Kamikaze Kangaroos!

by Tony James Slater

  “What kind is it?” I asked.

  “Dugite,” Roo replied.

  “Poisonous?”

  “Deadly. Third most, I think, in all the world.”

  No-one spoke for a couple of minutes, as we all contemplated the implications of that. But I’m not good with silence, so I broke it.

  “He’s a lazy bugger, though.”

  “Yes,” said Roo, “luckily.”

  We were quieter as we walked on – and a fair bit more cautious. I had a tendency to wander along, lost in the remembering of some past adventure or day-dreaming about future travels, but it now occurred to me that this wasn’t the safest way to bush-walk. As I thought about it, the reality of the situation dawned on me. It had been a week since we’d had any phone signal. We were far from help – and when I say far, I mean several days’ fast hiking. And that would only bring us to the nearest road, with the hope of flagging down a car, getting a lift into the nearest town, and then hoping the local hospital had a helicopter…

  Treatment for a snake-bite involves lying still and moving as little as possible to slow the spread of the poison, whilst a friend calls for an ambulance. Out here… well, I could either ignore that advice and hike for help, or I could lie here under a bush whilst the others went to get some.

  But I’d be dead either way, so it didn’t really matter.

  Following this revelation I started watching the path intently, and stomping my feet as I walked, which Roo advised us would scare snakes away.

  I did this for about the next half-hour – and then I gave up, because that shit is exhausting.

  And day-dreaming, though potentially deadly, was much more fun.

  Point Of No Return

  At long, long (LONG long LONG!) last, we crested a headland and saw the giant windmills of Albany’s new wind farm gleaming in the distance.

  As welcome sights go, you could be forgiven for thinking this was one of the greatest ever seen. But to be honest, we were all having mixed feelings.

  On the one hand, the desperation to be back in town, to eat anything other than bread and instant noodles, to be clean and dry and to sleep on real mattresses was a palpable thing. We’d talked for days (weeks, if I’m honest) about what the first thing we’d do was, once we were back in civilization.

  ‘Take a shit,’ I think, was highest on my priority list.

  On the other hand… this was it. The End. Game Over.

  Sighting the graceful white windmills was a bit of a false alarm, in that we still had three days to go; for now, they were the size of daisies on the horizon, and they would continue to grow until we hiked right beneath the thirty-five metre long Kevlar blades, mounted on towers twice that height.

  It meant that the end was a long time coming.

  We had ample time to address our feelings; triumph, mostly, at having achieved such an impossible task; gratitude, to the Gods of Fate, that had somehow allowed us to escape serious injury the entire time. And regret, because no matter how difficult, and how painful this journey had been, we still didn’t want it to be over.

  Because, what do you do, after hiking for over six-hundred miles?

  Where do you go?

  Other than to the pub?

  “Anyone feel like turning back?” Roo quipped, as we hiked past a signpost. It was a rare distance-marker, pointing back in the direction we’d come from. ‘Kalamunda – 952 km’ it said.

  I think that was when it first hit us, that this whole endeavour was nearly over.

  “Remember Cardiac Hill?” Gill said.

  We all had a chuckle. About three weeks in we’d started hearing about this monster from people coming the other way, and had been psyching ourselves up for it for days. Everyone we met complained that it had nearly finished them off, a slope so long and so steep it had earned its name by giving several people heart attacks.

  Then one day we’d started descending, and descending, doing a solid two hours of serious downhill gradient. It wasn’t until right at the bottom that it occurred to me; “You know what folks… I think that was Cardiac Hill!”

  And it was. Lesson learned: never try to do this hike in the opposite direction.

  “I’ll miss climbing mountains,” Roo commented. We’d summited several peaks on the course of the hike, our biggest accomplishment being two in one day – and a beast of a day it was, owing to our decision to double-hut. We’d been unofficially racing a group of loud-mouthed army cadets for a couple of days; they’d been doing a week-long section of the Track for ‘training’, and were walking in head to toe camouflage, toting all the expensive bits of gear we couldn’t afford. There were three of them, and they marched off at speed, while we sauntered – but somehow we always seemed to catch them up, which became slightly awkward after a while.

