Righteo.

Actually, that briefing proved to be flawed. Expecting the track to loop around the property I found myself at the end of a long ridge, and the end of a long battle with the motorbike. After returning down the gully from the aforementioned stalk I found myself negotiating shale the size of house bricks and  had been thrown off, landing heavily on my rifle (dammit) and being pinned under the bike. It eventually slid off down the hill, engine still running.  I had torn some bark off but as I had fallen was doing everything possible to ensure I did not hit my head. This is no country to have an accident in. It’s tight and close and even though I was still on a track it would be very difficult to find me should I disable myself. I get sorted and press on, following the boundary fence. Three or four times I had to get off the bike to work out where the track had gone and where the safest approach was. But the country got tighter and tighter and steeper and steeper until in the end I found myself on the end of a long bald ridge. The boundary fence cut down  a steep spur onto a flat. I walked some of it and decided it was within my skill set. But very quickly the slope was beating me so I turned the engine off and rolled down on brakes to what proved to be the limit of the property, Now I was a long way from where I started, the sun was high in the sky and I discovered a problem – there was no way out. The spur had rolled out onto a flat area about 200x 200 metres but there was only one way in and one way out for the bike for the area is bounded by steep escarpments. I was in a cul-de-sac. There was nothing for it but to walk out. Easier said than done though – it’s 42 degrees in the shade. Goodness only knows what it is out in the open.

Water check – 1.75 litres. Will that be enough? No hat. Pull T-shirt onto head. That made a difference. Knife. Check. 40 rounds of ammo. But no food. Legs good though abrazed. Feet OK. Feeling OK despite the heat.  Toilet paper. Check -  I reckon it will be handy not for the obvious but if I find a muddy dam I can make a filter out of toilet paper and an ammo box. I let myself down one of those escarpments and find myself in a creek bed. Now I fully appreciate the heat of the sun since up on the ridges there was always a breeze. Down here it is hot and still. I start walking. At least in this part of the world I have another asset – a poly pipe running from a dam somewhere. If the water situation gets too bad I can shoot a hole in that. I walk about a click then decide I need to get to some high ground so I can get my bearings. It’s a hot ascent and I sit down for a breather and a water check.

I am about equidistant from the highway which I can see in the distance, and from the point where Franko and I had set up a water drop earlier in the day. I decide against the highway. Lugging up the road with a rifle over my shoulder might be asking for trouble even though I am a law abiding license holding rifle owner.  I could hide it and keep the bolt but the possibility of losing a rifle and trying to explain it to Mr Plod is not worth the grief at this point. I start to cross country.

It proved a four- five hour exodus. At one stage I thought “this ground is so deceptive” but then castigated myself – all ground is deceptive if you don’t know it. Mind you this is rolling and steep with lots of dead ground you just cant see until you are in it. I could see the bluff I was taking a bearing off  but it was something of a mirage as there was a lot of ground to cover in between. I was carefully measuring the water out. Urine was a decidedly unhealthy colour and that got my attention.   I slowed up. Best not to push it. Then I found the track we were on last night (forever grateful for the sense of direction I was born with) and so I paused for a break. I had heard branches crashing off their trunks earlier in the day so I took care where I stopped and found shade. Twenty minutes of  breather helped. But now I was worried about salt. I knew I was going to need salt, and soon, or I would be in trouble. The salt tablets were in the other pack, idiot. And I was hungry, though I pushed that out of my mind at this point. Salt and water. I checked the water bladder. Still good, just under a litre.

An option was to shoot a roo and get some of its liver into me and possibly even a drink of blood. Are there any parasites in roo blood? I was sure not but figured even if there were I would see a doctor when I got back and get checked. But after twenty minutes I was feeling a lot better and got going again. Mind you the knees and calves, bruised from the bike fall, had stiffened up. It took a hundred metres to loosen them.

500ml of water later and an hour further up the track across open country and no shade to speak of. I took another break. Maybe half an hour this time. It was perfect. I found some shade and thought of Noel Coward and mad dogs and Englishmen. I need to be added to that list. I nodded off after checking the water again and making sure napping was not symptomatic of heat stress.  I start to double guess myself when I worry about how subjective my assessment really is. The bush around me is very active. I watch a kookaburra chasing lizards and parrots fussing over a nest. I nod off for a short period, figuring the worst case scenario will be to wait until this oven sun has dropped and I can walk in the evening, or in a worse case scenario, at night. It crosses my mind that our water cache that we had set up earlier is not in the best position – I start to dread the prospect of a stiff uphill climb to reach it. I wake to discover the ants have found my open wounds. There is a burning sensation as they chew away. I leave them alone and drift off.

