Off the Track

by Cristy Burne

  The creators of this book recognise and acknowledge the Noongar people as the traditional custodians of the land through which the Bibbulmun Track passes.

  For Deepika, the Harrys and adventurous families everywhere

  ALL UNPACKED

  Harry had just finished packing his bag when Deepika’s mum unzipped it and took everything out again. She started a pile of his things, right there, on the floor of his new apartment.

  ‘You won’t be needing this on the track,’ she told him. ‘Or these. Or this.’ His best spinner. His trading cards. His remote-controlled car. They all went on the pile. Then, after she’d taken everything fun out of his bag, she stood there, holding out her hand.

  ‘What?’ he said, pretending not to know.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Your phone.’

  Now he pretended not to hear. ‘What?’

  ‘You won’t need a phone. We’ll be embracing the great outdoors. It’ll be our time to get to know each other.’

  She beamed at him. Harry’s eyes grew wide. They’d only just met, but he already knew all he wanted to know about Deepika’s mum. Ana was bossy. She dressed like a farmer. And she was obviously deranged. ‘No way, I need it.’ He held his phone close and looked for his mum. She knew about phones. She’d save him.

  But Mum was in the other room, on her phone.

  He thought Deepika would surely understand. She was a kid. But when he looked to her for help she just smiled at him. She didn’t even seem to realise her mum was being a fruit loop. Or perhaps she was used to this behaviour.

  ‘There won’t be much reception out there anyway,’ said Ana, still holding out her hand.

  Harry wanted to back away. Or run. Or hide.

  ‘It’ll just be extra weight to carry,’ Ana pushed on. ‘You really won’t need a phone.’

  Now Harry did take a step back. ‘But I really will,’ he insisted.

  But Ana didn’t seem to hear. ‘Just leave it on the pile,’ she said, and started folding a T-shirt. ‘Do you have a rain jacket? What about an extra jumper?’

  This was brutality. ‘I’m entitled to my freedom.’ Harry puffed out his chest. ‘And my basic human rights.’ Without a phone there’d be Nothing To Do. And he was pretty sure Not Dying Of Boredom was a human right.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ana, still sorting his belongings. ‘Deepika, can you get Harry a spare spare-jumper? There’s a pile on the couch.’

  ‘Okay,’ chimed Deepika. She turned to Harry with another enormous smile. ‘I’ll lend you my favourite,’ she said, and skipped away.

  Just then Mum returned from her phone call. Harry could’ve kissed her.

  ‘Mum, I can bring my phone on the hike, can’t I? I’ll take care of it and I won’t stay up late, plus you know how annoying I can be when I’m bored …’

  He tried to flutter his eyelashes, but Mum was looking to Ana instead. Unbelievable. Mum hadn’t seen Ana in twenty years, but now, just because they were back in the same city, they were acting like long-lost sisters. Worse, even though Harry and Deepika had only just laid eyes on each other, suddenly, just because their mums were old friends, they were supposed to be all buddy-buddy best friends forever, too. Ugh.

  And way worse than all that put together, the absolute worst, in fact, was that this was only the beginning. Mum had dragged Harry all the way from Sydney. And they were here to stay. He’d had to say goodbye to all his friends. His school. Their old apartment. The only life he’d ever known — and it had been a good life, too.

  And now this.

  ‘Here,’ said Deepika, holding out a brandless blue jacket he wouldn’t wear even if he was alone and freezing in Antarctica and it was snowing. ‘It’s so soft, feel it.’

  ‘Don’t forget repellent,’ Ana said to Mum. ‘The horseflies can really bite.’

  ‘And it’s so warm,’ said Deepika. She pushed the jacket at him. ‘Feel it. That’s why I love it so much.’

  This had to be some sort of demented dream. Harry looked pleadingly at Mum. Surely she could see? This whole move had been a horrible mistake. And spending an entire weekend tramping around stinking-hot, snake-filled scrub with only lunatics for company was another horrible mistake. If she was really so desperate for a long-lost Ana-reunion, why couldn’t they re-une at a resort? Somewhere with a pool, and a flat-screen and a DVD collection.

  Harry appealed with his eyes. ‘Mum, I seriously need my phone.’

