After a chat with the young family, I was off to walk to a campsite just out of Mylor about 16km away. A good 7am start to the day.
Up and down through forestry trails and farmland, it should be a nice day.
After walking through a forest for about 5km I had an attack of SVT (Racing heart) . I tried all my usual tricks to flick the switch and get my heart back into a proper rhythm but nothing worked. I coughed, squatted, held my nose and blew, had a poo, sat down and blew into a syringe until I was blue in the face, then swept my legs up into the air, but nothing worked. I drank water and had some food, rested then tried it all again.
Just ignore it, I said. Stupid bloody electrics should work properly.
I staggered up a few hills, hardly able to get one foot in front of the other, for another hour and a half before collapsing on the side of the track, hands and feet tingling and my eyesight going funnier than it usually is.
I remembered a similar episode when I was walking Te Araroa when I struggled on, with the help of other walkers, for 5 hours before reaching a hut. There I was pressured into using my PLB personal locator beacon) to call for rescue helicopter. My heart settled down in the chopper and the hospital deemed me to be a very fit lady and to carry on with Te Araroa, which I did, after couple of days rest at my brother’s in Nelson. I had walked about 1,700km before that episode and continued to do another 1,300km.
This time I was on my own, and not sure what to do, so I rang the SA Emergency number, which I had put in my phone on the advise of the Friends of the Heysen Trail. They listened to me blubbering my symptoms, then told me to hang up and ring 000.
I did not want to do that. I have already been involved in 7 rescue helicopter episodes and was not keen to add to that tally. So I kept trying to sort it for another 40 minutes, but I had no luck. I hardly had the energy to get myself wrapped in the foil blanket as I was getting very cold and shakey.
So I rang 000 at 10.45, giving them my exact location thanks to my Farout app. I was less than 1km from a road. It wasn’t long before an ambulance, from nearby city, Mt Barker, arrived along the bumpy forest track. I was very relieved and began blubbering again. I am not usually a blubbering person, but needs must.
The lovely ambo lady was very excited to be on this job, being a hiker herself. They had been accompanied by police to the road end so they could cut the chains on the gate. I wonder if I will get a bill for that.
They quickly had the monitors on me and determined that I needed to go to hospital as I definitely had some funny traces going on. I felt much better as soon as I was in that ambulance.
The Ambo lady was very envious of my gear and had a good poke around my pack. She kept saying that she was so excited to meet me and that the doctor on duty had also walked the Heysen and would be interested in my gear. What about my heart, I thought.
Mt Barker hospital was amazing, unlike my lical hospitalin New Zealand where half dead people waited 48 hours. I was seen straight away. They brought me sandwiches, hot coffee, a heart specialist, blood tests, a new survival blanket, soup sachets and some small muesli packets for my pack.
After being tested, pocked and prodded I was deemed fit to go on my way. Everything was back to normal and my blood levels were all good.
So now what? I think the universe, or something, was telling me that the Heysen is not for me. I did not want to risk that happening again; I was embarrassed about it all, even though they told me I did exactly the right thing calling the ambulance.
So I walked out of the hospital, caught a bus across the road, and was back in Adelaide, at the Tequila Sunrise Hostel, in time for dinner.
The next day, I met up with an old friend from New Zealand,and met her lovely Aussie children for the first time.
The following day I was on a plane to my cousin’s in Melbourne, the Heyson Trail behind me. Not my best adventure!
Note to self: no more solo hiking in the off-season! I’ve realised I genuinely miss the “trail chatter”—passing friendly faces during the day and debriefing over camp stoves at night. I tried branching out and making friends with the local wildlife, but kangaroos are terribly one-sided conversationalists.