  So we studied our guidebook, and planned a coup. Up the highest mountain on the Track we climbed, puffing and blowing, to find the army boys waiting for us in the shelter at the top.

  “Thought you lot weren’t gonna make it,” the loudest bloke said. Then he generously offered us one of the three rooms in this unique stone shelter, being as how him and his mates had arrived first and occupied the other two.

  “No, that’s quite alright,” I told him. “We’re not staying in this shelter. We’re hiking on to the next one.”

  And after scoffing a chocolate bar each, that’s exactly what we did – leaving him standing there, open-mouthed in disbelief.

  Thirty-four kilometres we made that day, arriving at the second campsite long after dark. That’s twenty-one miles. It doesn’t sound that far actually, but we did climb two mountains, adding almost a thousand vertical metres up, and the same again coming down, to our total.

  “What about you?” Gill asked me. “What will you miss most?”

  “Strangely enough, I think I miss the trees…”

  I could feel the black look she fixed on my back. “Pah! If I wasn’t too knackered to bend over, I would totally find something to throw at you right now.”

  Roo started the next obvious thread of conversation. “So what won’t you miss?”

  “These bloody boots!” I moaned. “Buy a size too big, they said. But then the wet socks compress to nothing, the shoes expand with wear, and every time I walk up or down hill I slide around in them, bashing my heels or my toes with every sodding step! Worst. Advice. Ever.”

  “At least you didn’t get blisters,” Roo countered. “How many do you reckon we’ve burst, Gill? Three or four a day, for the first month?”

  “I’ve still got a few,” Gill admitted. “You know what I’ll miss least of all, though? Having to get up in the middle of the night – in the freezing cold, the dark, and the frigging rain – and put soaking wet shoes on to scarper to the loo. And worst of all, no matter how cold I was, or how desperate for a wee, I still had to spend ages running the torch around the toilet seat, checking for redbacks!”

  Roo shuddered. “Ugh! Yeah, checking under the rim of the seat was the worst! I saw things I can never un-see. I’m mentally scarred! But still, it was better than dying in the wilderness of a spider-bite on the arse.”

  Hearing all that surprised me a bit. “So you guys checked the toilet seat for spiders every single time you went? Even at night?”

  “Yeah, we had to use a bloody torch! Why, didn’t you?”

  “No. It never occurred to me.”

  A day later we passed under the windmills, and strolled casually down the side of the main road into Albany. We were stronger – mentally more than anything, having overcome a desire to quit so strong that some days it was the only thought in my head. But physically also, particularly the girls; looking back, I’m blown away by what they achieved. At times I thought that hike would kill me – but both Roo and Gill handled the whole thing, ignoring the pain and carrying on (or on occasion, crying with the pain, and still carrying on). They’d been directly responsible for me completing the Track; I’d never have made it without their example of tenacity and relentles
s positivity, shaming me into carrying on even when every fibre of my being screamed at me to give up.

  Ladies, I salute you!

  In Albany we encountered nothing of note. No fanfares, no celebrations, no crowded streets welcoming us back to reality. We were just three tired hikers, hobbling in on battered boots, covering the last few steps of a long and lonely road.

  So after we collapsed in the youth hostel, and ditched our stinking clothes, we made two forays – once more in our pyjamas.

  First we went to McDonalds, and ordered everything on the menu. And then found out our stomachs had shrunk so much we could hardly finish a meal between us.

  Then, we went to K-Mart, and bought three plain white t-shirts and a packet of marker pens.

  ‘I Just Walked 1,000 Kilometres!’ we scrawled across the t-shirts, in a variety of styles.

  And the next day, when we roused ourselves after fourteen hours of blissful sleep, we wore the t-shirts all around town. A few people smiled and waved at us, and then a photographer from the Albany Advertiser spotted us.

