Tomorrow When the War Began for Chapter Three
The path was covered with leaves and sticks, and was a bit overgrown in
places, but compared to what we'd been down, it was like a freeway. We
stood spread out along it, marvelling. I felt almost dizzy with relief
and astonishment and gratification.
'Ellie,' Homer said solemnly, 'I'll never call you a stupid dumb obstinate slagheap again.'
'Thanks Homer.'
It was a sweet moment.
'Tell you what,' said Kevin, 'it's lucky I wouldn't let you pikers give up back there, when you all wanted to wimp out.'
I ignored him.
The bridge was old but had been beautifully built. It crossed the creek in a large clearing and was about a metre wide and five metres long. It even had a handrail. Its surface was made of round logs rather than planks but the logs were matched and cut with perfect uniformity. Joints cut in each end married the logs to crossbars and the first and last ones were then secured to the crossbars by wooden pegs.
'It's a lovely job,' said Kevin. 'Reminds me of my own early work.'
Suddenly we had so much energy it was as though we were on something. We nearly decided to camp in the clearing, which was cool and shadowy, but the urge to explore was too strong. We hoisted our packs on our backs again, and chattering like cockatoos we hustled down the path.
'It must be true about the hermit! No one else would have gone to all that trouble.'
'Wonder how long he was here for.'
'How do you know it was a he?'
'The locals always talked about him as a male.'
'Most hims are talked about as males.' That was Lee, being a smartarse.
'He must have been here years, to go to all that trouble with the bridge.'
'And the track's so well worn.'
'If he did live here years he'd have time to do the bridge and a lot more. Imagine how you'd fill your time!'
'Yeah, food'd be the big thing. Once you'd organised your meals, the rest of the day'd be yours.'
'I wonder what you'd live on.'
'Possums, rabbits maybe.'
'Wouldn't be many rabbits in this kind of country. There's wallabies. Plenty of possums. Feral cats.'
'Yuk.'
'You could grow vegetables.'
'Bush tucker.'
'Yeah, he probably watched that show on TV.'
'Wombats.'
'Yeah, what would wombats taste like?'
'They say most people eat too much anyway. If he just ate when he was really hungry he wouldn't need much.'
'You can train yourself to eat a lot less.'
'You know Andy Farrar? He found a walking stick in the bush near Wombegonoo. It's beautifully made, handmade, all carved and everything. Everyone said it must be the Hermit's but I thought they were joking.'
The track was taking us downhill all the time. It wound around a bit, looking for the best route, but the trend was always downhill. It was going to be quite a sweat getting back up. We'd lost a lot of altitude. It was beautiful though, quiet, shady, cool and damp. There were no flowers, just more shades of green and brown than the English language knows about. The ground was deep in leaf litter there were times when we lost the track beneath heaps of bark and leaves and twigs, but a search around under the trees always found it again. Every so often it brought us back to Satan's Steps, so that for a few metres we'd be brushing alongside the great granite walls. Once it cut between two of the steps and continued down the other side: the gap was only a couple of metres wide, so it was almost a tunnel through the massive hunks of rock.
'This is pretty nice for Hell,' Fi said to me as we paused in the cool stone gap.
'Mmm. Wonder how long since anyone's been down here.'
'More than that,' Robyn, who was in front of Fi, said. 'I wonder how many human beings have ever been down here, in the history of the Universe. I mean, why would the koories have bothered? Why would the early explorers, or settlers, have bothered? And no one we know has. Maybe the Hermit and us are the only people ever to have seen it. Ever.'
By that stage it was getting obvious that we were close to the bottom. The ground was levelling out and the last of the sunlight was filtering through to warm our faces. The overgrowth and the undergrowth were both sparser, though still quite dense. The track rejoined the creek and ran alongside it for a few hundred metres. Then it opened out into our campsite for the night.
