G’day bushwalkers of every level of fitness and experience and welcome to Feet First Australia, a blog about the simple pleasure of getting out and about on foot.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Melanie Ball. I am a long-time travel writer and photographer and author of Top Walks in Victoria and Top Walks in Australia, guidebooks published by Explore Australia; Top Walks in Tasmania is due out October 2018.

My motivation for this blog is the thousands of kilometres I’ve walked over the past few years and a 2015 spent travelling and hiking around the extraordinary country I call home.

And Australia is extraordinary. Where else on Earth can you traverse an outback mountain range worn from Himalayan heights to a gnarly rock spine? Stand at the altar of a moss-cloaked Antarctic beech tree which sprouted when Ancient Rome held sway across Europe? Or venture solo into big-sky country so flat you can see the curvature of the planet?

I hope to entertain you by describing and recommending bushwalks, swapping favourite hikes, answering questions, discussing and reviewing hiking food and equipment and just following wherever the blog takes me. I hope to inspire you to get out and about on foot.

A huge thank you to Simon Box, my husband and mostly-patient photographic model (that’s him in the stripy shirt above and those are his feet on the header photo), another Australian born in England. He wrote the Food For Thought post.

Thanks to all the other friends who join me on walks and everyone who hikes with me through this blog. I hope you have a great time.