It's been more than four years since Lucy Barnard first set off from Canberra to become the first female to walk the length of the world.
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Starting at the southern-most tip of Argentina, the 30,000-kilometre journey should have ended in the tip of North America in Barrow, Alaska. And three years in, everything was on track.
She had reached Colombia, becoming the first female to walk the length of the Southern Hemisphere. Barnard, with her blue heeler Wombat by her side, was well on her way to also becoming the first female to walk the length of the world.
And then Covid happened.
Barnard was in the middle of the Amazon when the pandemic first hit. By the time she reached the next town on her route, there were already curfews and lockdowns in place.
"Colombia put in curfews and lockdowns well before [Australia] ever did," Barnard says.
"They did it immediately and I got into a town and I wasn't allowed to leave for a few weeks. Eventually, I got permission from the embassy to travel - I needed a letter that proved that I was travelling to leave the country. But you couldn't get that letter until you had your flights booked."
This not only meant travelling from a remote part of the country to the airport at short notice - with the risk of the flight being cancelled in the meantime- but it also meant trying to organise a dogsitter for Wombat.
This was a mission in itself. The first lady Barnard found didn't have a yard and planned on leaving Wombat on the street. Obviously, this was not an option.
But, thanks to her social media following, Barnard was put in touch with Santi, who had a background in dog training and kennelling, making him the right man for the job. It meant Barnard was able to make her flights - no less than six of them - to make her way back to Australia and into quarantine.
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Now more than a year on from this moment, her journey - or at least, the first half of it - has been made into a short film, which will feature in the Gutsy Girls Adventure Film Festival when it comes to Canberra later this month.
Shot by Danyal Taylor, the film Walk the Earth was originally meant to be a vlog detailing the Peru leg of Barnard's trip.
"We spent a couple of weeks together hiking ... and as we were walking he started saying I think I've got enough film to make a short film," Barnard says.
"Dan found some good solutions to looking at Covid in the film and the feedback that we got with that inclusion was nice too. It finished the story in a beautiful way. Like a 'to be continued' cliffhanger."
For now, Barnard is waiting to return to Columbia to not only pick up where she left off but reunite with Wombat, as well. For her, it's not about gaining the record for being the first female to walk the length of the world, anymore. It's about finishing what she started.
"I guess now you'd say that it's not a true hike because I haven't completed it in one push. But that's cool. If someone wants to come along and have that record, I'd totally be supportive of that," she says.
"I still feel that it's important to finish. It's not about the time that I have spent doing this and I don't feel that walking away would be a great failure on my end.
"I think it's important that women are seen doing the same things that men have done and be a role model in that way. And for me, it's just who I am. Some people were born to be journalists, and some are born to be adventurers."
- Gutsy Girls Adventure Film Tour will be at the National Film and Sound Archive on July 21 and 22. For tickets go to gutsygirlsadventurefilmtour.com.au.
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