FEATURE
It’s the journey, not the destination When Clemmie Wotherspoon started out on the Bicentennial National Trail with her small herd of horses, little did she know that living her dream would be full of unexpected twists and turns, writes JANE CAMENS.
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s soon as I meet Clemmie Wotherspoon, it occurs to me that she’s the sort of person people are drawn to – she’s charismatic, this 29-year-old tall, blonde adventurer. When I catch up with her Clemmie is marking time, house and horse-sitting for a friend in The Pocket, tucked into the foothills of the Byron Bay hinterland in northern New South Wales, her dream of completing the Bicentennial National Trail on hold for a few months. She’s looking after 15 horses on the property, seven of which are hers. She also works at a beach-and-bush-trail riding ranch, and, most importantly for her, seeks to bring anyone interested into a closer connection with horses. “My vision,” she tells me, stroking Odin, one of her foster-care dogs, “is to connect people with nature and encourage them to investigate the animal-human connection.” Clemmie started out to ride the 5,330 km Bicentennial National Trail from
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Healesville in Victoria in March 2018. The track follows old stock routes and brumby tracks running up the spine of the Great Dividing Range, from Healsville to Cooktown in Far North Queensland. It was opened in the early 1970s by a committee headed by the legendary RM Williams, and is possibly the longest, non-motorised multi-use trail in the world. Reports suggest that fewer than a dozen people have completed the trip on horseback. The trail links 17 national parks and over 50 state forests, crossing both private and public land. It’s a Big Adventure, and nowhere near half over for Clemmie, who initially planned to take a couple of years to complete the journey. The dream has been with Clemmie since she was a child, growing up in industrial Delaware. “I was raised by my American mum and my Australian dad,” she says. “I was obsessed with a book Dad gave me, Robyn Davidson’s memoir, Tracks, and the Australian landscape.”
HORSEVIBES MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2019
The book, which was later developed into a film, told Davidson’s remarkable story of her 1987 camel trek across the Australian desert. “I had this crazy idea to come to Australia and do something similar,” Clemmie says. The yearning for nomadic travel grew stronger when she went off to university in Portland, Oregon, to study