We found ourselves in a clearing about the size of a hockey field, or a bit bigger. It would have been hard to play hockey on though, because it wasn't much of a clearing. It was studded with trees, three beautiful old eucalypts and quite a few suckers and saplings. The creek was at the western edge; you could hear it but not see it. The creek was flatter and wider here and cold, freezing cold, even on a summer day. In the early mornings it hurt and stung. But when you were hot it was a wonderful refreshing shock to splash your face into it.
That's where I am now of course.
For any little wild things living in the clearing we must have seemed like visitors from Hell, not visitors to it. We made a lot of noise. And Kevin – you can never cure Kevin of his bad habit of breaking branches off trees instead of walking a few extra metres to pick up dead wood. That's one reason I was never too convinced when Corrie talked about how caring and sensitive he was. But he was good with fires: he had the white smoke rising about five minutes after we arrived, and flames burning like fury about two minutes after that.
We decided not to bother with tents – we'd only brought two and a half anyway – but it was warm and no chance of rain, so we just strung up a couple of flies for protection against the dew. Then Lee and I got stuck into the cooking. Fi wandered over.
'What are we having?' she asked.
'Two-minute noodles for now. We'll cook some meat later, but I'm too hungry to wait.'
'What are two-minute noodles?' Fi asked.
Lee and I looked at each other and grinned.
'It's an awesome feeling,' Lee said, 'to realise you're about to change someone's life forever.'
'Haven't you ever had two-minute noodles?' I asked Fi.
'No. My parents are really into health foods.'
I'd never met anyone who hadn't had two-minute noodles before. Sometimes Fi seemed like an exotic butterfly.
I can't remember any hike or campout I'd been on where people sat around the fire telling stories or singing. It just never seemed to happen that way. But that night we did sit up late, and talk and talk. I think we were excited to be there, in that strange and beautiful place, where so few humans had ever been. There aren't many wild places left on Earth, yet we'd fluked it into the middle of this little wild kingdom. It was good. I knew I was really tired but I was too revved up to go to bed until the others started yawning and standing up and looking towards their sleeping bags. Five minutes later we were all in bed; five minutes after that I think I was asleep.
'Ellie,' Homer said solemnly, 'I'll never call you a stupid dumb obstinate slagheap again.'
'Thanks Homer.'
It was a sweet moment.
'Tell you what,' said Kevin, 'it's lucky I wouldn't let you pikers give up back there, when you all wanted to wimp out.'
I ignored him.
The bridge was old but had been beautifully built. It crossed the creek in a large clearing and was about a metre wide and five metres long. It even had a handrail. Its surface was made of round logs rather than planks but the logs were matched and cut with perfect uniformity. Joints cut in each end married the logs to crossbars and the first and last ones were then secured to the crossbars by wooden pegs.
'It's a lovely job,' said Kevin. 'Reminds me of my own early work.'
Suddenly we had so much energy it was as though we were on something. We nearly decided to camp in the clearing, which was cool and shadowy, but the urge to explore was too strong. We hoisted our packs on our backs again, and chattering like cockatoos we hustled down the path.
'It must be true about the hermit! No one else would have gone to all that trouble.'
'Wonder how long he was here for.'
'How do you know it was a he?'
'The locals always talked about him as a male.'
'Most hims are talked about as males.' That was Lee, being a smartarse.
'He must have been here years, to go to all that trouble with the bridge.'
'And the track's so well worn.'
'If he did live here years he'd have time to do the bridge and a lot more. Imagine how you'd fill your time!'
'Yeah, food'd be the big thing. Once you'd organised your meals, the rest of the day'd be yours.'
'I wonder what you'd live on.'
'Possums, rabbits maybe.'
'Wouldn't be many rabbits in this kind of country. There's wallabies. Plenty of possums. Feral cats.'
'Yuk.'
'You could grow vegetables.'
'Bush tucker.'
'Yeah, he probably watched that show on TV.'
'Wombats.'
'Yeah, what would wombats taste like?'
