It is almost dark by the time I get up and along to this little patch of sand by the water. I’ve made it.
Pack off. Hat, clothes off. Jump in. The water feels very good, but I don’t linger. Out. Firewood. Small fire, small meal. I cook and eat lying down. I fall asleep a few times, spoon in mouth. I grab the dictaphone, rest it on my chest, and tell you about my day and a half. The dictaphone is voice activated and stops recording if I stop talking, if I fall asleep.
I am out for nine days, and I will talk to you each day. That will be my letter to you, my friend, my car driving friend.
SATURDAY APRIL 2ND, 2005
If Australia’s Top End – the squarish top of the continent, bounded by the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea, not the pointy Cape York to the east – is an old breadboard, buckled and gouged but still basically flat, then the Arnhem Land Plateau is an old rough-hewn slice of bread lying in its middle. The escarpment is the golden brown crust standing perpendicular to the breadboard.
Geologists tell us a story of a long, long time. First, the erosion of mountains, the sediments flowing down rivers and settling on the ocean floor in layers kilometres deep, and over time being compressed and compacted by the ocean above it into stratified sandstone. Sea levels change. One afternoon, earthquake yanks the plateau up a few hundred metres. And then, over a long time, the plateau is eaten away by water, wind and sun. At one stage ocean waves are crashing against the escarpment.
Aboriginal people tell different stories, but they are always stories of a long, long time.
The first Europeans to come this way had a story about God making the universe in six days about six thousand years ago.
I wake at dawn stiff and sore and I don’t want to get up. If you are walking in this climate it is a very good idea to get up at first light and walk as much as you can early, before the crazy heat, but this morning I linger, sleeping some more and then walking about stretching, scratching and shaking my head, looking about me.
I’d slept on a patch of sand at the bottom of a wide gorge, a minute’s hop up from where this creek – let’s call it First Night Creek – falls off the Arnhem Land Plateau. It goes through a series of waterfalls and a gorge, then is out across the plain and joining the bigger creek to the north. I am eighty metres above the plain and I can see a section of it to the north-east, out to where I was yesterday. I work out where the highway would be, then I turn my back on it and pick up my pack and walk upstream.
I follow the creek for half an hour. I make good progress on the rock shelves that dominate the banks, breaking my stride for the occasional rock hopping or for the few little climbs that are necessary. I keep glancing over to the hillside on my left – to the east – because that is where I’m going. When the creek turns to the west it is time to leave it.
I have a quick swim in the shallow pool at the bend. I have not seen the sun yet, but I was wet with sweat after walking a minute. I drink as I swim, and fill up two of my three water bottles. I swing my pack from the ground to my shoulders, and with that momentum I head for the hill.
For twenty minutes I push across flat open woodland, following wallaby tracks through the long grass, then another twenty hauling up the stony ridge before me. Then I am standing on the top, breathing hard, basking in the view and the first rays of sun. I drop my pack and get out a bottle and drink. Then I get out my map, and I climb with it onto a little rocky peak nearby where I get a panoramic view.
I use 1:50000 topographic maps. Each map covers an area of twenty seven kilometres by twenty seven kilometres and has a grid of black lines two centimetres apart marking out square kilometres. They are big maps, and I keep them folded into a handy size, the area I’m working with on top. Blue lines mark water. Brown lines mark altitude contours at ten metre intervals, so brown lines close together indicate a steep slope. Dark green indicates the occasional ‘dense vegetation’, with light green for the rest. Splotches of brown on top of the green indicate ‘distorted surface’, corresponding roughly to what we call ‘stone country’: country dominated by stone.
To the south and south-west lies the flat, long, broad valley I’ve just left, its floor one hundred and sixty metres above sea level, and it is the first tier, bordered definitively by the second tier another hundred metres higher. I’m on that second tier now, and its warped and weathered demeanour stretches before me to the east.
The map is useful in some ways but not in others. It tells me the ‘distorted surface’ starts a couple of kilometres away, but the immediate east of this ridge is definitely stone country. It tells me there is a little creek running north several hundred metres away, fringed by ‘dense vegetation’. What it doesn’t tell me – what wasn’t picked up by the aerial photography the maps are derived from –- is that the creek lies at the bottom of a narrow gorge that has vertical, unclimbable, fifty metre walls; the camera was fooled by the gorge’s narrowness and by the height of the rainforest towering within it. But I’ve been there and I know how it is, and though I’m wanting to go east I pick up my pack and make my way south-east.
In half an hour I’m veering around the southern edge of that sheer-walled ravine, and soon after I’m at the top of an east-flowing creek. I know this creek, but I’ve never seen it flowing, and I follow it for a kilometre as it tumbles and gains through a series of waterfalls, rapids and pools, then I step out into open skies when it enters the much bigger gorge of the much bigger creek gushing down from right to left. The sun is bathing the top half of the gold-grey ramparts about me, and I stand for a minute and marvel.
There is no name for this creek on the map, and I know no name other than the one my kids and I gave it when we were here. We called it Mama because she is big – a river, really – and because her four big tributaries stretching out across the country upstream are all on one side and they reminded my children, when they saw them on the map, of a litter of feeding puppies. The metaphor doesn’t work perfectly because here the flow goes from the babies to the mother, but my kids didn’t care.
I follow Mama upstream to Dog Leg: a big open bend in the river, with a couple of beaches, broad rock shelves, and caves with paintings. I’ve spent many happy days here over the years. I let my pack slip from my shoulders, hang my sweat-drenched shirt in the sun, put my sunnies in my hat on the ground, and swim. I make a fire and boil the billy while I eat my muesli, looking about me at this familiar place, this magnificent place.
I unfold my map. Further upstream are the blue lines of those four tributaries. I know them all, their gorges, waterfalls, pools, shady beaches and sunny beaches. I place my left hand in the centre of the map and cover Mama’s catchment. My right hand hovers beside it, above the area to my east. Then I get out my other map and join it to the first one. I trace out my intended journey with my finger, making a sweeping loop that covers half of both maps.
I make a big decision now: I will loop clockwise. When I pick up my pack and walk I don’t continue following the gorge further upstream – I would if I was to loop anticlockwise – but instead leave it for a thickly-forested side gorge. I clamber and climb and push my way up its eastern wall, and then I’m on the plateau again, looking down on Mama a hundred metres below me. Then I begin the short cut to Relief Falls.
I’ve walked this four k through stone several times, and I know the landmarks, but I’m mostly in the small stuff, when I can only see fifty metres ahead, and I’m always plotting a path, looking ahead five metres, then ten metres, then thirty metres, then I look for a place to put my foot down carefully under my heavy pack. Each step involves a decision, and it is hard work. The heat becomes more and more intense, and it radiates off rocks, becoming a surreal personality in certain places, and I regret my late start. I stop in shade a few times, and three