If you're looking for an inspiring read we've got just the book, From Snow to Ash by Anthony Sharwood.
In the hellish, fiery Australian summer of 2019/20, Walkley Awardwinning journalist Anthony Sharwood abandoned his post on a busy news website to clear his mind.
He embarked on a personal quest of transformation and adventure, solo-trekking along the Australian Alps Walking Track, Australia's most gruelling and breathtakingly beautiful mainland hiking trail, which traverses the entire 660km of the iconic High Country from the outskirts of Melbourne to Canberra.
The journey started in a blizzard and ended in a blaze. Along the way, this lifelong lover of the mountains came to realise that nothing would ever be the same – either for him or for the imperilled Australian Alps, a landscape as fragile and sensitive to the changing climate as the Great Barrier Reef.
"Like many hiking books, the narrative spine of From Snow to Ash is an internal monologue which meanders like the trail itself. You really get inside my head as I undertake my first ever long through-hike," says Anthony.
"There are also adventures, mishaps, navigational mistakes, quirky characters encountered along the way, and even a few terrible dad jokes thrown in. But I have been a journalist for 20 years and this is also a serious journalistic work about our delicate and precious mountain environment. I interviewed 19 or 20 people to help readers understand our mountains, their history, their ecology and above all, their fragility in the face of a changing climate and other threats."
Published by Hachette Australia on 25 AUGUST 2020 ($32.99).