  Mum looked at Ana again and Ana just shrugged. ‘It’s your choice Charl, but there won’t be much need for phones. As long as we have one for emergencies.’ She returned to matching socks.

  Mum nodded with relief. ‘Right, okay.’ She slipped her own phone into her jacket pocket and shrugged apologetically at Harry. ‘Sorry mate. We only need one.’

  Unbelievable. ‘But Mum!’

  ‘Surely you can leave it at home, just for a weekend,’ she said, but she couldn’t meet his eye. That’s because she knew full well what she was asking. Mum would have a nervous breakdown if she ever had to leave her phone for just five minutes, let alone an entire weekend.

  ‘Here,’ said Deepika. ‘You can borrow these socks. They’re like walking on pillows.’

  ‘Does everyone have sunscreen?’ Ana asked.

  ‘Mum …’ appealed Harry.

  But she was gone, into the other room to make one last call.

  And so just like that, the decision was made. No phone. One whole wasted weekend. Unbelievable.

  Later, piled into the back seat of Ana’s car with Deepika, Harry slouched as low as his seatbelt would go, and scowled.

  In the front passenger seat, Mum was using her phone to check the maps app. Which was totally unfair, and she knew it. ‘Look Harry,’ she said, all forced cheer and fake smile. She reached round to show him her screen. ‘Not long now.’

  She was obviously feeling guilty. Well, good. He was glad, and he scowled some more.

  ‘Bye-bye civilisation,’ cheered Ana. ‘Bring on the bush!’

  ‘Yay!’ cheered Deepika.

  Ugh, thought Harry.

  ON THE TRACK

  An hour later and they hadn’t walked a single step. Harry was exhausted. He was stuck, still, with Deepika in the back of Ana’s car. Their mothers were chatting non-stop about jobs and schools and old friends and other jobs. And whenever they paused so Mum could check messages on her phone, Deepika would jump in and never stop.

  ‘Camping is awesome and hiking is even better and I can’t wait to eat hot noodles and toast marshmallows and jump over logs and this one time we climbed a tree, and I could see across the whole forest, and when the wind blew you could feel the whole tree move, but I wasn’t scared even though it was really, really high.’ She paused for breath, then leaned closer. ‘Well, a bit scared.’ She grinned a huge grin at him. She seemed to do that a lot. ‘Have you ever climbed a really, really high tree?’

  Harry just shrugged. His old apartment was really, really high, if that counted. But he hadn’t had much call for tree climbing.

  ‘Well, have you been hiking?’ Deepika persisted.

  Harry shrugged.

  ‘Well, what about camping?’

  He shrugged again. He didn’t want to make friends with Deepika. He was more into proper-fun things, like gaming and Netflix. Not camping and pillow socks.

  Hours later, right when vital parts of Harry were turning numb, Ana pulled into what she referred to as the car park. It was actually an abandoned sand patch, ringed by miles of deserted scrub.

  Mum lasted approximately twelve seconds before she confirmed that her phone had no reception. Then she started having some sort of semi-cyborg meltdown.

  ‘But I didn’t realise …’ she spluttered. ‘What about my messages …? What about work?’ She st
ared desperately around her, into the sand, into the bush, as if willing a phone tower to somehow rise from the undergrowth.

  Ha! thought Harry. Serves you right.

  And then Mum shrieked. ‘What’s that?’

  Harry spotted a dusty red sedan, hidden further down the dirt road and a few metres into the bush. He knew what it was immediately. A stolen car. And the driver was probably on the run from the police. With a fistful of diamonds. Also stolen. Probably from a celebrity. Offering an enormous cash reward for their return. He saw it on his newsfeed all the time.

  ‘Should we call the police?’ Mum asked.

  But Ana had obviously never lived in Sydney. ‘It’ll belong to another hiker. Some people prefer to hide their car than use the car park,’ she said, giving Mum a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘Just don’t leave anything valuable on display. Now, who needs a hand with their pack?’

  Unbelievable.

  Ana heaved her backpack up onto her shoulders. She looked like some sort of travelling circus, with plastic mugs and dirty thongs and blackened pots and water bottles all hanging off her. And they were only going for one night.

