We suffered from vibration-sickness; the feeling that someone nearby was using a jackhammer with such ferocity that the vibrations were travelling right through the ground and up our legs. We staggered around the car park like a bunch of drunks, while our central nervous systems tried to adjust to the sudden stillness. It was probably hilarious to watch; like an old episode of Star Trek, when the cast really try to sell the effect of the Enterprise taking a direct hit.
Finally, I felt I’d recovered enough to use the toilet without pissing all over the place. It was a long-drop; the kind of ‘outback dunnie’ that consists of a garden shed containing a box with a toilet seat over a very deep, very smelly hole.
Not the ideal facility to use when one’s ability to stand upright has been compromised.
I bounced off several walls, and emerged feeling worse than when I’d gone in.
“Why did we come here again?” I asked.
Ah, yes. Hiking.
The main selling point of Kalbarri National Park was Nature’s Window – a natural archway formed right on the edge of a precipice. It framed a panoramic view of the vast, empty landscape, and the narrow gorge that cut through it. The view was even better from the top of the arch, which was easily reached by climbing on an ironically placed sign warning ‘Climbing Danger!’
Far below us, the river winding through the gorge was emerald green, reflecting the scrubby vegetation that clung to every nook and hollow. The cliffs were a dark, dusty red, and in the bends of the river yellow sand had accumulated, forming a series of miniature beaches. It was a stunning essay in the colours of nature – here, even the barren rock put on a pretty show, as though to make up for the complete lack of anything else to look at.
“Gorgeous,” I commented. And not for the first time.
The next warning sign we encountered was where the trail petered out – about ten paces from the car park. Evidently this chunk of unspoilt wilderness was particularly unspoilt.
‘GORGE RISK AREA’, the sign read. ‘TURN BACK UNLESS YOU ARE: CAUTIOUS, FIT AND AGILE, PREPARED TO SCRAMBLE, COMFORTABLE WITH HEIGHTS, CARRYING WATER’.
“Well, you’re screwed straight away,” Gill said to me.
“Why? I’m great with heights! I’m fit. And I love to scramble.”
“Yeah, but you’re the least cautious person I’ve ever known.”
“Oh, screw caution. Who needs that?”
“Exactly.”
We descended into the gorge, picking our way down tracks that probably weren’t tracks at all. The strata in the rock ran horizontally, giving it a stripy appearance. The eroded layers formed flat planes and step-like edges, inspiring those of us who love to climb (me) to venture further and higher than was probably wise.
It was so easy, and so much fun, that before long both the girls were scaling the cliffs in all directions. Nature had provided us with a wonderful playground, and after making a supreme effort to get here, we figured we might as well make the most of it.
The river was so still in places, so unaffected by the wind racing across the flat desert above, that it became a mirror. The doubled view of rock and sky, reflected in the tranquil water, was made even more impressive by the complete lack of anything man-made to spoil it. There was nobody there but us – and looking around the place, I could easily imagine that there never had been. No litter, no graffiti; no sign of human passage at all.
It’s possible we were a bit lost.
But never mind! With a bit of narrow-ledge work we followed the river on its serpentine path, sometimes walking three abreast, sometimes single file, crabbing sideways on our tip toes, hugging the rock.
In one of the narrower sections, where the walls closed in above us, Gill paused. “Woah, listen,” she said.
We stopped dead, and listened. “Listen, listen, listen,” echoed faintly back down the rock towards us.
“Ha ha! Echo!” I called, listening to the reverberations as ‘echo, echo,’ was repeated up and down the length of the canyon.
Just then, a deafening shriek rent the air:
“AAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUWWWWEE!”
The sound wave billowed out all around us, crashing into the walls of the gorge and bouncing back to wash over us again. It sounded like those monsters from Pitch Black were coming from every direction to tear us to shreds.
Rocks fell in the distance.
I think I pooed a little.
When the sound abated and the echoes subsided, Gill and I dropped our hands from our ears and turned to look at Roo, from whose throat the unearthly noise had come.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t do that in England?”
“Um, no. We mostly just say ‘Echo’.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
As the afternoon wore on, we started looking for a route back.
Every curve we rounded offered another rugged vista.
It was absolutely… gorgeous.
“If you don’t stop saying that, you’ll be swimming in it,” Gill informed me.
We came across a wooden signpost with what looked like a line drawing of a colon on it. We assumed this was a route marker, but there were no notes to accompany the bowel diagram; no ‘You Are Here’, with an arrow pointing to the sphincter, and no clue as to which direction the stomach was in. I was assuming the car park was at the stomach end – otherwise we were incredibly lost, and would be exiting via the rectum – neither of which appealed to me.
We were, unsurprisingly, rather late getting back to the car park. Rusty was the only vehicle left, and we still had the agonising two-hour trip out of the park to look forward to.
Only this time we would have to go slower, because it was getting dark, and there would be kangaroos on the road.
“But it’s so barren,” I said, “it’s hard to imagine anything surviving here.”
“Oh, there were loads of signs of life back there,” Roo informed me. “There was wallaby poo all over the place.”