I am woken by the sound of a Massey Ferguson tractor. Franko to the rescue? Not quite. I have walked to within 200 metres or so of an intersection which takes Franko up the hill with some of his New Year guests for a shoot. I trudge up hill to where they are shooting cans and guzzle whatever water I can.  It takes a few hours more before I start to feel not so dehydrated.  Its been a long time since I have been forced to think ‘survival’ but that was what today proved to be all about. Assessing risks. Weighing options. Creating solutions. Staying in control.

“Righteo”.

I fired up the motor bike and headed off, up a track that was less track and more scrub in most places. I puttered along for a few clicks. It’s spectacular country and every now and then the early morning sun caught the Gulf waters in the far distance. Up and down and round about and then I found myself in a creek bed with three kangaroos pulling themselves out of their nest of loose dirt and shifting away through the native pines. I’m enjoying those. The pines that is. They are perfectly shaped and petite in a strange sort of way. I lose the kangaroos but am not perturbed about that.  While the new owner of this block wants them cleared off it’s the goats that have the priority. And there is plenty of sign of goat. Their tracks are everywhere and I have been travelling in and out of their scent for half an hour now. Okay, scent is probably not the right word. Goats are inclined to pong.

By now the morning freshness has burned off in the oven of a day. The sky is a brilliant azure and the heat is beating back off the rocks that make up the banks of this creek. (Later I learn we are at forty degrees. It certainly felt like it). I step up the bank and look at the opposite ridge. I can see there is a goat track coming straight down the hill to where I am standing. And there it is, the faintest hint of a goat bleat carried on the breeze, but coming from behind me. I pause and turn my head in that direction. I can see a rocky bluff nearly a kilometer away. It looks like perfect goat country. But are they up there? Do I lug myself up there in this heat to chase something I might have been imagining?  I come down off the bank, re-cross the creek and start a slow plod up a spur, heading in the general direction. Then I hear it again. Another bleat. But I am at the mouth of a large gully, closed in by scrub and pine. They could be anywhere.

I decide to push up the left spur. The weakness of my position is twofold  – I am on low ground and the wind is on my back. If there are goats out there in those rocks heading up the left spur might be indirect but it will push the wind  onto my right shoulder. The bush closes in and I am pushing through pine and scrub and a million black boys that  stab me as I pass. I am amazed at how many tracks I am crossing but I have not heard any more bleating. I walk carefully, trying to not crash through in case goats are nearby. I roll my feet into the litter to reduce the possibility of a cracked twig, and step onto and off rather than over logs – all the while very conscious of the possibility of a snake bite. A bite out here will undo me – there is no way I could get to a doctor from here if a brown snake grabbed me. At one point I look across the rolling ridges and know that a bite out here would not only be fatal but there would be little prospect of someone finding my remains. Suddenly I can see the rocky spur at the head of the gully. It’s about 600 metres away and another 500 feet up (I still mix my metric with the imperial – I can visualize height in feet better than in metres). It looks like ideal goat country and sure enough, as I catch my breath and gaze across the rock line I catch the slightest movement. Up comes the scope, dialed out for maximum advantage and there she is. Tan coloured and moving down the rock line with another black and white one in tow. As I watch they bleat and the sound carries to me very clearly. And then somewhere in front of me I hear another bleat. Two mobs? I hate taking my eye off the ones I can see – I have learned the hard way that these beasts are very elusive the moment you lose sight of them. You think they will reappear on another ridge but they don’t. They vanish into thin air.

But the prospect of a mob in front of me changes that. I climb as quickly as I can as quietly as I can to get height. Height is advantage, every time. I bend down to wriggle under a bush and find myself on a goat track, with very fresh droppings. I pick them up and take a sniff. It’s moist. Only an hour old at the most in this heat. But there is no hint as to whether they are off to the left or to the right. Have I missed them?  I take a punt and turn right. That will take me up to the head of the gully in any event. A  kangaroo climbs out of his bed in front of me and moves off ten meres and stops. He is not spooked which is good – if there are goats around their startled flight can galvanise the goats into action as well. I stand like a stork for a minute waiting to see what the roo will do, foot hanging in mid step. I wait and so does the roo. So I quietly push on. I look over my shoulder and the roo is still poised at polite attention watching me. Then the bleat, directly in front of me, on the same goat track I am on is my guess. I drop to my knee and prop by a small sapling. The bleating continues and suddenly there it is, meandering along the track, breaking cover only twenty five metres away. I close the bolt and sight up the picture waiting for more to appear. A second goat ambles into the picture. Are there any more? Are there another four or six or ten just out of sight? I can’t tell. I squeeze off  a round and the first one drops, then rolls down the hill. The sound of the round rolls around and down the hills, hammering off the rocks and echoing from every point possible. The second goat jumps uphill (clever girl) and disappears. I hold my position and sight picture and she steps back into it, watching her mate rolling to a stop. I squeeze the trigger again. Nothing.

