Mount Barney

And it was about the first year after I did my studies, so we're talking early 199- 1990s, sort of, no, no, '93 sort of probably would've been, 1992.

And I was given this really big group to walk up Mount Barney on an overnight trip.

And Mount Barney's not the highest mountain in Queensland, but it's probably one of the more technical ones.

And I had this large group of year 11 boys, about 18 of them, on my own, walking up Barney Gorge, which is pretty technical.

Like, I wouldn't recommend anyone do that, particularly not someone as green as I was.

And one of the students noticed this and, and said to everyone, "Hey, everyone, just, hey, notice how quiet it is." And, and they said, "Why don't we sit here for a minute?" They said this.

Like, "Why don't we sit here for a minute and just notice how quiet it was?" And we did that.

And then another person said, "Well, why don't we see how long we can be quiet for?" And that, they literally sat in dead silence on top of Mount Barney East Peak, uh, being completely quiet until I think someone farted and everyone laughed and, and the moment was gone.

I think I went and did.

I went and hiked up Mount Barney as one training run.

Then I tried to do – I saw on Ben Strava – that he ran in the rain.

So I tried to do one of those loops that I could see him doing, got lost.

So whoever's available just says, "Yeah, I'm available." So it'll come through.

"Right, we've got a guy missing the back of..." Like the one we're going to do tomorrow, on Sunday is at Mount Barney out past, um, Beaudesert.

Yeah, right.

Um, we, um, "Right, who's available?" And it'll be available, not available.

And they moved to the Rathdowny, Boonah, Bay Desert.

Mount Barney, big history around there.

Yeah,

phenomenal, yeah.

And a lot of people get caught out.

They think, oh, look, okay, Mount Barney, for example, it's only a four-kilometre hike.

We can do that.

And then you go out, but they fail to realise that it's 1,000 metres in elevation and it totally changes it.

I did attempt one hike.

up Mount Barney in the national park, Karajini National Park.

And looking back at it now, I'm like, oh God, how did we, what did we even think? Like we didn't carry enough water.

We started way too late in the day.