'They say most people eat too much anyway. If he just ate when he was really hungry he wouldn't need much.'
'You can train yourself to eat a lot less.'
'You know Andy Farrar? He found a walking stick in the bush near Wombegonoo. It's beautifully made, handmade, all carved and everything. Everyone said it must be the Hermit's but I thought they were joking.'
The track was taking us downhill all the time. It wound around a bit, looking for the best route, but the trend was always downhill. It was going to be quite a sweat getting back up. We'd lost a lot of altitude. It was beautiful though, quiet, shady, cool and damp. There were no flowers, just more shades of green and brown than the English language knows about. The ground was deep in leaf litter there were times when we lost the track beneath heaps of bark and leaves and twigs, but a search around under the trees always found it again. Every so often it brought us back to Satan's Steps, so that for a few metres we'd be brushing alongside the great granite walls. Once it cut between two of the steps and continued down the other side: the gap was only a couple of metres wide, so it was almost a tunnel through the massive hunks of rock.
'This is pretty nice for Hell,' Fi said to me as we paused in the cool stone gap.
'Mmm. Wonder how long since anyone's been down here.'
'More than that,' Robyn, who was in front of Fi, said. 'I wonder how many human beings have ever been down here, in the history of the Universe. I mean, why would the koories have bothered? Why would the early explorers, or settlers, have bothered? And no one we know has. Maybe the Hermit and us are the only people ever to have seen it. Ever.'
By that stage it was getting obvious that we were close to the bottom. The ground was levelling out and the last of the sunlight was filtering through to warm our faces. The overgrowth and the undergrowth were both sparser, though still quite dense. The track rejoined the creek and ran alongside it for a few hundred metres. Then it opened out into our campsite for the night.
We found ourselves in a clearing about the size of a hockey field, or a bit bigger. It would have been hard to play hockey on though, because it wasn't much of a clearing. It was studded with trees, three beautiful old eucalypts and quite a few suckers and saplings. The creek was at the western edge; you could hear it but not see it. The creek was flatter and wider here and cold, freezing cold, even on a summer day. In the early mornings it hurt and stung. But when you were hot it was a wonderful refreshing shock to splash your face into it.
That's where I am now of course.
For any little wild things living in the clearing we must have seemed like visitors from Hell, not visitors to it. We made a lot of noise. And Kevin – you can never cure Kevin of his bad habit of breaking branches off trees instead of walking a few extra metres to pick up dead wood. That's one reason I was never too convinced when Corrie talked about how caring and sensitive he was. But he was good with fires: he had the white smoke rising about five minutes after we arrived, and flames burning like fury about two minutes after that.
We decided not to bother with tents – we'd only brought two and a half anyway – but it was warm and no chance of rain, so we just strung up a couple of flies for protection against the dew. Then Lee and I got stuck into the cooking. Fi wandered over.
'What are we having?' she asked.
'Two-minute noodles for now. We'll cook some meat later, but I'm too hungry to wait.'
'What are two-minute noodles?' Fi asked.
Lee and I looked at each other and grinned.
'It's an awesome feeling,' Lee said, 'to realise you're about to change someone's life forever.'
'Haven't you ever had two-minute noodles?' I asked Fi.
'No. My parents are really into health foods.'
I'd never met anyone who hadn't had two-minute noodles before. Sometimes Fi seemed like an exotic butterfly.
I can't remember any hike or campout I'd been on where people sat around the fire telling stories or singing. It just never seemed to happen that way. But that night we did sit up late, and talk and talk. I think we were excited to be there, in that strange and beautiful place, where so few humans had ever been. There aren't many wild places left on Earth, yet we'd fluked it into the middle of this little wild kingdom. It was good. I knew I was really tired but I was too revved up to go to bed until the others started yawning and standing up and looking towards their sleeping bags. Five minutes later we were all in bed; five minutes after that I think I was asleep.
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