About Darren Edwards

My Hiking Journey

I began hiking at a time when I was running a successful business but finding it increasingly difficult to manage the demands that came with it. I had been running my own design agency since 1993, building a steady and respected business. The workload and expectations were constant, and over time I lost perspective.

I had started the agency with a great deal of ambition, but over time the long hours began taking me away from my family and left little time for anything else. I felt trapped by the business I had built. I needed a reset, though I didn’t yet know what that would look like.

Hiking started with a few quiet hours walking in the bush, away from screens, deadlines and noise. I didn’t expect it to become such an important part of my life.

Reaching Breaking Point

Eventually, the strain caught up with me. Despite having a good life on paper, I fell into a deep depression. It left me feeling weighed down, disoriented and unable 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. I wasn’t suddenly better, but I felt steadier, so I went out again the next day and continued walking regularly.

Finding Perspective in Nature

For the next two years, I walked almost every weekend, often both days. I walked in all kinds of weather, sometimes with thoughts racing through my head and sometimes simply exhausted.

Being in the bush gave me some space away from the expectations I felt elsewhere.

Gradually, something changed. Spending time on ridgelines and cliff edges helped me put my problems into perspective. They were still there, but they no longer occupied all of my attention. As I began to feel better, I was able to reconnect with my family and friends, especially my two sons, and find a better balance in my life.

How Hiking Changed My Life

I believe hiking saved my life because it gave me something I could return to regularly. It got me moving and gave me time to clear my head. 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 3,838 trails across the country.

I did not begin the site as a business. I wanted to make reliable trail information easier to find and hoped that sharing what I had learned might encourage other people to start hiking too.

What Hiking Taught Me

The more time I spent hiking, the more I realised that safety is rarely about one thing. Fitness, terrain, weather, equipment, timing, group dynamics and judgement all affect one another. A small change in one part of a hike can quietly place pressure on several others, and the earlier you recognise that change, the more options you usually have.

That understanding now underpins much of what I have built through Trail Hiking Australia. It led to the development of the Hiking Safety Systems Framework (HSSF), which examines how the different parts of a hiking system interact, and the ExploreSafe Framework for Outdoor Decision-Making, which turns that thinking into seven practical principles for preparing, recognising change, maintaining options and making decisions before, during and after a walk.

Those same ideas have also shaped the planning tools, safety scenarios, calculators and educational resources across Trail Hiking Australia, as well as my books: The Capable Hiker: A Practical Guide to Hiking in Australia, Small Things Don’t Stay Small, and the two-volume Hiking Australia series, Before You Go and On the Trail. Together, they explore preparation, early warning signs, judgement, decision-making and the way conditions, capability and choices interact before, during and after a hike. The Capable Hiker brings much of that thinking together in one complete guide across the full journey of a hike. View my author profile →

I share this story because it explains why Trail Hiking Australia became so important to me and why I have continued working on it for so many years. What began as a way to document the places I walked gradually became something much broader: helping people prepare well, notice what matters, make better decisions and come home safely.

In the media

I’ve appeared on national television and radio, and been quoted in Australian and international publications on hiking safety, risk management, and responsible decision-making on trail.

• A trail expert’s guide to beginner hiking — ABC Radio National (Life Matters), June 2026
• Is social media masking bushwalking dangers and leading to poor hiking decisions? — ABC News, December 2025
• Drive with Lucy Breaden — ABC Hobart (radio), December 2025
• Talking hike safety — ABC News Breakfast (live TV), January 2025
• Hike safely in Australian bushland — ABC Radio National (PM), January 2025
• Lost for 10 days in California forest, man survived by drinking from his boot — Washington Post, June 2024
• How hiking benefits your mind, body and spirit — WellBeing Magazine, May 2023
• Puffer jacket buyers’ guide — A Current Affair (live TV), June 2019
• So you want to go hiking? Here’s everything you need to know — Nine / Coach, September 2018

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