A perambulation along Australia's Victorian coastline turned out to be a feast not only for the eyes, Miranda Spary discovered.
When I told people I was doing the Great Ocean Walk, everyone told me to be careful of overheating and sunburn.
I'd seen the pictures of that poor burnt koala cooling off in a basin of water during the bush fires.
Nobody suggested bringing a raincoat.
Or galoshes.
But I knew what to expect.
Silvery, dry gum trees, slithery snake trails on dusty paths, and that terrible, burning sensation in your throat and whole body as you gulp down huge mouthfuls of water every few minutes.
Australia is hot all right, and I was ready for it.
An email had arrived in March telling me I was going on a walk with nine other trampy types who call themselves the Glampers.
I had tramped with some of them before on the Hurunui Walk in North Canterbury, and had hoped and hoped that they might ask me again.
So I rushed to send in my deposit in case they changed their minds.
Melbourne is a wonderful city but don't arrive on the day they are shooting Border Patrol at the airport.
All the staff must have been jostling to get on-camera as they certainly weren't on duty at any of the normal customs and immigration desks.
It seemed to take a very long time to get into town and hit those fabulous cafes for some fine Melbourne coffee and breakfast.
Real tramping life started very early next morning.
An outfit called Bothfeet organised everything for our walking tour.
Their van arrived and whizzed us off out of town to the coast.
We stopped at some tiny coastal settlements and explored the contents of the cake shops, stocking up on supplies in case the packed lunch we were promised proved disappointing.
We started walking from pretty Apollo Bay.
We needn't have worried about the lunchboxes.
Bothfeet has a stunning Vietnamese chef called Ha, whose life ambition is to ensure every tramper on their walks enjoys every eating moment.
His ambition must have been realised on our trip.
Ten women who love food and have to do most of the cooking at home are going to be very happy with almost anything someone else prepares.
And when that someone else is Ha, their happiness knows no bounds.
The first day's walk is only 8km.
It sounds no distance at all, but it took us several hours.
There was so much to see, and with most of us living so far from the ocean, watching those lacy waves crashing on rugged Australian rocky shores was an easy way to waste a lot of time.
We must have taken a hundred photos each of all the strange rock formations.
All too soon we were under a cathedral roof of soaring eucalypts and our lovely guide gave us a mini yoga session while we waited for the van to arrive.
A slight breeze made the trees sway and creak and groan, but it was pure lack of fitness that made our bodies do the same.
Bothfeet's ecolodge doesn't just contain Ha, the wonderchef, but lots of other delights.
We oohed and aahed at the rooms and the enormous jacaranda tree in full purple regalia.
The highlight was the foot spas.
Even though we had walked only a short distance that day, it was lovely to pretend that we had earned the right to sit like queens with our feet soaking in massive ceramic pots full of bubbles while the lodge staff buzzed around bringing us cups of tea and Ha cakes.
Happy, happy glampers.
It was hard to recognise those happy ladies next morning as 10 sulky, sullen, surly faces appeared at breakfast.
Torrential rain had dampened everyone's enthusiasm for a bracing constitutional.
The only person looking cheerful was lovely Jane, who had packed a very fetching disposable orange waterproof cape.
Her cheerfulness was not contagious.
In the van, the guides apologised that the day's walk was to change - the mountain ash forest would be too treacherous with all the rain, so we would be doing what sounded a lot less interesting, but had the major upside of being a lot shorter.
Shorter in that rain could only be a good thing.
Funnily enough, the rain stopped shortly after we set off, but the ground was pretty boggy and we had to keep our eyes down to watch where we stepped - which was how we managed not to notice the koalas.
They wear cleverly designed outfits that match the gum trees perfectly and they like to stay up high, antisocially ignoring each other and short-sightedly destroying the trees that feed them.
There were masses of them once we learned how to spot them, and we all developed "koala neck", which is what you get from staring upwards for too long.
And "koala ankle", which is what you get when you don't watch where you are walking because you are looking upwards for koalas.
The other danger with "koala neck" is that it stops you seeing the koalas that are down low in the tree and right beside you.
Australia is full of wildlife and it all seems so happy to get close to you.
Shrieky, shouty, colourful birds are everywhere, and it made me want to enrol our shy brown kiwis in a self-confidence class.
Every day of the walk was full of animals and birds, including the very unimpressive legless lizard.
It could easily be mistaken for a piece of yellow string, only not as interesting.
It was definitely the quietest Australian we encountered.
During our four days' walking, we barely saw another person, apart from our 10 loud selves and our slightly quieter guides.
That is, apart from the days at the Cape Otway Lighthouse and the Twelve Apostles.
While our return to civilisation at the lighthouse meant getting a cappucino and swapping camera duty with other tourists for some happy holiday snaps, reaching the Twelve Apostles was a less than gentle reminder about the joys of staying away from the great unwashed - vast car parks oozing with buses, cars and people.
We were lucky our guides had warned us about the crowds and had given us a fortifying glass of Champagne beforehand.
There's a reason some places in the world have those gigantic crowds out in the middle of nowhere.
It's because there is something well worth seeing.
And the confusingly named Twelve Apostles are well worth seeing.
The sea is forever removing and replacing the Apostles, so it's an ever-changing spectacle.
There's a nice story about one of the Apostles under which the sea had nibbled away an arch.
This Apostle became known as London Bridge as the arch grew bigger.
One day, inevitably, the arch grew too big and London Bridge fell down.
The police were told that there were two people stuck on the far side of the Apostle so a rescue helicopter bristling with TV cameras was dispatched.
When it arrived, the two people hid their faces away from the helicopter.
It appeared they were a couple having a sneaky romantic day away from their spouses and jobs, and the last thing they needed was their rescue televised nationwide.
Getting away from it all is one of the reasons hiking holidays are so popular.
This walk really does let you do just that.
One day we walked miles along a deserted beach in our bare feet.
The only other footprints on the whole thing were those of a kangaroo and joey.
Our constant chatter and shrieking and singing probably kept them at bay, but given the size of mummy or daddy kangaroo's feet, we were quite glad not to have met them.
The Great Ocean Walk isn't a hard walk at all, but there is a lot to see and a lot of very different terrain.
We were very glad of our foot spas each day, and the massages.
Clever Kerry had brought along some sachets of a surprisingly legal potion called Rev.
It's just the thing for when you have collapsed in a heap and need a bit of a pick-me-up to get you going again.
The guides might have had to do a bit of prodding us with big sticks some days if it hadn't been for our friend Rev.
We were lucky to do the walk after so much rain.
The vegetation was all sparkly clean and fresh and fragrant.
Seeing it while it was actually raining wasn't so flash, but although the rain came down in buckets, it didn't do it for long.
And we loved the lodge.
Eco is often a synonym for not very comfortable, and for not very warm showers, but Bothfeet's only problem was the ecolightbulbs, which weren't quite bright enough for late-night reading.
After a day's tramping, Ha's breakfasts, lunches, dinners plus morning and afternoon teas, foot spas, far too much from the complimentary bar and endless chatting, singing and nonsense, our cosy beds were far too comfy to waste staying awake reading anyway.
Especially when Victoria's rain poured down on the tin roof.
- Miranda Spary is a Queenstown writer.
If you go:
www.bothfeet.com.au
