The Bare-foot Bushwalker
By Dot Butler
ABC Books. $25.00
Reviewed by Denis Kevans
Dorothy, "Dot", Butler recreates her remarkable life in The Bare-Foot Bushwalker". There's a photo of Dot, 50, climbing out of a crevasse in the Tasman Glacier of New Zealand. She's barefoot, hand over hand, on a single rope.
"You had no gear to get up that rope?", I asked, staring at the photo. "No I didn't. I wanted to show there was another way of climbing the rope, without gear."
I was talking to Dot at a fundraising dinner for the Blue Mountains National Park World Heritage listing. She's had 60 years with Sydney Bushwalkers, 40 years with the NZ Alpine Club, and 25 years teaching mountaineering to young Australians in New Zealand. For this she was given the Australian Geographic Gold Medallion for Adventure in 1988.
She's climbed ice mountains in Peru, the Yotunheim in Norway, and the Sierras in the US. In one day, barefoot, she walked 50 miles in the old Burragorang, and, on another day, the length of the Grose River. In this, her 80th year, she climbed the Three Sisters. Barefoot? Of course.
She bushwalks barefoot. It's best for posture. Shoes, she says, press the big toe against the others, and spoil the foot's in-built balance. "Nepalese women", says Dot, "never wear shoes, and have the best posture in the world".
"The conservation movement started with the bushwalker Myles Dunphy", Dorothy said. "He proposed a Greater Blue Mountains National Park in the '30s. Now, with the dedication of Nattai National Park, Myles' dream has come true." (Nattai will include the Couridjah Corridor, logged for its blue gums in the '30s).
Dot's life was on ABC TV, with her friend Marie Byles, Australia's first practising woman solicitor. Together they strove for NSW's first National Park — Boudi, north of Sydney.
Always active, Dot has just built a mud brick house with her daughter. Writing the book? "I threw out draft one, retyped it, crossed out, cut bits out, pasted bits in, and here it is." Mitchell Library sent a man who said — "I want to go through your drawers." "What do you mean?", said Dot. "Oh, we would like your handwritten manuscripts, please. They're valuable."
Dot's powers of description, and faithful memory, catch your attention and take you walking with her, on this world-ranging story of adventure, courage and romance.