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You probably haven’t seen Joash at Walsh’s for a while. Here’s why

You probably haven’t seen Joash at Walsh’s for a while. Here’s why

People from all corners of Australia are about to be graced with Queanbeyan resident Joash “Seggy” Tore’eke Molia Taufa’ahau’s enthusiasm for life and incredibly infectious smile. 

Straight from the pages of Cherly Strayed’s Wild – or like a scene from Forrest Gump – Joash is on his own personal journey, literally and figuratively.

He’s started hiking through the rugged Australian bush under an unforgiving sun, aiming to reach all four points of the compass across our great continent: something that’s never been done before. But why attack such a big challenge and such a young age?

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“Twenty-two and nothing to do!” Joash jokes before pausing,

“It may seem like some grand adventure, but I’m really just living my life intentionally.”

Sponsored by Mont Adventure Equipment, Joash set off in November from Wilson’s Bay, South Point, Victoria, roughly 700km from Queanbeyan. Covering up to 30 kilometres a day, pushing through unforgiving terrain like the Snowy alps and learning the value of walking poles and an ample amount of tiger balm.

“You measure your days in kilometres because you can’t control the time … you might get so distracted or things might be so rough, you’ll only walk five kilometres. But if you say, ‘I’m going to walk 20km’, then you don’t worry about the time, you focus on what you can control.

“Sometimes you might get held up because, for instance, you have to wait for cows to pass. Literally, Gippsland is such a pretty place, but even when you leave, for about 700 kms it just smells like cow dung!”

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Blisters, burning sun and hours between meals is about as far removed from his friends’ tradie jobs and Mooseheads antics as one can get. A gruelling pilgrimage may not be the most carefree way to spend your early 20s, but Joash says it’s the people he meets along the way that keep him putting one foot in front of another.

“I think what continues to surprise me while walking is the people, it’s sounds so cliche, but it really is,” he says.

“You go in and stay with a stranger and they put you on their floor or they put you in their shed and one guy who actually rode past me, he came back and he invited me in for coffee and we had a yarn. He told me about his wife’s mother who had cancer, and it just reminded me that everyone has things going on and you’re just a moment in their life.”

Joash stays focused on his goal by documenting his adventures in his blog ‘37,0000 days’, where he articulates the unique challenges of navigating one of the harshest and largest continents in the world.

“The short answer is 37,000 days or 100 years. A ‘full life’ is a number in age most will never reach. With the average life expectancy much less than 100 years. 37,000 days isn’t realistic at all. So it’s this idea of – it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s life in your years, to use up our short, fleeting time intentionally,” Joash explains.

While walking Joash prefers to keep his phone in his pocket, taking in each moment and approaching what’s around every new corner with fresh eyes, 

“I was walking through fog, right on a cliff and I could hear the ocean … coming out of the darkness and I saw the sun rise and I saw this sea of clouds. In the distance was the Bass Strait and you could see what looked like a shark’s fin, but it was a mountain on one of the islands, it looked like it was sailing through the sea of clouds, and I was like ‘Wow’.”

Joash says a full night’s sleep is so crucial to his physical and mental health, he even has a tried and tested safety check when sleeping in small towns that he says works every time.

“Where there’s one police station and one pub, the first thing you do is, you go to the pub. Why do you go to the pub? Because if they’re in hi-vis you know it’s been a long day and they won’t hang around much later than 5pm.

“If they’re not in hi-vis then they’re bar flies and they’ve been there for ages – which is my assumption. So if they’re in hi-vis they’re gonna vacate and you can sleep next to the pub, in a bus stop or around the corner, you’ll be safe and no one is going to bother you.

“If they’re not then you know, ok I’m not going to stay near the pub, I’m going to go away. You trust people’s intentions are good, or you hope they’re good, because we think about ourselves that way. But you definitely learn to read the street.

“I sleep in bus stops, I sleep in toilets, because I want to look after your feet and your legs.

“[Pitching my tent is] 15 minutes of prep, so if there’s a public toilet tha’ts free and open 24/7, I’d rather sleep in there because that’s 15 minutes I can focus on my recovery rather than setting up my tent.”

The extraordinary humanitarianism of Joash’s story is that of someone much older and wiser. And in his favour he has young legs, fresh eyes and an incredible magnetism to all the good in the world.

“The view is always nice. But the view doesn’t sit with you, doesn’t eat with you, doesn’t exchange a story – people do. And I think that’s what continues to motivate me, that thought, ‘let’s go there and see what happens’.”

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About the Author: Holly Winchester

Part Jennifer Coolidge, part Jennifer Garner (gaudy and geeky), Holly idolises Dolly Parton and Princess Di and loves NRL. When she's not creating killer content, you’ll find Holly at the Maccas drive thru getting her chai latte fix or buying 1990s memorabilia for the walls of her Googong home. Specialist subject: the Woolies carpark.