At 6:02 am on 14/10/2024 I set off from Kalamunda with 17 days of food and harbouring little hope of making it 1,000 odd km down the Bibbulmun Track to Albany in a fully unsupported fashion. My pack weighed 19 kg and it kicked my butt. I slowly levelled my revenge as I ate it down to size day by day.
I got injured, attacked by a swarm of 100 ants at 3 am, was cold, wet, exhausted, went further and longer in my pain cave than ever before, ripped a hole in my forefoot with 80 km to go, slept terribly and almost ran out of coffee. It was, overall, not an enjoyable experience.
Nonetheless I was determined to at least survive and so at 7:37 pm on 30/10/2024 I found myself at the southern terminus in Albany.
For reasons that are now abundantly clear to me, no one to my knowledge has completed the hike in this style, or even attempted it. Hiking in an unsupported style entails not resupplying at all, buying food or drink, paying for accommodation or services. It was at least a cheap hike. Water was acquired mainly from water tanks at the Bibbulmun Track shelters, and sometimes from public taps in towns. I carried two 10k mA power banks and charged them for short durations in towns at publicly available outlets (visitor centres, parks etc). Furthermore, the Bibbulmun Track Foundation notes that camping is not allowed within National Parks, Nature Reserves, Conservation Reserves or Public Drinking Water Source Areas. I strictly abided by these requirements as well as those noted in the FKT guidelines.
There were a number of diversions due to prescribed burns when I walked the track including a very large one south of Northcliffe. At each detour I noted the difference in the diversion length vs the original route length and balanced out the difference by backtracking in two locations: for 10 km near Murray shelter and for 4.8 km along Princess Harbour near Albany
A longer form report will be available from the link below