my work, and a lot of things were going wrong in my life that I felt were my fault.
“My mum was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, and it wasn’t really shoved in my face until March 2014 when she said that she missed me and she needed me, and she’s not the sort of person who says that.
“When I saw her, it put all my problems in perspective.
“So, originally my motive was to help myself by helping someone else, but as my mental health got better and better and my mum’s condition went into remission with chemotherapy, it became more about the people I could help who I met on the trip,” he said.
Dan’s journey has been grueling; he has worn out seven pairs of shoes. He has been walking an average of 45kms a day. During that time he has pushed his trolley that normally weighs about 75 to 80kgs, but during his trek over the Nullarbor Plains he was pushing a 100kgs.
“I had to carry water and enough canned food to get me to the next destination,” he said.
He was held up for five days waiting for supplies before he could start his travels across the Nullarbor so he decided not to take any rest days and just keep pushing on. It took 30 days to cross.
“The Nullarbor was very challenging, with temperatures in the high 40’s and the flies were awful,” he said.
“I didn't have a camp stove because I was wary of carrying a gas cylinder in the high temperatures I was to experience when I crossed the Nullarbor.
“I only ate tinned food, muesli, dried fruit and nuts.
“I am totally sick of baked beans, tinned beetroot, beans and I even got sick of tinned tuna but I had to like that again because it was a protein.
“At one stage while I was crossing the Nullarbor I only had beef jerky to eat for five days,” he said.
Needless to say Dan bought a camp stove as soon as he had finished crossing the desert.
“I still haven’t got sick of noodles,” he said.
On Friday Dan arrived in Bega and on Tuesday he arrived in Narooma.
On Monday evening he was walking along the highway when he arrived at the turn-off for Mystery Bay.
“I pondered if I should walk to the 2km in and then out and decided not to, so that night I camped on Corunna Lake.
“The next morning when I woke up and saw Mystery Bay I regretted my decision,” he said.
To make matters worse the day he left Corunna heading to Narooma Dan was 30 minutes into his walk when he realised that he had left his Go-Pro behind, so he parked his trolley and walked all the way back to retrieve it.
“Travelling from Orbost to Eden was one of the toughest parts of my journey,” he said.
“Although I try to walk on the wider verge and against the traffic, the roads were in dreadful condition in places and I was starting to feel a little jaded by cars.
“When I was crossing the Nullarbor everyone was friendly and waved or stopped for a chat, but I started having problems with traffic in the Adelaide Hills and around Mt Gambier.
“By the time I crossed the NSW border I was finding cars driving very close to the verge of the road, even though there were no double lines or other traffic on the road and the waves that I was used to seeing turned into people sticking their finger up at me,” Dan said.
But not Dan’s entire trip has been challenging as he has had some interactions with people that he has found humbling.
One of those was not far out of Western Australia when a young girl in a wheelchair came up to him and donated a handful of silver coins.
Another was near the Coorong, South Australia when a man approached him who had lost his wife only three days earlier.
“Sharing the old man’s pain made me relate to him which helped me to comfort him and I found that rewarding,” Dan said.
By the time Dan arrives in Sydney he believes he will have raised about $11,000 of which 30 per cent will go to SANE and the rest will go to Cancer Council NSW.
The walk helped Dan deal with his own mental health issues, by giving him enough time to confront those issues and ultimately being able to help someone else.
“It has definitely helped me with my self-esteem,” he said.
Today (Wednesday, February 25) Dan set off from Bodalla and is hoping to make his way to Batehaven. He is taking the back road to Batemans Bay in order to avoid having to walk the ‘Mad Mile’.
If you see him, please give him some space and a friendly wave or if you can donate to the cause.