  Harry looked across at Deepika. Okay, so she was odd, but surely another kid would understand about stolen diamonds. He wondered about asking her, except she didn’t seem to care, perhaps not even about the cash reward. She was tightroping along a log. Her dark hair hung in one shiny plait down the middle of her backpack, and she was wearing a collared shirt, quick-dry trousers and sturdy-looking shoes.

  Harry was wearing his new sneakers and a gaming T-shirt. He’d wanted to wear jeans but Boss of All Things Ana had said no. So now he was stuck with board shorts. He wondered about tightroping on the log, but it didn’t look all that fun really.

  Deepika caught him watching and grinned. ‘How heavy’s your pack? Mine’s mega-heavy. I’m even carrying my own sleeping bag. Mum finally let me. Plus I’ve got snakes, and smarties, and chocolate frogs, and a whole packet of chips. I love chips. And a spare jumper.’ She grinned even wider. ‘Of course, a spare jumper. How ’bout you?’

  Harry blinked. His pack was his schoolbag, not a proper pack, and it was still in the boot of the car.

  ‘Did you bring much chocolate?’ Deepika asked.

  Harry sighed loudly and pulled his bag from the boot. It was surprisingly light, but he wasn’t telling Deepika that. It was Ana’s fault anyway. She’d had taken out all the heavy stuff.

  Ana helped Mum put on her pack. It was Ana’s old one, big and faded blue and stuffed to the brim. He really couldn’t believe Mum was doing this. Neither of them liked being outdoors. Mum must’ve been distracted by her phone when Ana had invited them. She’d agree to a lot when she was texting.

  ‘All ready?’ Ana asked.

  ‘Ready!’ Deepika chimed, still super-cheery, which seemed to be her only mode.

  Ana did some last-minute checks and locked the car. Mum made them all pose near the track sign while she took a million photos. With her phone. Harry made sure he looked wounded in every shot.

  ‘I can’t get online,’ Mum said, ‘but I’ll post them as soon as I can.’ Her voice only broke a little and Harry was reluctantly impressed. She’d existed almost fifteen minutes with no reception. It had to be a new record.

  ‘Let’s get moving!’ Ana announced.

  Deepika whooped and then jumped the first few metres along the dirt path. Literally. Her giant plait bounced with each bound.

  Harry walked. Carefully. He’d googled about surviving in the bush. There were wild pigs with gigantic goring tusks. Plus snakes, real ones, with deadly poisonous fangs. And ticks, with about a million spindly legs and blood-sucking jaws. And mosquitoes, the kind that carry strange tropical diseases and make you itch till your leg goes bright red and then explodes. Although he might have made up the exploding part.

  And right now there were trees with blackened trunks stretching away on either side. Scrub with dagger-sized thorns crowding in. Giant ants with sharpened pincers all over the track. Plus glistening spider webs, and probably even spiders. The kind that pierce you with dripping fangs to inject paralysing venom. You’d be dead in minutes. Or was that hours? Harry wasn’t sure which was worse.

  And no one really knew what lay ahead. You could walk for months on this track and still not reach the end. Even Ana had never walked this stretch before. She said that was part of the adventure. Unbelievable.

  ‘You want to go first?’ Deepika asked.

  Harry gulped.

  Deepika waved him forward. ‘Go on. Being the leader is way fun.’

  Ana waited. Mum did too. Flies buzzed and crickets or frogs or some sort of noisy chirping creature chirped. Crows cawed in the distance.

  ‘Nah, you go,’ he said.

  Deepika stepped past him, leading them out and along the track.

  Harry had been walking for around four seconds when Ana called out: ‘You sure that’s the right way?’

  Ugh. Lost already. Had Ana set them up on purpose? Harry turned, but Ana was smiling.

  ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Our first Waugal.’

  She was talking to Deepika, who was pointing at a tree. And incredibly, perhaps for the first time since they’d met, Deepika was silent. Not so incredibly, she was beaming.

  ‘What’s a Waugal?’ asked Mum.

  ‘The snake,’ said Ana.

  ‘What!?’ said Mum. ‘Where!?’

  Harry looked everywhere for a snake, then noticed Ana trying not to laugh. ‘There.’ She pointed to Deepika’s tree.

  Tacked into the tree’s lined trunk was a yellow triangle about the size of Harry’s fist. On the triangle was a picture of a twisting black and yellow snake.