  Our vindication came in the form of an article, printed the very next day, alongside a photo of us looking considerably cleaner than we had in months.

  ‘The Big Trek Is Done’, the headline announced.

  The article was one paragraph long.

  108 words.

  Including the title.

  “You know what would make the whole thing more interesting?” Roo said.

  “I dunno. If one of us had died?”

  “No! Next time we should do it for charity!”

  I gave her a long, hard look, and tried to inject every ounce of defiance I could muster into my reply.

  “Next time?”

  To this day, I count completing the Bibbulmun Track as one of the foremost achievements of my life.

  But it’s impossible to tell people about it.

  Every so often, just for a laugh, I give it a go.

  “I hiked a thousand kilometres, once,” I’ll chuck casually into a conversation.

  “Woah! Really?” will be the response.

  “Yup.”

  “That must have taken ages!”

  “It did, actually. It took two months.”

  “Wow, that’s so cool. Hey, did you ever see that movie about the climber that got trapped by his arm? He had to bite his own hand off!”

  And that’s as far as it goes.

  I could launch into an hour-long tirade about wet feet and crippling shoulder pain, about the dangers of downhill acceleration over rough terrain when you’ve got twenty kilos on your back, about cold and hunger, gigantic trees and lonely beaches, about mental barriers erected and demolished, and noodles, noodles, frigging noodles.

  But no-one really cares.

  I mean, why would they?

  No reason to make a big song and dance about it.

  All I did was go for a walk.

  Desert Crossing

  Something I’ve just realised about the Nullarbor: the name, Null-Arbor, literally means No Trees.

  So, to call it featureless may actually be a misnomer; it is a landscape clearly defined by its complete lack of features.

  Like trees, and shade.

  And water. And life.

  To me, the incredibly flat, arid wasteland looked about as devoid of life as anyplace on Earth.

  But I was wrong about that once more; aside from spikey grasses and countless flies, there were things that lived in this desert. Lizards, like the racehorse iguana, and marsupial mice (that’s right folks – kangaroo-mice!), the ubiquitous kangaroos, plus snakes, spiders and scorpions (everyone’s favourite trio of desert-dwellers) – and wombats, apparently.

  “So what do wombats look like?” I asked Roo. Chatting about the peculiarities of Australia, and in particular their wildlife, was one of my favourite ways to pass the endless hours we spent in Rusty.

  “They’re gorgeous!” Roo replied. “Like big fat balls of fur the size of a dog, with a smushed-up face. Like a giant version of a chinchilla, actually. They’ve got a pouch, but – how clever is this – it faces backwards, so they don’t fill it with soil when they’re burrowing!”

  “Wow, that is cool. I could never remember out of ‘wombat’ and ‘numbat’, which was the real animal and which was the insult.”

  “Ahh… they’re both real. You know that, right?”

  “Eh? No? You’re kidding me! Then what the hell is a numbat?”

  “It’s like a tiny, stripy ant-eater. With a pouch. Only, it eats termites.”

  “No way!”

  “Yeah! They’re adorable. But they’re practically extinct. We used to breed them at Perth Zoo, but all the wild ones get killed by foxes.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. Foxes kill everything here. All the numbats and bilbies and quokkas.”

  “Honestly, it’s like you’re speaking another language sometimes. All I hear is ‘Willa-billa-balla-bong’.”

  “You’re just jealous because your frogs don’t whistle.”

  We’d been advised not to risk free-camping by the side of the road on the Nullarbor; aside from the danger of careless drivers passing in the night, there were more sinister stories that we honestly couldn’t decide whether or not to give credence to. We’d heard around campfires in Broome that gangs of disaffected youths sometimes prowled the desert highway at night, looking to cause trouble. Horror stories of cars being torched with their owners still asleep inside were enough to give us pause – even though a bit of cautious Googling hadn’t returned any evidence of such crimes.

