On Saturday night 28th March 1959, two weary Boy Scouts limped down Jeffrey Street, Redcliffe, climbed the short flight of steps into Mrs J. McKenna’s house, and collapsed thankfully into two chairs. As they sat practically exhausted, pools of water formed on the floor from their saturated clothes and boots.
The two weary young men were bothers Arthur and Len Coleman, of Walloon Road, Rosewood. They had just finished walking 75 miles (120.7km) in 48 hours. Their two day, rain soaked ‘expedition’ had taken them over mountains, along dirt roads and around the fringe of Brisbane from Rosewood to Redcliffe.
They set out to walk from the 75 miles from Rosewood at 5.40 p.m on Thursday night (26th), and hobbled through the tollgate at the Clontarf end of the Hornibrook Highway at 5:45p.m. on Saturday night.
This side of the tollgate, they gratefully accepted a lift from a man whose name they did not find out, but who had a son in a local Scout group. He took them to the Scarborough Scout Hall which is south of the Showgrounds just round the corner from Jeffrey Street.
“This was a brand-new car, and we were saturated, but he didn’t mind. He took us in, packs, water and all,” the brothers said gratefully on Sunday morning when they were talking to a Redcliffe Herald reporter. When they were interviewed the brothers were wearing borrowed clothing. Their own clothes were still drying. The object of the walkathon was to qualify for their Ramblers’ Badge. Part of the qualifications was undertaking a walk during which the aspirants had to stay out for four days and three nights. No specific distance had to be covered.
Their route took them from Rosewood over Mount Crosby, through Kenmore, The Gap, Bald Hills and Brighton. They carried maps but had no compass because the rest of the Rover crew to which they belonged had taken the only compass with them to Stradbroke Island, where Rovers and Scouts spent a strenuous Easter holiday.
The Coleman brothers pin-pointed their position with the aid of the Southern Cross, lined the map up on it, and only lost their way once. They blamed that on faults in the military map which showed a main road where only a cart track existed. They estimated that this error, which occurred the other side of The Gap, and took some time to discover, set them back eight hours in estimated time of arrival at Redcliffe. The map was generally unreliable, they said.
Arthur Coleman, 20, was a pit carpenter in the mines at Rosewood at the time and his brother Leonard, 18, was an electrical fitter in the Ipswich Railway Workshops. They carried food with them during their walk but we are unable to light a fire at any time, because everything including wood and matches was soaked. They said that people all along the route had been most helpful and encouraging, and had frequently offered lifts which they had to refuse.
Leonard said one woman had invited them into her house for a meal and had given them tea and dry bread. When the Herald queried the generosity of a meal of dry bread, Leonard hastened to explain. “Oh she gave us sandwiches. What I meant was that the bread was dry. The bread we were carrying was wet from the rain, but just same, we ate it when we were hungry.”
Arthur said, easing the the weight on his weary feet, “It was a rough trip but we wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
The brothers said that they practically had to fight off motorists who stopped to offer them a lift on the Hornibrook Highway Bridge. The brothers kept walking, but only just, right to the end of the bridge to complete the task they had set themselves. This stretch, they said, seemed the longest of all and their 70lb packs seemed to weigh hundred weights. They slept under a two man tent in a field 5 miles (8km) south of Kenmore on the first night, pitched the tent under a school at the Gap on the second night.
They started off on the walk back on Sunday morning, did not know how far they would cover, but expected to have completed at least 100 miles in all before they gave up in time to get to work on the following Tuesday morning.
Staying at Mrs McKenna’s home, and ready to greet them when they arrived, was Mr Gordon Yarrow, who was chairman of the Scout Group Committee at Rosewood.
Hornibrook Highway Toll Gate ca. 1960
Redcliffe Museum Photographic Collection
Main Photo: Rosewood Scouts at the top of Mt Walker mid 1960’s. (Spencer Yarrow)