  ‘That’s our trail marker,’ Ana explained. ‘A picture of the Rainbow Serpent. In Noongar culture, the Waugal is the giver of life, and it shaped this land. Stick with the Waugal and it’ll take us where we need to be.’

  I need to be in Sydney, thought Harry. Preferably on the couch. I bet it can’t take me there.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mum. ‘Nice.’ She pulled out her phone and took a photo of the trail marker. Then another.

  ‘So,’ said Ana. ‘Which way do we go?’

  Harry half-shrugged. The yellow triangle was shaped like an arrowhead, and it was pointing the same way they were walking. So he half-pointed in that direction.

  ‘Nice one,’ smiled Ana.

  Deepika gave Harry a thumbs-up, then she turned and kept walking. In the same direction they’d been going before. Harry wondered if the day could get any more tedious. Then, after thirty more seconds, Mum called out.

  ‘Wait a sec, I have to grab a picture of this view,’ she said, pulling out her phone. Harry sighed. It would be a great shot, and if he’d had his phone he would’ve taken a photo too. Instead he tried hard to look like a disadvantaged artist. Hopefully Mum would see him and feel terrible.

  But if Mum did see, she didn’t seem to care. Instead, she seemed to be doing her best to enjoy the trip, despite the no-reception thing. Perhaps she was more used to the outdoors than Harry gave her credit for. He remembered once she’d had a pot plant on their balcony.

  ‘Let’s go!’ urged Deepika.

  Soon they had walked non-stop for two whole minutes, which Harry decided was long enough to see all there was to see. Scrub. Sand. Sky. Done.

  Except then they walked some more. And more. And more. And more and more and more. Ahead of him, Deepika chattered and chattered. And chattered and chattered and chattered. She seemed happy about everything.

  ‘Oh, this is cool, just watch out for snakes,’ she said, clambering over a fallen log. ‘Real snakes, I mean.’

  Harry watched, closely, trying not to puff.

  ‘Check this out, which way will you go? I’m going left,’ she said, winding around a hollow stump.

  Harry also went left. No point in rocking the boat.

  ‘This is like a roller-coaster, whoa, my legs,’ she cried, racing down a dip and back up the other side
.

  Harry chose not to race. It felt nothing like a roller-coaster.

  And still they walked. And walked. And walked. And still Deepika talked. And talked. And talked. And Mum kept stopping to take photos. And they all had to wait each time while she lined up the perfect shot.

  ‘Ow!’ Harry slapped at a fly the size of a jumbo jet. He tried to look mournful. It wasn’t hard.

  ‘Mum,’ Deepika asked. ‘Can me and Harry go ahead, just for a bit?’

  Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to go ahead. But he didn’t want to wait here either. Mum was taking selfies with what Ana claimed was an orchid. It looked more like a dried spider on a stick.

  ‘What do you think, Charl?’ Ana asked. ‘Can the kids go a little way ahead?’

  Mum hardly looked up. ‘Sure, okay.’ She lined up another photo.

  ‘Yay!’ Deepika cheered.

  ‘Just five minutes,’ Ana warned. ‘Then you stop and wait for us.’

  ‘Okay,’ chimed Deepika, and she winked at Harry.

  Harry was too surprised to wink back.

  While Mum posed for another awkward orchid selfie, Harry and Deepika set out. Now he didn’t have to concentrate on looking miserable for Mum, he felt a bit lighter. Then he remembered the three-walled hut. Mum had tried to hide her shock when Ana had revealed that little detail in the car. ‘Just three walls?’ Mum’d asked, turning pale.

  Ana had grinned. ‘You only need three — the important bit’s the roof.’

  Harry walked behind Deepika, trying to imagine sleeping in a hut with only three walls. He wasn’t even sure it could work.

  When Deepika stopped, he nearly walked into the back of her. She turned to check that their mothers were out of sight, then she grinned. ‘You want a chocolate frog?’

  Harry nodded carefully. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Top pocket,’ she said, turning so he could reach the zipper on her bag. ‘Quick. Mum’ll say it’s too soon for a snack. But it’s never too soon for chocolate.’

  He set to work, finding the packet and dishing out a frog each. Deepika eyed him curiously as she bit off her frog’s head. ‘You’re really quiet.’