Camino de Sydney – Talk by Founders Giselle and Brent Clark
May 25, 2025 – Curl Curl Creative Space
Good afternoon and welcome to our Camino de Sydney talk. There are three parts to our talk.
Part 1: Setting the scene
GISELLE: The story of the Camino de Sydney began on our first date in May 2017. I was still on a post-Camino high from having walked the Camino de Santiago the previous year with my Dad. The week before Brent and I met, I had walked 40km from Cronulla to Manly in one day as a fundraiser, again with my Dad. You could say I am keen walker, maybe even a walking addict. Anyway, on the night I met Brent, I chewed off his ear about Camino. Brent had previously read books about the Camino but was yet to walk it.
Over the three years of dating which followed, there were many discussions about walking Camino de Santiago together. We often did walks together, sometimes locally in the suburbs and sometimes scenic walks on the coast, on holidays or in the Blue Mountains. But the Camino was the ultimate goal.
We decided 2020 was the year when our Camino dream would take place. We booked flights and accommodation with a plan to start the pilgrimage in mid-June and arrive in Santiago on 24 July, which is the eve of St James’ feast day. Each time we did our local walks, we thought of it as a training walk for Camino de Santiago. We did a training walk up Mount Kosciuszko.
Unbeknownst to me, Brent hatched a secret plan. He was preparing an epic marriage proposal. He planned to propose on the day that we completed the Camino – in the plaza in front of St James Cathedral in Santiago.
However, it was not to be. Covid struck and plans were discarded.
Brent was perplexed. His proposal plan was thwarted.
Ever the ideas man, a new plan was coming together.
If you can’t propose at the end of Camino de Santiago, why not just create a new Camino and propose at the end of that?
And that is exactly what he did.
Part 2: How to make a Camino
BRENT: We wanted to make a Camino in Sydney which paid tribute to the Camino in Spain.
Paying tribute
- The most popular Camino is the Camino Frances, which starts at St Jean Pied de Port in France and crosses over the Pyrenees. So, we need a French starting point. Audience Q: What is the most French part of Sydney? La Perouse.
- The walk in Pyrenees. Audience Q: Any mountains in Sydney you can think of? Blue Mountains.
- Meseta is the flat, dry plains in Spain. Audience Q: Where might you find that in Sydney? Penrith, Western Plains.
- Then we have Galicia, a green area. Audience Q: Where might you find a green area in Sydney? Upper North Shore is green and leafy.
What to include in the Camino?
- Beautiful coastal walks. I grew up on Northern Beaches and remember the Bicentennial coastal walk from Manly to Palm Beach coming online in 1988. We even took a photo of the the Curl Curl boardwalk to put on the front page of the Camino De Sydney website. In recent years we have had new walks be signposted for tourists such as the 2-day Bondi to Manly walk.
- Cultural diversity.
- Food, of course, some Spanish tapas.
- Multi-faith walk passing churches, mosques, synagogues, shrines and temples.
- To give Camino de Sydney elements of a spiritual pilgrimage, we decided to pass through every suburb in Sydney that starts with Saint: St Ives, St Leonards, St Peters, St Andrews, St Johns Park, St Helen’s Park, etc…
Elements from Spanish Camino which we kept
To make this new Camino meaningful, it was important to include authentic Camino elements.
- Pilgrim Passport
- Certificate
How to end a Camino is a bit trickier. The Camino de Santiago ends in the Cathedral housing the remains of St James the Apostle. Since we don’t have the remains of one of the 12 apostles in Sydney, we chose to use the namesake St James and so end the pilgrimage at St James train station, which is nearby to St Mary’s Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the Southern Hemisphere.
I was happy to spend hours on Google Maps, discovering the best paths to take and ways to connect some of our favourite walks. We did many walks and many drives, discovering new areas of Sydney that we had never visited and working out what to include in the Camino de Sydney. It became our couples lockdown project.
Giselle was tasked with making the website, not knowing the deepest reason for my eagerness to finish creating the Camino de Sydney.
Part 3: The proposal
BRENT: As mentioned earlier, our Spanish Camino was due to end on 24 July in 2020. To mark what would have been our final day of walking in Spain, I decided to take Giselle to St James church in Glebe, in place of St James Cathedral in Santiago. I had my proposal speech ready.
GISELLE: It was a Friday afternoon, and I was a bit oblivious to what was happening. In fact, on the way to the church I was falling asleep in the car. We arrived and parked across the street. We headed up the steps of the church and I saw Brent bend down. Thinking he was tying his shoe, I waited patiently.
BRENT: And I proposed to Giselle, and she said yes. The epic proposal had happened, just not as I had originally planned. There was no one around to tell, except for the church gardener. I had brought a bottle of champagne and strawberries and we celebrated on the steps of the church.
Giselle had finished the Camino de Sydney website and I had finalised the route on Google Maps. I sent a 3-line email to the editor of Traveller in The Sydney Morning Herald. Travel news was light, I mean, we were in lockdown at the time. They picked up the story, and somehow we ended up on page 6 and 7 of the Saturday Herald. Talk about a slow news day.
GISELLE: We also appeared in That’s Life Mega Monthly magazine, Catholic Weekly newspaper and even went international when we were interviewed on Radio New Zealand.
BRENT: We have had 140,000 views of the map. We had a great response from the public after our media articles. We also created an Instagram page.
GISELLE: There were many people emailing us and telling us stories of their Caminos or planned Caminos. It has inspired many day trips and people learned about possible walking paths in their own city. Some even provided feedback about adjustments that could be made to our route. It really is a Camino for the locals.
BRENT: Camino de Sydney has found a place amongst the other Australian Caminos, namely: The Aussie Camino from VIC to SA, The Way to St James Cygnet in Tasmania, The Camino Salvado in WA. Elizabeth Eastland also knows the founder of Camino Salvado.
For over a thousand years, pilgrims have walked the Camino De Santiago as a spiritual journey, for religious reasons or even as a form of penance. The Camino De Sydney is more like a ‘love letter’ to the beautiful city which we live in. We hope that Camino de Sydney can inspire your own Camino dreams.
Buen Camino!