“Really? And it was definitely wallaby poo?”
“Yep,” Roo said, thereby admitting that she could tell the difference.
I decided to take her word for it.
Because when you’re traveling with someone for the first time, it’s always good to find they know their shit.
Getting High
I have been told, on occasion, that there is something wrong in my brain. Not by doctors, you understand – just by… well, pretty much everyone else. So as I stood at the base of a hundred-foot cliff, looking up, some mis-wired chip in my head fired up. Where most sane people would have said, “Fuck me, that’s a big bugger!” and carried on walking, I turned to the others and said, “We’ve got to do this one!”
It had been another long day of hiking and climbing – same gorge, different day. Okay, technically speaking it was a different gorge as well, but it looked identical to the last one. We were several days and over six-hundred kilometres north of Kalbarri, in yet another national park with the equally ambiguous name of Cape Range.
The girls looked at each other, then back at me. I could tell they were hesitant, but this didn’t sound any kind of alarm in my head. Okay, it did – but the alarm was saying ‘Quick! Get started before they have chance to think up excuses!’.
We’d done some great climbs already, and both girls had grown in confidence since this morning. I knew they had it in them to manage this one – as long as I could get them started before nervousness set in. This one would be our crowning glory.
Our ultimate challenge.
Plus, I really wanted to climb it.
I’ve always loved climbing stuff. Some would say, I’ve always loved to climb stuff that I really shouldn’t climb. Not too long ago this habit had come to a head, in a tricky situation in Thailand which had very nearly cost me my life.
Afterwards, I’d promised myself that in the future, I would think before I climbed. That I would analyse the situation and weigh up the dangers – even do something previously unheard of, an
d actually consider not climbing something!
I think it’s a testament to my strength of character that today was the first time in almost six months that I broke that promise.
Up I went, an easy scramble for the first few body-lengths. I looked back over my shoulder at the sky, realising that Roo and Gill were already quite a way below me. But, in fairness to the pair of them, they were both trying it.
“You’re doing great,” I called down to them. “See, this bit’s not too bad!”
Roo was having an easier time of it than Gill, purely because she was built for it. Climbing is all about strength-to-weight ratio, and Gill, for her size, is fiendishly strong. But Roo was strong too, and she had less body-weight than some insects. Her long, lean limbs splayed out in all directions to find holds even I hadn’t been able to reach. She wasn’t relying on strength, at least not yet. Honestly, if we’d have filled her lungs with helium, I think she’d have floated to the top.
First Roo, then Gill, reached me. I’d decided to wait for them because the next section looked quite steep. Well, steep for a cliff…
I think the appropriate term is sheer.
But I was confident, and I sought to give them confidence by pointing out the hand and foot holds as we went.
It was an arduous climb, but not impossible. Slowly but surely, we inched our collective way upwards. Gill called up to suggest a brief rest, and I agreed wholeheartedly. The next ledge above me was an obvious choice, so I hauled myself over its lip and thrust my hand down to help Roo. Gill powered over the edge herself, huffing and puffing a bit, but exhilarated with the accomplishment.
She stood and looked out at the view, empty air stretching all the way across to the opposite side of the canyon.
“Beautiful,” she said.
“MotherFUCKER!” I replied, which startled both of them.
They looked confused until they saw me slapping at my legs. Giant red ants had climbed me in a fraction of the time it had taken me to climb their cliff, and unlike our little group they weren’t stopping for a rest.
“Shit!” said Roo, “Those things bite really bad!”
Then both girls started swearing as they swatted at dozens of insects that had already ventured onto their shoes and up their trouser legs. Cries of “ARR!” and “OWW!” mingled with the profanity, as the creatures began to take their revenge.
“We can’t stay here!” I said. “Climb!”
And climb we did, with a purpose.
Thankfully, we left most of the freakish ants behind, though every few seconds another one would emerge from the neckline of my t-shirt and take a bite out of whatever it could reach.
“Argh! You little bastards!”
The ants paid me no heed.
Still we climbed, slowing now, as the route became more and more difficult. I thought I could see the top, but it looked like the final push would be the biggest challenge so far. Behind and below me, the two girls battled on, though there was rising panic in their voices when they asked me where to put their feet next…
“A ledge!” I cried. “Let’s get up there, and we can have a breather!”
“Thank God,” said Roo.
“How?” said Gill. “I can’t see where to go!”
“Just a little further,” I told her. I grabbed hold of a twisted tree trunk that seemed to grow right out of the rock, and dragged myself up onto the ledge above it.
Roo followed, taking my hand, clearly straining to lift herself over the edge. It had been a long climb, and she immediately set about pulling ants from her clothes and squashing them.
Gill reached the last section below the ledge and baulked at the height of it. “I’m not tall enough,” she said, her voice shaking with exertion and fear.
“It’s okay,” I told her, “just grab onto this tree. You can haul yourself right up on it, and I’ll grab your other hand.”
“I don’t know, it’s very high…”
I could tell she was about to panic.
“Don’t worry, it’s easy,” I told her. “Roo just did it, and I helped her up too. Come on, you’ll make it!”
