HEAT, humidity, isolation - nothing stops Dan Watson from his Perth to Sydney trek - except the need to refuel in the Eurobodalla.
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Mr Watson stopped in Moruya for lunch on Wednesday, February 25 after walking from Bodalla in the morning.
He took the coast road to Batemans Bay on Wednesday afternoon to avoid the Mad Mile, north of Mogo.
The Bay Post/Moruya Examiner caught up with Mr Watson on North Head Road.
After spending the night in a bed at Bodalla rather than his usual tent, thanks to the generosity of Narooma News reporter Jeanne Medlicott, he was feeling better than he had in 10 days.
He was also pleased to see flatter roads and wider shoulders, putting space between him and the “mildly psychotic” drivers he had encountered on his journey.
“I was starting to get a bit disheartened, because of the roads,” he said.
“I was basically playing chicken.
“My outlook now is to kill them with kindness – I give the cars a wave and now there’s a lot more acknowledgement.”
Brown as a nut, he described the local area as “a real treat”.
“If I wasn’t here to walk these roads, it would be pretty spectacular,” he said.
“I love it.”
My outlook is to kill them with kindness
- Dan Watson
To raise money for SANE and Cancer Council NSW, on October 20 last year Mr Watson left Perth and hopes Bondi on March 7.
The Bega Valley offered some of the toughest terrain, along with the Adelaide Hills and the isolation of the Nullarbor Plain.
The motivations for his walk have now changed since he first began.
“When I first started, it was basically about me and my mum,” Mr Watson said.
“I was very depressed, really unhappy with my work, and a lot of things going wrong in my life were all 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,” Mr Watson said.
One of the most humbling experiences for him was when a young girl in a wheelchair approached 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 days earlier, and Mr Watson helped to share his pain a little.
“The word ‘cancer’ is such a leveller for people because it’s about as extreme as it gets, so that is where the solidarity comes from,” he said.
“It took me a while on the road and getting to rock bottom to realise that I can be selfish,” Mr Watson said.
“If I kept worrying about myself, I wouldn’t have finished the walk.
“But to make the walk for someone else, for Mum, that was taking those issues off myself.”