Walking the Camino: a modern pilgrimage to Santiago by Tony Kevin

Tony Kevin is the author of A Certain Maritime Incident: the sinking of the SIEV X, which exposed the tragedy of the drowning of 353 people when their boat sank in the Indian Ocean on its way from Indonesia to Australia. Those people were Iraqui Shia Muslim refugees, mostly women and children, and there is no doubt that the Howard government’s border protection policies were implicated in their deaths. Tony Kevin worked long and hard to ensure that these people’s lives were not written-off as collateral damage the hysteria of the War on Terror.

Subsequently, Tony Kevin suffered a deep personal crisis of realisation when he understood that the incident was part of; “…a disturbing collapse in previously assumed public standards of truth in government and respect for human rights of all in the community.” So, in his own words, he set off, as a 63-year-old, overweight, retired man lugging a sixteen-kilo pack 1400 kilometres across Spain.

This book wouldn’t be an obvious choice for me, but I very much enjoyed reading it, for two reasons. Firstly, the ruminations on a very complex, multicultural, multi-faith Spanish history which prompts the gentle reestablishment of belief in the inherent possibilities of people of all kinds living side-by-side in harmony. And secondly, the travelogue of his epic journey, with its rugged terrain, physical challenges and chance encounters appeals to the wanderlust in me.

Tony Kevin is a deeply religious man, which made this pilgrimage significant to him in a way that it would not for me. And only occasionally did Tony Kevin’s essential conservatism disturb me. And it’s not hidden. He confesses that he is an old-fashioned family man, maybe even a bit patriarchal. Doh! The responsibility seems to be left with the reader to occasionally remember his obviously long-suffering wife, left back in Canberra with small children to care for, while he wanders off to salve his soul. His obvious admiration for the toughness of rural Spaniards shows little understanding of the suffering of women in poor, rural communities. And when he waxes lyrical, in an aside, about the wonders of those areas of Annapurna where there are no cars and everything is carried in by porters, I have to object (I’ve been there myself twice in the last two years and can only be deeply distressed at the sight of men and women carrying 50 kilo’s of dried noodles, lentils and tinned tuna up the side of mountains day after back-breaking day, for the equivalent of $10 a day) Get real, Tony – while the rural way of life has many, many merits, when accompanied by a desire for modern product consumption it spells misery for the poor in general and women in particular.

But that was all a little like having a nagging blister on my heel while staring up at the Himalayas. In the end, the beauty of the Spanish terrain, the wonderful descriptions of local people and fellow walkers, and the gradual restoration of Tony Kevin’s belief in human goodness makes this a terrific read for the armchair traveller.