I Hiked a Luxury 5-Day Trail in Queensland & It Challenged My Views on Adventure

Steph walked the Scenic Rim Trail on a luxury Spicers guided tour with eleven friends, to find out if creature comforts dull the magic of being outdoors.

We Are Explorers acknowledges that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Mununjali, Wangerriburra, Ugarapul, and Migunberri peoples who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

Who’s a hiking snob?

I’m not new to multi-day hiking: I’ve done the ultralight thing, filtered water from troughs, carried my life on my back, and rolled my eyes at people who carry camping pillows. Pfft.

My partner, however, is.

She was nervous in the lead up to a long-awaited group expedition with her closest friends on the Scenic Rim Trail, a trip that was months in the making, to celebrate 25 years of the group’s friendship. They flew in from New York, New Zealand, Melbourne, and Sydney. Some shouldered well-worn hiking packs, others brought suitcases for ATV portage between overnight stops.

Read more: Scenic Rim Trail – 4 Days in the Heart of Main Range National Park, QLD

My partner wasn’t the only one in the group with the jitters. For a group made up mostly of professionals in highly demanding office-based jobs, five days in the bush isn’t necessarily within the comfort zone. The 62km journey promised ticks, leeches, bush wees, rock scrambling, and several brutal climbs.

Plus – a whole lot of luxury.

Scenic Luxury

It would’ve been easy to turn my nose up at the many creature comforts the Spicers experience supplies: spacious eco-cabins with comfortable beds, chef-cooked meals (including daily packed lunches), a well-stocked bar every evening, hot showers, flushing toilets, even a foot soak and a glass of sparkling wine when we arrived into ‘camp’ on the final afternoon.

Not to mention the operation and profiting of a private company on public land. But that’s another story.

Read more: Are Australia’s Walking Tracks Losing Their Sense of Adventure?

When I first heard about these amenities, I felt a flicker of that old superiority. I’d spent years earning trail cred through long days of discomfort and deprivation. This sounded less like hiking and more like a scenic walking holiday.

‘This isn’t real hiking’, one might scoff. And yet.

Spicers operates several walks of varying lengths along the Scenic Rim Trail in Main Range National Park, about 1.5 hour’s drive inland from the Gold Coast.

The walk encompasses the traditional land of the Mununjali, Wangerriburra, Ugarapul, and Migunberri Peoples. Our group booked the four-night package and opted to add on the night before at one of the Spicers lodges for an easy departure on day one.

From start to finish, the guides and staff were outstanding – friendly, experienced, and adaptable. I was especially struck by their intimate knowledge of the landscapes and ecosystems we encountered. I learned about ancient trees with subterranean communication networks, bush tucker (featuring several fungi superfoods), and the romantic idiosyncrasies of bower birds.

The Trail Humbles

The physical challenge was real – my feet ached after long days trudging uphill – but it wasn’t the elevation gain or the kilometres that changed something in me. That had to do with my introduction to dadirri.

You’d expect a group of eleven friends, many of whom hadn’t seen each other properly in several years, to generate a fair amount of chit-chat. I sensed the introverts were quietly thrilled when our guides suggested a stretch of silent, solo walking through an especially dense part of the rainforest. Even the chattiest among us came to love dadirri, a way of being with Country explained by Daly River Aboriginal woman, Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann: 

‘Dadirri is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians…It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness… It is something like what you call ‘contemplation’.’

We gathered on the trail then set off one at a time – one guide going first to meet us a couple of kilometres down the way – with a gap of two minutes between each walker. The first time I practiced dadirri, I noticed these things: 

The air smelled green.
Jewels of birdsong dripped from the canopy, treetop lacework filtering the light.
My breathing slowed as I trod more carefully, parting strangler fig vines draped across the path.
A tension in my body surfaced through deep breaths and a few tears.
I was paying attention. 

Miriam Rose adds:

‘In our Aboriginal way, we learnt to listen from our earliest days.’

‘This was the normal way for us to learn – not by asking questions. We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. Our people have passed on this way of listening for over 40,000 years… There is no need to reflect too much and to do a lot of thinking. It is just being aware.’ 

What is ‘real’ hiking?

In the past I’ve bragged about the lightness of my pack, how little I spent on specialised gear, the austerity of my DIY meals, how rudimentary my ‘sleep system’ was. To what end?

Outdoor adventure isn’t a competition (most of the time). No-one handed me a prize the times I came home the dirtiest, smelliest, and most tick-ridden after days on the trail. While I love being resourceful and am inspired by people who try to do hard things, suffering isn’t the point.

Real hiking, whatever else it might be, is about presence.

The preparation required to do the Scenic Rim Trail unsupported might keep people away who’d otherwise gain so much from hiking the trail. I have a new understanding of accessibility: it’s not one size fits all. For some people, hiking on the cheap reduces barriers – borrowing gear and gross rehydrated stroganoff is, after all, how I got started.

But for others, the barriers are different: not knowing how to plan a route in the backcountry, safety anxiety, an unrealistically heavy pack, or simply not having weeks to research gear and logistics.

Of course, this kind of hiking isn’t the most accessible kind. There’s no denying it was expensive (the hike itself, plus the travel to and from Main Range National Park in Queensland), which locks out many Explorers from being able to afford the experience and its more comfortable facilities, while a private company turns a profit.

It’s not something I’ll do often, but I’m so grateful to have had the experience – not least of all because the very unhumble circumstances of this luxury hike humbled me in unexpected ways, and I’m better for it.

One More Thing

However! The question remains: Without the luxury, without the group, will my partner join me on another, much more basic, overnight hike? 

I asked. Her response? 

‘Absolutely!’ 

And then: ‘But I’m definitely investing in a camping pillow. If I’d had to worry about whether my tent was waterproof or if I’d packed enough food, I would’ve spent the whole time anxious instead of enjoying it. Now I know what it feels like to be out there for days, and I want more’, she said.

Without the barrier of inexperience making it miserable, our group was able to feel good out there, to enjoy a sense of belonging in wild places. The only credential that matters on the trail is showing up – however you need to. My partner and her excellent friends taught me that, and the rainforest, in its ancient silence, confirmed it.

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