It’s nearly a week since we were all there in the mist on the top of Kosciusko – hardly enough time to process everything that happened, but here’s my take.

As a journo, I marched to cover a historic event and correct an imbalance for my own publication [see the resulting articles here: http://tinyurl.com/23w6q5m ]. We’d given much more coverage to bullish positions on housing, so this walk helped rebalance things a bit.

But my brief as a reporter was only decided after I’d decided to walk for my own reasons. I do, of course, think that current house prices and debt load in Australia are very unhealthy – the community symptoms of that are everywhere. And yet it was also obvious to me very early on that this walk was part of something much bigger.

Walking alongside free thinking individuals day after day, listening to their life experiences and ideas (and sharing my own) quickly created a sense that it didn’t matter what we all thought about house prices – and not everyone agreed with Steve’s prognosis. Rather, the important thing was to strive to work things out for yourself. And so we discussed history, literature, religion, relationships, environment, warfare, politics and diet, just to name a tiny sub-set of the topics broached on the road.

And sometimes the words stopped altogether – not only from fatigue, but because understanding and communication sometimes go beyond a cerebral outpouring of words. Actions say a huge amount, and I remember in particular Duncan’s chilly night sleeping in the park in a homeless swag; Peter’s checking and rechecking that every member of the party got safely up and down the mountain; John’s reminder of what really matters when he left early to get home and watch his son play soccer; the visible focus, care and commitment Ania showed in keeping Steve’s body in one piece through a gruelling physical ordeal; and the great intensity with which Colin was able to really listen and absorb the thoughts and feelings of fellow walkers (mine lot of time) – a vanishing skill that is extremely valuable.

It also quickly became clear that some of the party were carrying heavy burdens with them over the miles – bereavements, troubling life-experiences waiting back home, and the usual scars and injuries of lives that, it seemed to me, had been a lot more than ‘half lived’.

One of the natural antidotes, of course, is to live life with a flourish along the way. Leading this charge was David Hirst, shiraz in hand, loudly toasting Goldman Sachs for finally being busted for fraud, telling preposterous stories (that we only later realised were true) and giving a certain professor a lesson in pool hustling.

By necessity I often hid myself away in my room to write up the articles for my publication (do you know how hard it is for a journo to leave a party to do this?), but whenever I emerged there were friendly faces conversing furiously, laughing, expounding, or just sharing wine and stories late into the night. I couldn’t believe what a wonderful cross-section of people had randomly responded to Steve’s call to join the walk. But then as Ania told me one day, “if you have pure intentions, you attract good people”. I think she must be right.

Because, to the extent that I understand human character, I can say that Steve Keen’s intentions are pure. As I wrote in the final article for Business Spectator: “Whatever the future holds for Australia’s economy, it is clear that Keen’s relentless message to Australian policy-makers is sincere and, at the very least, founded in constant intellectual exertion.”

I think we all owe him a debt of gratitude for having the wit and courage to organise such an audacious protest against the ‘group think’ that threatens to ruin us all.

Which brings me back to where I began – that this walk was about much more than house prices. The world is in an extraordinary state of flux, as if some reckless performer were spinning too many plates before a dazzled, frightened audience. Most of us see at least one of those plates falling soon (China, Greece, housing, sovereign debt, the stretched biosphere, myriad forms of social disintegration, the stock market – take your pick), but if we are to prevent the rest crashing down around us, and start rebuilding, we’ll need plenty of good-hearted and intelligent people to stand up and act – not just to passively say “the system’s broken”, but to throw all their talents into answering the questions “What’s better?” and  ”What’s next?”

On this walk I saw a bunch of people with all the tools required to get to work on this mammoth task. We may not do this together, but the choices we make in our respective walks of life will, I hope, be sustained by the memory of this epic walk – or better still by keeping in touch with and encouraging one another as this difficult phase of history unfolds.

As I dropped Nina off at her south Melbourne flat late on Saturday night, I told her what I’d said to every other member of the party as we said goodbye: “Let’s all meet and climb that mountain again in ten years’ time.”

Nina shook her head. “No,” she said, “That’s too long. Make it five.”

Thanks to all of you for giving me an experience to treasure, and a wealth of ideas and inspiration to take into the future. Keep in touch. And keep walking…