With Swag and Billy: A Guide to Walking Trips in Tourist Districts of New South Wales

In 1895, two friends with literary inclinations and a taste for romantic scenery founded the Warragamba Walking Club, preferring to explore the roads of New South Wales in parties of no more than four. Henry J. Tompkins and William Mogford Hamlet carried their swags and billy cans into the bush when walking was still a radical act, before marked trails existed and when the only traffic hazards were the occasional bicycle or horse-drawn carriage. Their guide, published by the Government Tourist Bureau and running to three editions between 1906 and 1914, offers routes through present-day suburban Sydney, into the Blue Mountains, and through the Southern Highlands and Hunter Valley. This is more than a travel guide. It's a window into an Australia barely recognizable: the roads unpaved, the suburbs unconceived, the bush still wild and close. Walking these routes now, you follow the very paths these early enthusiasts trudged, seeing the landscape through their eyes. The poetry professor John Le Gay Brereton walked with them. The language is of another era, earnest and appreciative, free of GPS coordinates and difficulty ratings. For history buffs, bushwalkers, and anyone enchanted by the idea of old Australia, this is a small treasure. It reminds us that the pleasure of walking with friends through beautiful country is not modern at all.