Chapter 4: POWERING ON
Wujal Wujal to Julatten
It was still the silver-grey light of dawn when I found myself facing a 50-metre causeway across the Bloomfield. The water rushed fast and deep: it looked like the opening of floodgates on a major weir. I felt incapable of judging if it was safe to cross. The donkeys didn’t seem fazed by it but I tethered them nearby so they could get used to it while I ran back to the Walker house to see if anyone was up yet.
Rainess greeted me from the veranda looking as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. The young man unhesitatingly offered to accompany me to the river. It was fine to cross he said. As we approached the riverbank Rainess trailed us in case the donkeys were as nervous as I was about wading through the raging torrent. But the donkeys had no problems at all. Despite the incredible force of deep rushing water, they pranced easily across the solid concrete floor. The crossing was a much bigger deal for me as I fought through pounding, gushing water nearly to my waist. My saving grace was that, being a causeway, the force of the water was constant all the way across, allowing me lean into it. I was grateful too for Rainess walking behind us.
At seven o’clock I thanked Rainess and left the river to commence a steady uphill climb. All day we ascended through lush, tropical rainforest growing right up to the gravel roadway. I was in heaven; the beauty of the forest was surpassed only by the many picturesque creeks we crossed.
I thought of my therapist’s response to my plan to do this trek. At first he laughed, “Walk the length of Queensland with two donkeys! What an amazing idea.”
Barry’s face then became serious as he looked straight into my eyes. He spoke slowly, as if beginning a long story, “I once had a very wise therapist who said… it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
At the time I laughed and cried to recognise the truth of what this trek might mean for me.
The first suitable campsite appeared mid-afternoon. It was near Meelmele Creek which, from my reading of the map, was about halfway between the Bloomfield River and Cape Tribulation. The Coast Road was not marked on my 1980 1:100,000 map, but I presumed we’d reached the Cowrie ridge, the first of the two ranges. This would put the hardest behind us.
I didn’t bother pitching the tent, in order to break camp quickly and leave at first light. We crossed the creek and rounded a bend to find a sign announcing the start of Cowrie Range. So much for hoping we’d covered the hardest part! I could now see that the road continued up, up, forever upward, Donovan Range as yet nowhere in sight. Grinding uphill for two hours got us to the top of Cowrie Range where we enjoyed a kilometre or so of an undulating ridge.
The other side of the Cowrie was so steep that long sections had been concreted to enable four-wheel drive access. I later learned that the road had been made by a bulldozer going straight up and over Donovan Range, then again up and over the Cowrie with no thoughts of engineering. It happened in the early ‘80s during demonstrations against a road being put through the Daintree: a drunken ‘dozer driver had gone out in the middle of the night and cut it through the forest, up, over and down the Ranges.
These concrete slopes were nightmarish for my donkeys as their hard little hooves were inclined to slip on the smooth concrete. They could not ‘sit back’ into the steep downhill slope as they would on sand or grassy soil. Heavily loaded they needed all their strength to keep from falling forward, such that the ensuing uphill climb, although extremely steep, came as a relief. Downhill the other side of the Donovan was also concreted and sloped relentlessly for a descent of 800 metres in elevation. There was no way of avoiding the hard surface as it was sandwiched between thick rainforest trying its darnedest to straddle the concrete intrusion.
Eventually we were down from the ranges and traipsing a dirt road cut through jungle in flat river country. There were lots of wide river crossings (called ‘creeks’ by locals, but rivers to me). The water was mostly quite shallow, but the donkeys’ legs were so shaky from all the steep concrete that even small river stones were treacherous. Every crossing became slower than the last.
At three o’clock we were still ten kilometres and two major river crossings from our destination. I had been warned that there was nowhere to camp after Meelmele Creek because the rainforest came right to the edge of the roadway; hence no option to stop before Cape Tribulation.
Our progress was made even slower by the amount of traffic on the road, mostly tourists in hired four-wheel drive vehicles. Almost every driver stopped to speak to me. Being conspicuous like this was not something I had anticipated.
I was once flattered when my gregarious sister commented that she liked the way I dressed, “Kind of elegant,” she said, “like me”.
“Ha,” I smiled, “But for different reasons. You dress with great flair so you’ll be noticed. I dress conservatively so I won’t be noticed.”
She laughed, “How true!”
I had not thought about this for years until a month into the trek, talking on the telephone with my daughter Cassie. She asked if people took photos of us.
“Oh yes!” I replied. “All the time. It wasn’t something I’d expected because, you know how I hate being conspicuous in public, well turns out travelling with two donkeys like this attracts attention.”
“Well, duh, Mum!” (Yes, I suppose it should have been obvious.)
Some passers-by just commented that they’d never seen anybody doing this before. Others asked lots of questions like, “Where are you going?” or “Where have you come from?” both of which I found hard to answer. They were the sort of profound questions that Richard Bach in Illusions suggests we should keep asking ourselves, because the answers will keep changing on our journey through life. On my trek the answers depended on perspective. Were we talking about my ultimate destination or where I might camp tonight? And where have I come from; today, or last week? Or where I call home (itself problematic at this stage of my journey)?
My most difficult question however was, “Why are you doing this?” The simple answer was: It’s my pilgrimage from 40 years of married life to living alone. But this was too deep and too personal to share with passers-by. I was also afraid it risked the further question as to why I would want to live alone at my age; anyway, I was still coming to grips with this myself. I never knew what to say when people asked the why trek question.
At half past four, six to seven kilometres to Cape Tribulation, we reached the last crossing. It was a couple of notches more difficult than the previous river; wider, deeper with bigger, rounder, river stones. The donkeys really did not want to do this! As usual I unclipped Charley so she could make her own way while I crossed with Grace. Even if Charley is not keen, once Grace is across, she quickly gets her act together so as not to be left behind. This time Charley decided the crossing was way too hard. She started walking back the way we’d come, amazingly briskly for her tired state.
I hurriedly tied Grace beside the river and ran back for Charley before she rounded the bend and out of sight of the river. Was she thinking, If I can’t see Grace has crossed the river, I won’t have to follow? At that moment (wouldn’t you know it?!) a vehicle approached in the same direction that Charley was heading. A car coming up behind her would only hurry her in the wrong direction, so I flagged the driver down to ask her to wait a moment. When I returned with Charley, the driver asked if she could help. Rather than a tourist, she looked like a local woman in good clothes for an evening out. I replied that she probably wasn’t dressed for it.
“Oh I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m only visiting my mother for Mothers’ Day. What do you need?”
I had no idea it was Mothers’ Day. Whether it was a surge of missing my children, gratitude or sheer tiredness, tears welled as I explained how she could help. The woman looked very beautiful wading through the river in her long silk pants, encouraging Grace to the other bank. This time Charley kept up with us.