About Darren Edwards

My Hiking Journey

I began hiking during a period when life looked successful on the surface but felt increasingly unsustainable underneath. I had been running my own design agency since 1993, building a steady and respected business. The work was constant. The expectations were constant. Over time, I lost perspective.

What began as ambition slowly became obligation. Long hours crowded out family time and personal space. I felt trapped in a cycle I had built myself, living to work rather than working to live. I needed a reset, though I didn’t yet know what that would look like.

Hiking started as something simple. A walk in the bush. A few quiet hours away from screens, deadlines and noise. What I didn’t expect was how deeply it would affect me.

Reaching Breaking Point

Eventually, the strain caught up with me. Despite having a good life on paper, I fell into a deep depression. It was not dramatic or theatrical. It was heavy, persistent and disorienting. I struggled to see a way forward.

Looking back, I can see how feeling trapped by my own success contributed to that collapse. At the time, I was living on the edge of a state park in Melbourne’s west. One morning, I forced myself out the door and into the bush. I walked without purpose. I just kept moving.

I came back hours later feeling clearer than I had in months. Not cured. Not transformed. Just steadier. So I went again the next day. And the next.

Finding Perspective in Nature

For the next two years, I walked almost every weekend, often both days. I walked in heat, in wind, in rain, in silence. I walked when my thoughts were loud and when they were exhausted.

In the bush, there was no judgment and no expectation — only space.

Gradually, something shifted. Standing on ridgelines and cliff edges, I began to understand scale differently. My problems felt real, but they no longer felt absolute. The bush didn’t solve anything for me. It gave me perspective.

That perspective allowed me to reconnect — with my family, with my friends, and especially with my two sons. Hiking did not remove responsibility from my life. It restored balance to it.

How Hiking Changed My Life

I believe hiking saved my life, not because it was dramatic, but because it was consistent. It gave me rhythm, clarity and physical movement when I needed all three.

As I recovered, I began organising group hikes. Eventually those small gatherings grew into some of the largest hiking communities in Australia. At the same time, I built Trail Hiking Australia — initially as a way to document the tracks I had walked. Within two years, the site expanded to more than 150 Victorian trails. Today it includes 3,826 trails across the country.

I did not build the site as a business strategy. I built it because I knew how difficult it was to find reliable information when you needed it most. If hiking helped me regain stability and perspective, I believed it could help others too.

What Hiking Taught Me

Hiking did more than improve my mental health. It reshaped how I see responsibility.

Wild places are powerful, but they are not forgiving. They demand preparation, judgement and respect. The clarity I found in the bush came with an understanding that access carries responsibility.

That belief now underpins everything built into Trail Hiking Australia — from grading systems and safety frameworks to route descriptions and trip planning tools.

I share this story not for sympathy, but for context. Trail Hiking Australia exists because walking restored my perspective when I had lost it. If it offers even a fraction of that clarity to someone else, it has served its purpose.

If hiking helped me rebuild balance, perhaps it can offer something similar to you.

Darren Edwards
Founder and developer of Trail Hiking Australia
ex*****@*************om.au