  We’d seen enough burnt-out wrecks on the drive through Halls Creek to make us a little paranoid – so we limped into a different road-house every night, pitching our tents on gravel car parks and shivering through the frigid desert night.

  Rusty was struggling, as expected, and the intense daytime heat and complete lack of shade did little to help – so we made small hops, from rest-stop to gas-station to road-house, refuelling every time (which was sensible), and scraping the coating of dead bugs off the windscreen every time (which was essential). Hours were spent every day waiting for Rusty’s radiator to cool down enough for us to open it and add more water.

  On Australia’s longest straight road – ninety miles of tarmac without the slightest curve or bend – we boiled up a total of three times. But there wasn’t much we could do about it – we’d tried to get him looked at by a mechanic in Subiaco, before we left Perth. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest move to drive a crippled old van decorated like an explosion in a paint factory into a dealership filled with gleaming Toyota Prados, but it was the only place with an appointment at short notice. We’d been a bit embarrassed, but had left Rusty parked amongst the Lexus SUVs and the Jeep Cherokees and wandered the markets of Subiaco while we waited for a verdict.

  It hadn’t been kind.

  “I reckon you should drive this van to the nearest scrap yard,” the mechanic had said.

  “Yes?” we chorused.

  “Then push it through the gates and walk away.”

  “Oh.”

  “Because it’s buggered.”

  And that was the last professional opinion we dared invest in, before making our attempt to cross the Nullarbor. After all, if five more mechanics had told us the same thing it wouldn’t have made much difference to our plans – just to our stress levels. And to our bank balances. So we chose to believe he’d been a bit hasty, or had been trying to avoid taking Rusty on as a project. I couldn’t blame him for that, even if his delivery had lacked a little tact.

  Because Rusty had no air-conditioning (of course!), sweat poured off us as we chugged along with all the windows open. Once again, every pore in our skin was clogged, every fold in our clothes became filled, and every tooth and every eyelash sported a thin coating of fine red grit. I was picking it out of my nose for weeks afterwards.

  I’ll leave to your imagination the effect it had on my other orifices.

  But believe me when I s
ay – that shit gets everywhere.

  I had it worst of course, because I was lounging in the back – we’d stopped making it into seats, and were basically driving with a permanent double bed in the back – on which I spent the entire drive reclining, and gathering vast quantities of dust.

  Because I couldn’t drive.

  It occurs to me that I’ve never mentioned why this was, and now seems like as good a time as any.

  I was given six driving lessons as a present for my seventeenth birthday. I’m still owed three of them.

  You see, when I was about ten, my Dad took a fantastic new job that involved us all upping sticks and moving from Yorkshire to Lancashire, where we got a shiny new house in a quiet cul-de-sac. We’d traded one sleepy northern English village for another, and to the adults, it was just geography. But to us kids, making that shift between counties transformed us both overnight into persona non-grata. We were like the unclean. I don’t think it had anything to do with the ancient grudge between Yorkshire and Lancashire – Gill was only seven, and I seriously doubt anyone in our age group gave a toss about that stuff. But the trouble was, we weren’t from there. And if you weren’t from there – well, then you weren’t one of them.

  To say we were bullied, my sister and I, is to make an understatement so dramatic it defies words. Every day at school there were torrents of abuse waiting; the kids in our new village threw stones at us on sight. I hid when I could, and took the brunt of it when there was no other option. It probably didn’t help that I was so damn weird. Years passed this way, with home my only refuge. Of course, I thought of giving up on this life, and taking a peek at the next one. Especially whenever I was high up, on cliff tops and castle walls and the like. I could picture myself soaring through the air, letting it all just float away as I plunged, free, through the endless empty sky. Oddly enough I’ve never feared death; injury for sure, because that stuff bloody well hurts; but not death. I’m too curious for that. But it wasn’t only me that I had to think of. More than anything, I knew that I would miss my family – and that they would miss me. It was our love that kept us so close, and in my darkest days, it was that love that kept me here.