In southern New South Wales, an ancient Aboriginal trail some 365km long links the snowy peaks of Targangal (now known as Mount Kosciuszko) with the turquoise waters of Bilgalera (Fisheries beach) in Twofold Bay, near the coastal town of Eden.

Thought to be thousands of years old, the track, after decades of not being used, threatened to vanish from popular imagination like a line of faded ink.

John Blay, 70, is the author of On Track: Searching Out the Bundian Way and says once revived, it will become one of Australia’s great walks.

Blay has been writing about south-east NSW for more than 30 years. There’s even a wattle that grows up to 25 metres high named after him – he identified it on one of his many back-country adventures.

A typical pathway through Byadbo wilderness on the Bundian Way. Photograph: John Blay

This area of NSW is home to a number of Indigenous nations, including the Yuin, Ngarigo, Bidhawal and Monaro peoples. Friendships with members of those communities, including BJ Cruse, chairman of the Eden Aboriginal land council, tipped Blay off about a pathway linking the Monaro region to the coast.

When Blay received a history research grant in 2001, his hunt for the Bundian Way began. Historical documents indicated parts of the track were surveyed in 1842, and in the following decades parts of it were used for travelling stock.

“It was very well known back in the 1800s,” Blay says. But with the advent of cars and bitumen roads, the route fell out of popularity and was eventually forgotten.

In 2003, exhausted by his search but sensing he was close, Blay stumbled across a lead that would break the case wide open. He met an old dingo trapper and horseman in his late 80s called Harold Farrell, living in the town of Bombala.



Blay asked Farrell if he had heard of the pathway. “Of course I have,” he replied. “I know it well, I used to use it.” Farrell pointed out exactly where it lay.

“When I went out the next day that’s exactly where the route went,” Blay says.

Having now completed the trail several times, Blay says walking it became a sort of “pilgrimage towards the old Australia”. Dotted with Aboriginal artefacts – worked bits of stone, axe heads and middens – the trail is an example of “Aboriginal landscape”, he says – something quite different to “settler landscape, where people look for grass for their sheep or cattle”.

On his walks, Blay began to better read the natural environment, noticing how the plant life changed and recognising good camping spots, which he says were always the same places where Aboriginal people once camped.

At the end of summer, thousands of ravens flock to the high country and feast on bogong moths. Photograph: John Blay

He says in the summer, the track was used by Aboriginal people to ascend into high country and hunt for bogong moths, which line the granite walls “two or three inches thick, like carpet”. After being netted, the moths were thrown on to a charcoal bed, which burned the legs and wings off. “They’re a highly nutritious source of food,” Blay says.

Has he eaten bogongs himself?

“I have, they’re fantastic! Crunchy and delicious, like eating a roasted cashew nut,” he says.

At the end of the cold season, says Blay, it was common to head to the coast for “great big feasts of whale meat”, as well as fish, lobster and abalone. There would be ceremonies “where they traded and met up with their friends and relatives”.

In the decade that has passed, Blay has worked as a project officer for the Eden Aboriginal land council, developing the track for public use and working closely with Cruse and Cruse’s father, the Yuin-Monaro elder Ossie Cruse.

“He’s been an amazing leader of this project,” says Blay of Ossie, and credits BJ with doing all the difficult “political work”. In 2010 the track was surveyed for modern use by a team of five Aboriginal people who walked its entire length. It was heritage listed three years later.

A couple more years is needed before the track is ready for walkers and fitted with primitive campsites, says Blay, although a 12km stretch along the Twofold Bay foreshore complete with scenic viewing platforms is due to open in six months.

John Blay, the author of On Track: Searching Out the Bundian Way.

Blay says it is Aboriginal people doing the development work, among them inmates from NSW jails that find the work “inspiring”. Once complete the track will be an opportunity for visitors to learn about Aboriginal Australia.

“We’ll have signage, a guidebook and app,” he says, adding that there will also be an art gallery.

The Bundian Way project runs a three-day camp for Aboriginal children called Getting Back to Country. Ossie told the ABC: “A lot of our kids are damaged because they haven’t had the opportunity to live the kind of culture they need to live and that damage will be repaired on the Bundian Way.”

Blay says during his time on the Bundian Way, which even in the wildest of back-country looks like any other dirt track, he has spotted kangaroos, emus, snakes and a “beautiful little animal that lives close to the coast called the long-nosed potoroo”.

Oh, and snakes. Lots of snakes. “But if you don’t hassle them they won’t hassle you,” Blay says.

He expects most people will only walk sections of the trail at a time, but says walking its length – “from the highest part of the country to the coast” – is an incredible experience. “Every day you’d get an almost entirely different landscape ... you get to one end and you want to walk back to the other end again.”

A map of the Bundian Way. Illustration: John Blay