Following Dr Michael Mosley's death I share my close call hiking in the heat and how to be prepared

Introduction good day I'm Karen welcome to life in the bush this is a video about safety in the bush particularly when walking in hot weather uh the recent passing of Dr Michael Mosley reminded me of an experience that I had some years ago where I found myself in a similar predicament that Dr Michael Mosley found himself in prior to his unfortunate passing if you're not sure who Dr Michael Mosley is just Google him uh he's written many books been in many um documentaries I first heard about him from the documentary eat fast live longer and I've been following him ever since I've got three of his books um and his wife's cookbook I was listening to his audible book on my drive to work on the day that he went missing uh and unfortunately days later when they found him uh he had passed away that same day that he'd gone missing because he found himself uh in hot weather walking um I'm assuming he would have run out of water become dehydrated uh and that is similar to what happened to myself and a few friends the reason I decided to share this story with you uh is because I thought I was prepared when I went on my walk but my friends and I we became very dehydrated we weren't prepared enough uh and what I've learned from that I wanted to share with you because I'm hopeful that if people choose to set out on a hike or a bushwalk in the heat that they are well prepared and make it home safely so my story is I was living in My story Alice Springs uh it was summertime probably late 2002 or early 2003 friends of mine and I had heard about a walk that we could do along the East McDonald ranges a few friends of ours had done the walk and they taken various times to complete the walk so we weren't quite sure how long it would take us but I remember being prepared for up to 4 hours I had recently learned that if you're going to be out walking in the heat in central Australia that you should carry a liter per hour of time spent out there because that's what you need to drink to stay hydrated for those of you who don't know Allis Springs is in the center of Australia it's desert country out there uh in summer the temperatures can get up over to over 40° C on the day that we set out it probably got to the high 30s we were dropped off at the starting point at about 9:00 in the morning um which wasn't ideal but we were young and didn't feel like starting any earlier than that so that was probably the first um lesson learned is if you're going to walk in the heat try to do it earlier in the day before before the the real heat sets in in the middle of the day uh so we were told that all we had to do is walk to the top of the ridge the East McDonald ranges uh and then along the top of the ridge easy enough and then we'd get to a point so we where we started it was outside of civilization there was no houses around um we'd get to a point where we'd start to see houses and then um there'd be a caravan park at the bottom of the ridge we we headed down at that point to the Caravan Park uh we had a friend waiting for us in the pub next to the Caravan Park and that sounded simple enough we were told that if we got to a point where we saw a rock with a pole sticking out of it that was about halfway so we set off we actually didn't take very long before we got to the pole the rock with the pole sticking out of it so we thought well this walk's not going to take as long as we've thought um and we relaxed a bit we ate some musly bars we drank some of our water I remember sharing um my pineapple juice because I had taken I'd taken a 2 L bladder backpack of filled with water as well as a bottle of water and a bottle of pineapple juice so when we got to that what we thought was a halfway point I shared my uh pineapple juice around thinking well I don't need up to 4 lers of fluids because it's not going to be a 4H hour walk uh anyway after that point we continued walking and walking and walking and walking the day got hotter and hotter and we didn't start to see houses for a very long time and we thought what's going on we thought we were halfway we should be seeing houses by now we should be getting close to the end um and to our horror we came over a ridge and we saw in the distance the far distance another rock with a pole sticking out of it so we were a little bit not panicked but concerned I suppose that that's stage because we thought wow that's we're not even halfway and we thought we were already well and truly on our way to finishing this walk so I remember at one stage I'm not sure how far into the walk it was I discovered that I'd actually leaked a water a leater of the water um in my bladder backpack had leaked out so I lost a liter of water remember I'd Running out of water already shared some of my pineapple juice so I was probably I might have only had 2 and 1/2 L of fluids with me in the end uh the others probably had that to start with I remember they didn't bring as much as I did um but in my wisdom I thought perhaps we could take a shortcut and that was actually not a good idea uh I grew up playing in the bush um pushing my way through scrub up and down Hills but that was on the east coast in Victoria New South Wales not in central Australia I wasn't familiar with the landscape uh but I thought to myself well surely um instead of walking all the way along the Ridge and back down how about we just take a shortcut sort of on a diagonal down the ridge so we tried that uh but we couldn't get through we we wasted 20 or 30 minutes realizing that we couldn't get through the scrub it was too steep too Rocky prickly bushes everywhere we had to turn around and go back up to the top of the ridge so by the time we finally got close to the end we we' completely run out of water we were becoming dehydrated we were very hot and bothered uh it was the middle of the day very hot uh and eventually I remember we got to the point where we could descend The Ridge and um make our way down to the Caravan Park and every part of my body wanted to take a rest and sit down Rehydration but uh I knew logically that that wouldn't help because I there was no shade I didn't have any water to rehydrate myself if I did sit down and take a rest all that would happen is I'd get more dehydrated and lose more energy and I needed to use all the energy that I had to continue walking and um it's a bit windy here so my eyes are watering um so I needed to use all the energy that I had just to keep putting one foot in front of the other to get to the bottom of the hill uh and to the Caravan Park which we knew would be there and our friends were waiting for us next to the Caravan Park so when we got to the Caravan Park we found a tap and I just remember walking over to that tap and we turned it on and just gradually started drinking to slowly rehydrate ourselves and we just wet our hair with water we we made a puddle on the ground of water and just laid in it and our friends were only across the road in the pub and we couldn't even make it over there for ages we we laid there in the water to just gradually drinking for at least a half an hour until we felt well enough to to go across the road and meet up with our friends Lessons learned so uh it was a bit of a scary experience for uh me at the time there were things that I had learned um first of all I knew to carry at least a liter per hour but what I didn't do was was actually find out how long the walk was likely to take we didn't look it up and see how how long the distance was we could have started earlier in the day so that we weren't In the Heat of the day um and not only that but we should have carried more water so the learnings that I wanted to share with you from my experience uh if you're intending to go out bushwalking particularly in the heat is take enough water take more than enough water because you may take what you think is enough but then something happens like for me at least leaked out of my backpack uh and I was short on water but you never know what might happen you might twist an ankle and it the walk will take you hours longer than first expected so you need to have enough water to to get you through take your mobile phone with you we had our mobile phones we were in and out of range but we were still able to let people know that we were running late uh and that's a big one as well make sure people know where you're going and what time you're expected to arrive at your destination so that if you don't make it they can come and look for you also Outro stick to the track um I made the mistake of thinking we could take a shortcut and it actually added time to our walk which made us even more dehydrated and again there was the the time of day you know the earlier you go in the day the less chance that you're going to be walking through the heat of the day so I hope those have been uh helpful tips for you so that you can be safe out there enjoy the great outdoors uh but be safe be prepared I was a girl guide so our motto our motto was be prepared and I thought I was prepared but not well enough prepared uh but thankfully we made it through okay sometimes things do go wrong and some people don't make it so do take it seriously do be prepared do let people know where you are take plenty of water and be safe out there I'll see you soon thanks for watching