It is more than twenty years since I fired a semi automatic rifle but that military drill has counted for something. Somehow I was expected a self loading experience. Idiot. I quickly chamber a round without dropping the rifle from my eye. The goat is still standing there looking downhill, presenting a classic heart-lung profile. I squeeze off the second round and the booming echoing crash is far better than the empty pull of the trigger of a few seconds earlier.  When everything settles down I hear a bleat from off the rocks, only four hundred metres or so away now.  The second group are moving.

But that rock ledge is still above me. I scope the ridge and watch two or three goats moving away from me and out of sight. Do I go after them? I figure I have come this far I might as well push on but the deciding factor is my perception that these animals might have heard the shots but are not spooked. They did not look like they were in any hurry to get out of the way. But they are now out of sight and rule of thumb says, once out of sight I have Buckleys and Nunn of finding them. It’s vast country and there is plenty off space for them to hide. But I push on and climb straight up. Or that is what I want at least. There is a lot of fallen timber and I have to make a conscious effort to push my way upwards., even when it means backtracking a bit. The easy option is to allow fallen timber to push you downhill but very quickly you can lose any height you have gained. As I clamber up a rock wall, covered in goat droppings and hair I hear the quick “thud thud” of a roo warning something is amiss. I pause but can’t see it. But I can’t see the goats either. Worse, their bleating has stopped. Are they miles away now? I hope not. I scramble to the top of the ridge. By now the wind is coming across my shoulder. There is little chance the goats will smell me coming. I walk to a point where I had last seen the goats. I can hear nothing. But there is a spectacular view out over the gulf and I grab the camera and start taking some photos. I am very happy with this consolation prize. Then I hear a bleat. It’s very close.

I grab my rifle and a pocket full of ammo then peer over the rock ledge. There below me are two goats, one on point duty, looking out for the rest of the mob. She is in shade and peering down the gully through which I have just climbed. The wind is in my face and it’s I, not them, getting a face full of pong. I had expected to find them at some distance so had adjusted the scope accordingly. I had the presence of mind to adjust for point black shooting and started with the lookout. As expected the first shot had the whole mob stand up out of their nests but in this country the crashing boom would only confuse them. And confused they were. To my advantage. But I was sniping them through a fissure in the rock and was pretty much invisible to them. I kept my head down until done so I was not giving away any advantage I had worked so hard to attain. (Mind you I did check a few times where the rounds were going, the last thing I needed was a round splatting me in the face).

It was a two hour stalk which started with a bleat and finished with a chorus of them.

To be fair it is the 29^th of December and many businesses, if not most, will be closed. But even the pigeons are in go-slow mode. They don’t stand or fly but sit. Sit! I step over one, then another. They are too stuffed or hungover or something to even bother to move. I am intrigued and walk between another two. They cock their heads to watch but don’t shift a feather. So even the Adelaide pigeons are on holiday. I buy a coffee and sit in the street checking email and fighting the urge to do some work. The first group of people who walk past are five women who were on the flight over from Sydney. Maybe only visitors are out and about at this time. But the post office bells chime out the time and tell me it is nine o’clock. So where is everyone else?

But the languid stillness is nice. It’s taken the last year at SIMaid for me to slow down a bit and to enjoy not being in a rush or to sate the urge to be doing. Then again there is that manuscript in my bag that needs editing and the bus is still two hours away.  Red pen out.

