“Oh, how I wish we would only remember that we are but travellers here,” Mary MacKillop
I knew why I had been drawn to walk Australia’s Camino. It wasn’t to become closer to the Catholic Church or Mary MacKillop, whose journey across South Australia’s Limestone Coast inspired the route. I had come to feel closer to my mum.
My mother was a walker. Years earlier, she had completed Spain’s Camino de Santiago with her sisters and counted it, alongside raising three daughters, as one of the greatest achievements of her life. She wanted to walk another pilgrimage with her daughters one day, but Mum died before we could.
So when the chance came to walk the Aussie Camino, from Port MacDonnell to Penola across Boandik country, I thought perhaps I could take her with me in another way. I imagined the long road might carve some quiet into my muddled, family-filled life. I would walk, think and perhaps talk to her.
Instead, I found six other women.
The women at the pub
There is trepidation in beginning a walking holiday with strangers. What if you are the slowest? What if everyone else has calves carved from granite and an enthusiasm for dawn starts?
On the first evening, we gathered at a pub, quietly working out who everyone else was.
“So, this is a girls’ trip, then?” I asked.
Our guide, Natasha “Tash” Dawson, explained that the men originally booked had pulled out. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps kismet. Either way, the journey would unfold among women.
Any remaining anxiety faded as I watched Tash load an improbable number of bags into the van. To her, luggage, weather and flat tyres were merely details.
Finding our rhythm
Our first full walking day began at Port MacDonnell, or Ngaranga, on the Southern Ocean. In 1867, Mary MacKillop travelled from Penola to Port MacDonnell before sailing for Adelaide. We were walking in the opposite direction, heading inland.
At first, our rhythm was clunky. Then the rain came down hard, driven sideways by wind that treated waterproof jackets as a personal challenge.
I walked much of that day beside Grace, a woman so slight I wondered whether the wind might lift her off the road. She lived with type 1 diabetes, constantly checking and adjusting while the rest of us simply put one boot in front of the other.
By day’s end, she was soaked through and dangerously cold, eventually sheltering in the van. Yet she had walked through the worst of the weather without complaint, managing an invisible illness against very visible elements.
That day Grace became the Survivor, not because illness defined her, but because it revealed the courage required to do what others might take for granted. Resilience rarely looks cinematic. Sometimes it looks like checking your blood sugar on a wet roadside and carrying on.
By the time we reached the Blue Lake, rain had found every weakness in our clothing. But something had shifted. We had begun as strangers trying to be pleasant and ended cold, soaked and vulnerable, the social armour beginning to rust.
Why walking makes truth easier
Walking beside someone is different from sitting opposite them. On foot, the landscape absorbs some of the intensity. You can look at the road or your boots while saying things you might otherwise keep hidden.
Over the following days, stories emerged about grief, illness, changing families and lives that had not gone to plan. Nobody announced she was about to reveal something significant. She simply began talking.
As the group rearranged itself, roles emerged. The Organiser noticed what was forgotten. The Nurturer checked who needed a rest. The Adventurer looked beyond the next bend. The Quiet Observer spoke less but noticed more. The Storyteller made us laugh, then took us somewhere unexpectedly tender. Nobody was only one thing.
The sisters
The fourth day took us around 20 kilometres from Mingbool to Kalangadoo. It was also the day I found myself watching the two sisters in our group.
They had come to spend rare time together, away from families and responsibilities. Their closeness showed in tiny acts. One offered the other a sweet. “You haven’t drunk enough water.” One slowed without needing to be asked.
Sisters remember old versions of one another: the terrible haircut, childhood nicknames, teenage heartbreak, the person before work and family reshaped everything.
Their companionship helped me understand what the Camino de Santiago must have meant to my mother. Walking with her sisters allowed her to step outside the role of mother. With her daughters, her instinct would always have been to nurture us but with her sisters, perhaps she could simply be Sue again: sibling, equal, companion and occasionally the one being looked after.
I had come to walk with my mother’s memory, but that day I began to see her pilgrimage differently. Perhaps it had not only brought her closer to her faith. Perhaps it had returned her, briefly, to herself.
The road to Penola
On our final walking day, we left Kalangadoo for Penola, or Pinangula, roughly 18 kilometres away.
Penola was where Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods established St Joseph’s School and where the Sisters of St Joseph began.
Yet I found myself walking alone for much of the day. The group was nearby, stretched along the road, but the space around me widened. This was what I had imagined before coming: a road, my thoughts and Mum.
I talked to her silently about what I missed and still wanted to tell her; how grief does not travel in a straight line but loops back unexpectedly, sometimes triggered by two sisters sharing a lolly on a country road.
I had expected the walking to help me leave something behind. Instead, it showed me grief is not something you finally put down; it becomes part of the way you travel. Some days it is heavy, other days it sits lightly, but love remains inside it.
Mary MacKillop’s words had seemed philosophical before the walk. Now I understood them differently. We arrive, accompany one another for a stretch and eventually separate. We cannot determine how long someone remains beside us, only how attentively we walk together while we have the chance.
What seven women found
When we entered Penola, our pilgrimage ended where Mary MacKillop’s work had begun. At the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre, our passports were stamped and certificates handed over. More than 80 kilometres had passed beneath our boots, but distance no longer seemed the most important measure.
The Organiser learned she did not have to carry everything. The Nurturer remembered care can flow both ways. The Adventurer found the most unexpected territory was within the women beside her. The Quiet Observer showed how much can be understood before it is spoken. The Storyteller made room for sorrow through laughter. The Survivor showed that strength is continuing while carrying vulnerability.
And I discovered that walking with strangers could bring me closer to my mother than solitude alone might have done.
After enough kilometres, what matters becomes simple: waiting at the gate, sharing a lolly, noticing who falls behind and listening.
Seven women began with different burdens. We did not solve them; we simply walked beside one another and sometimes that’s enough.
The walk: Aussie Camino with Walk the Limestone Coast
Route: Port MacDonnell/Ngaranga to Penola/Pinangula, South Australia
Duration: Five nights, with four full walking days, approx. 12–21 kilometres daily
Includes: Accommodation, most meals, luggage transfers, private transfers, pilgrim passport and shell, local guiding and entry to the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre.
Finish: Penola, with final passport stamp and Camino certificate.
Feature image – Walking through the pine plantations of Wandilo photo Rebecca Foreman