She didn’t sound very confident, but she gave me a shaky, “Okay.”
Then she stretched out for the tree trunk, grabbed a hold of it, and pulled.
And the tree trunk came straight out of the cliff face as though it had never been attached in the first place.
Gill fell.
I know it sounds hopelessly cheesy, but time really does slow down in moments like this; or at least, it does for me. I had thoughts that would have taken me minutes to speak aloud. Chief amongst them was my voice repeating over and over, “I just killed her. I just killed my sister. Gill’s dead. I’ve killed her.”
I saw it all in a flash; her body, smashed and bloody, in a pile of rocks at the foot of the cliff; the horror in Mum’s face as she looked at me.
And, according to Roo, I screamed.
Gill did not scream.
She also did not die.
Scrabbling at the rock like a cartoon character, she fell about ten feet in the blink of an eye. Knees, elbows and fingertips bounced off the cliff, scuffing and scraping, and then her feet found a narrow lip and stuck there.
By terrified reflex she wrapped her whole body around the cliff face, hugging it for all she was worth, and her trip downwards was over.
For now, anyway.
“GILL???” I shrieked down at her.
She didn’t reply for what seemed like eternity. Then a croaky, “I’m okay,” floated up.
And Gill lay against the rock, breathing heavily, and quite possibly crying a little bit. But I could hardly blame her for that. I was crying too.
I think we’ll call that ‘shock’, and say no more about it.
After a few minutes, Gill regained control over her body. She was weak and trembling – but she was alive!
And she was about to face the ordeal of climbing back up again. Because there really was no other way but down. And it was a long, long way down.
Roo and I stared at her, and Gill stared back up at us. “I’m going to take a picture,” she called.
“Eh? Oh, okay.”
I could see what she was up to. Faced with continuing the climb, and well aware of her failing strength and shaking limbs, she’d found an excuse to extend her breather. Her camera was dangling from the back of her belt, and with one hand she reached around and unzipped its case. Laying there, sprawled across the rock like it was the living room carpet at home – only with about seventy-five degrees of difference – she pointed the camera up at us and killed a couple of minutes trying to get a clear shot. Roo even took one back at her.
Which was nice.
But it still didn’t solve the problem, so eventually, with much cajoling, we coaxed Gill back up the cliff. With no tree to haul on, the last section was a toughie, so I climbed down again to help her up. And then, rather than rest and risk losing heart, I mercilessly bullied the others on up the last stage of the climb.
It was the hardest part yet, even without considering our mental state, but somehow we pushed on through and made it.
I consider it one of the most difficult free climbs I’ve done – not the hardest, or the longest, but certainly the one where I came closest to shitting myself.
For the girls to have managed it was nothing short of miraculous.
I told them so, too, as we lay there on the flat top of the gorge.
“That was amazing,” I said, “the best climb I’ve ever seen either of you do! It’s something to be proud of. A real achievement. You guys were incredible!”
To her credit, Gill agreed. “Yeah, that was amazing,” she said. The elation of pulling off such a feat was flooding through her, overwhelming the despair she must have been feeling only minutes earlier.
Roo’s face was flushed with excitement too. “I’ve never done anything like that before!”
“I knew you could do it,” I said. “Both of you did so well… Next time it’ll
be loads easier, because you’ve got this experience now. Next time you’ll know you can do it.”
Gill pushed herself to her feet. “I don’t think there should be a next time just yet.”
“Well okay, that’s a fair point. We’ve definitely done enough for today! And anyway, it’ll be getting dark soon.”
Roo was standing now too, admiring the view from what felt like the top of the world. I stood up to join them, and studied the path we’d been following along the bottom of the gorge. It looked like a dark red pen line, drawn all squiggly across the lighter dirt.
“That is a long way,” she said.
“It is,” I agreed.
“So, I was wondering. How do we get down?”
Why Not To Drive At Night
It took us hours to find the car.
Forced to walk back along the top of the gorge, we headed in what we hoped was the right direction, but couldn’t quite be sure. And it wasn’t like we had much choice – whereas before we’d been following a mapped out (if terribly sign-posted) route, now we were wandering fairly randomly along the flat, dry landscape. We stuck close to the edge of the canyon, but the route below soon vanished in a direction we couldn’t match without growing wings. And from there on, it was all guesswork.
We walked for miles that evening, finally discovering the car park as the last of the light ebbed over the horizon. Thanks to the featureless flat plain, we’d used every last ray of sunlight, arriving back long after night had fallen down below.
When Roo’s sharp eyes picked out the squat silhouette of Rusty, sitting alone in a cleared area, she gave a whoop of joy.
She and I jogged over to our beloved vehicle – sprinting in mind, if not quite capable of doing so in body – and wrapped ourselves around him.
Gill, even less inclined to run, hung back to take a photo.
It’s a strange picture, with the two of us hugging the van; it’s caused a few raised eyebrows over the years. But we didn’t care. We were sweaty, aching, exhausted – and in Gill’s case, still bleeding quite substantially.
Kamikaze Kangaroos! Page 5