My interest in Tintin was rekindled  a few years ago when I was in Brussels and found he and his dog larger than life running around the side of a building, and Captain Haddock about to descend some stairs.  Mind you I kept bumping into Lucky Luke and Asterix and friends as well. The Belgians celebrate their cartoonists by painting vast and numerous murals of their characters on various buildings. And I was particularly susceptible to the advertising for the new movie which I saw last night. If you can be dragged out of the story (which is cleverly preceded by a short story in the credits) allow yourself to be distracted by the amazing artwork and “camera work”. The whole thing is animated animation – done so well that every now and then you have to remind yourself that “it’s a cartoon” when something looks a little too improbable. I think I need to see it again to catch more of what was going on. Because you know, in all the adventures of Tintin, and in all the years I have read his stories, and despite meeting him in Brussels, it has never occurred to me until I saw this movie, that he has no love interest. Other than buxom matrons whose singing shatters glass there are no girls!  Which I guess is entirely appropriate given that youthful holiday expectation of mine, for that was illusory too.

I am daily grateful that my bed is feather down even though it’s not my own, it’s a gift. And I am especially reminded of that each Christmas. Merry Christmas. Embrace the gift. And then live like you have received it – with compassion, gratefulness and grace.

A condensed amalgam of a number of conversations on Saturday afternoon…

“Let’s pitch here.”

“Ah, let’s not, if it rains we will get flooded out. Actually, when it rains…”

There’s nowhere else flat enough.”

“Drop yer pack, lets have a look.”

“How about here?”

“Look up.”

“What?”

“What happens if one of those drops on you?”

“Oh I see.” Slight pause. “What drops?”

“Those limbs. Stringybarks don’t tend to but those things there can drop branches.”

“How about here?”

“What’s coming off that rock if it rains?”

“Ahhh….”

“Heaps of water heading for your sleeping bag.”

“Oh. Well maybe there. That looks clear.”

“Uhuh, well spotted. Nothing overhead, a good start. Kick the ground.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Dig into it with your heel”

“Uh, I can’t. Too rocky.”

“Exactly. Let’s keep looking.”

“Well where then? There is nowhere that looks like it will work.”

“How about there?”

“Nowhere to put up tents.”

“What if we do a bit of weeding?”

“Huh?”

“Look, we can drop a fire in that pit there, get a tent up over there, hang the tarp there… The soil is nice and sandy, weeds should come out easy, and the water drain away.”

“Pit?”

“Yeah, under those weeds there. See?”

“If you say so.”

“I do. Start weeding. Mind the spikes on those rushes.”

“But there is nowhere for the tent. We need to site that somewhere else.”

“How about the ground under those weeds there.”

“Really?”

“Sure, watch this…”

“Oh, they do come out easy.”

“Uh-huh. And when we are done we will have plenty of space. Just make sure that nylon is a good distance from the fire. Oi, how come we have greenery in the fire place?”

An hour and a half later, sitting by the fire, logs cut and shifted in for seats, an evening worth of firewood collected, tents up, tarp stretched taut, first water starting to simmer…

“Hey, this site is really cool.”

“And dry?!”

“Ah yes, and dry.”

(A great team effort turning wilderness into home for the night).

What a disaster of a trip. I was an emotional wreck most of the way, taking wrong turns and missing street signs. Get a grip, get a grip. But it sneaks up quietly and shoots you from behind when you are least expecting it. I could figure getting emotional when I met him but here it was in anticipation. I should know by now there is nothing rational about any of this. Get a grip.  But by the time I had parked some of the fragility had worked itself out though there were some short catches of breath as I ferreted around looking for the ward. Down the hall, past the nurses station, rising expectation. Room looms into view, emotions nicely in check and,… And then he wasn’t there!  Is that him in the play area? I carefully scrutinise the faces of the kids, Twice. Thrice,  And again. No. None of them. A cleaner suggested they were in a bathroom somewhere so I wandered into a sun room to wait a few minutes. Then I drifted back towards his room. And suddenly a woman was standing in front of me and we were both lost for words. A long pause, queried names and an emotional hug with both of us trying to be composed. We did a reasonable job. I think. Then she invited me to meet Ryan.

And boom, there he was, in a wheel chair, head braced up but as tousle haired and brown eyed as I remembered him. Funny what your mind does. “Yup, that’s him, recognize that jaw” came straight to mind. Yet that was not really what I thought I would remember.  And he of course was just the tonic I needed – not because I could see he was well but because he had no idea who I was. In fact I was probably just another suit of which he had seen plenty over the last few days.  We were left alone for a few minutes (I appreciated that trust) but we had little to say to each other, both as shy as each other. He had a photo album and so we spoke about him and his mate and camping and a friend’s car. Just the sort of conversation you might have with a three year old. Aha, yes, when I first met him he was three but on the 12^th he celebrated his fourth birthday. He loosened up and chatted away to himself and eventually was not too perturbed by this stranger. His ambivalence to me, his focus on his photos (and then on his sticker book about Space) nicely took all the potential sting out of the visit. He was his own best tonic. He is the injured one yet here he was healing me.

Over the next couple of hours the story was filled in somewhat. Turns out they had taken a wrong turn that day and had no intention of being at that spot at all. Funny how life can turn these things up for you. Ryan’s recovery had been relatively slow up until two or three days ago when something triggered rapid and dramatic progress. From not being communicative a short time ago he is  now chatting and laughing and singing and being cheeky and delightful and being well, just a normal four year old boy. He wears under his T-shirt a hard plastic shell  which wraps around his torso and his neck and encapsulates the back of his neck and head.  He makes no complaint about this stricture but seems to understand its importance. He has worked out how to get from his wheelchair to his bed and how to lie down without any of the floppy flexibility a four year old usually needs when going to bed.   There is still the shadow of bruising in his face but he is bright eyed and beaming and glowing with life. The medical staff are worried there is brain damage which they still need to monitor but he is in a state where they are okay with him going home for the night. While I am chatting with his mother he heads for bed for a nap  – out of his wheel chair and onto bed, encumbered by his brace which prevents him from just flopping down and curling up.  But he relaxes as best he can and we chat on while he watches a cartoon and slows down.

We talk “damage” and relive the possibilities of what might have gone wrong.  I am mildly surprised to learn his skull is in fact undamaged. I know what broken skulls feel like (will spare you the gory “how”) so I wonder now what I felt on that side of his head.  But the most gratifying news is to hear that his neck was in fact broken as badly as I suspected. Before you wonder at my perverseness the gratitude is grounded in the need to understand that my assessment-at-a-glance was on the money. That when I peered into that wreck I had made the correct call and had responded appropriately, including my directives leveled at those others around the car who were trying to help. That my advice to the police, ambos and the two doctors was correct. That the firm locking of his skull against the little finger of my left hand which also carried the weight of his head was in fact what was needed. That I hadn’t dreamed up any nonsense about what went on in that car. That my response was appropriate. That my judgment and actions were sound. Not heroic, or clever, or brave or any of the other things kind hearted folk have tried to tell me and which I resist. Just sound.  It transpires that the hospital wants to create a case study out of Ryan as an example of how to handle a C1 break and yet have him facing down a perfectly normal life four weeks later.  I am gobsmacked but too embarrassed to ask if that will include my ten minutes in the car. But even if not, it’s enough to know he survived thanks to what I did and that what I did was sound. I hear myself introduced to nurses and others as “the guy who saved Ryan’s life” but that is not really me.  Actually I am not so comfortable with that description and am not sure how to react to it really. I can hear a counselor ask how I feel about the label, me saying I don’t know. Other people save lives, I don’t.  Its tough to make the connection between handling his bloody little head and seeing him curled up on the bed, video screen reflected off  his face. Somehow it’s more than enough to know he is in one piece and is looking forward to going home and being a little boy again.

And that’s what its about. His mum hopes he will grow up to be a good citizen especially given he has had this second chance. I can’t disagree with that. I hope he grows up to be a man of character, reflecting the impish ratbag that is in him now, that he never loses his quirky sense of mimicry humour, that he loves his family then as he does now. That he never loses that glint in his eye. And I hope that maybe, just maybe I can be part of the journey, even if only watching from the sidelines.

We depart with hugs. His mother is an amazing woman – generous and kind to a fault. We start strangers, and depart having shared parts of our hearts we would not usually reveal to strangers. The emotion catches up with me as I walk the corridors of the hospital and I nearly collide with staff, stumble on the stairs and stop to catch my breath. I am shot in the back a few times driving to the office, overwhelmed by all I have just seen and heard. But this time it’s a feeling laced with relief and gratitude, the latter to a creator who has spared a life. And spared it for the blessing of us all, even and especially through all this madness.

The sun heaves into a pristine Sydney sky lighting up a glittering spring day. I drive  with a weight off my mind. It’s a new day full  of new beginnings. New hope. New gladness. New opportunities.  New starts. All under the hand of an old God who renews us every day even though we don’t deserve it.

Postscript (and likely final note) to:

Aftermath (5)

Self Diagnosis is a Dodgy Business (4)

Cheek By Jowl (3)

Knot in My Stomach (2)

Blood in My Mouth (1)

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-

dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Follows related entries to this accident  Self Diagnosis is a Dodgy Business, Cheek By Jowl, Knot in My Stomach, and Blood in my Mouth