I decided to ask the group if they would help by continuing to walk with us so we could make it to Cape Tribulation before dark. The young people did this very willingly, clearly intrigued by the novelty. One of them led Grace and another led Charley while the third guy and I walked behind from where I could make sure the donkeys were not being pushed too fast in their exhausted condition.
We arrived at Cape Tribulation with dusk thoroughly upon us. The first accommodation had nowhere for the donkeys, but the receptionist rang ahead to another place with a paddock, called Farmstay. It was two kilometres down the road and the three tourists walked with us the rest of the way. It seemed that my two worn out donkeys were now as glad as I was for the company.
At Farmstay I was shown to a cosy looking cabin that in the moonlight emerged prettily nestled amidst rainforest. It had a lovely big veranda for storing my gear which the kindly proprietor helped unload. She also waited while I cleaned the donkeys’ hooves then showed us by torchlight to the paddock where my two staunch and courageous animals could finally eat and rest. No wonder we were shattered. We had walked practically non-stop for more than 12 hours through mostly difficult conditions, the one short rest so long ago I could barely remember it.
This was a delightful spot for a much-needed 2-day break, with loads of fresh fruit from Farmstay’s 30-acre orchard of weird and wonderful tropical fruits. In the morning, after visiting the donkeys with a piece each, I settled myself on the cabin veranda to munch on fruit, drink cups of tea, read, then write in my journal. Reading was an indulgence that would cease once I finished the third of three books I’d packed, but keeping a journal was fully part of the adventure.
During our first week on the road I had encountered enough challenges to feel reassured: two days on bitumen, the donkeys’ first encounter with motor cyclists and an echoing concrete bridge, crocodile potential, my prejudice exposed (first of many), miracle accommodation appearing when finishing too late to find a place to camp, savage dogs, finding an alternative route to avoid the muddy CREB Track and a long, hard day. I felt quietly confident about my new life as a single woman. The last time I remember feeling this sort of confidence was when I had four young children; smoothly running the household and organising the almost weekly, overnight bushwalking adventures that Lloyd and I so loved.
We discovered our mutual passion for bushwalking very soon after I left my first husband in New Guinea to live with Lloyd in Brisbane. I had fallen head-over-heels in love with this man despite being married with two young children. After two years of inner struggle I had finally found the wherewithal to leave my marriage. It was 1971, an era when the importance of fathering was mostly not understood (especially by moi). My arrangement with the children’s father was that they would visit him in New Guinea just once a year and he could see them whenever he happened to be in Australia. Very loose I know, but we pretty much stuck to this over the years and never had any hassles over the children. (Later, when my two babies with Lloyd arrived, my son Scott refused to visit his biological father unless his little brother came too. By then my first husband had married again so, for a few years, he and his wife had all four of my children for their annual week-long visit.)
My children’s first trip, however, I felt should be sooner rather than later. We had only been in Brisbane a month when they travelled to New Guinea in the care of an air hostess, for a week with their father. Lloyd and I took this opportunity for a weekend away (our ‘honeymoon’ if you like). We stayed at a guest house in Queensland’s Gold Coast hinterland, Springbrook National Park, preserve of rainforest and eucalypt forest. On the Sunday morning we drove to a place with a view of the cliffs, waterfalls and forest below. We could also see the ocean. I spotted a sign saying Nine miles return to the bottom of the largest waterfall.
When I suggested walking to the falls for lunch, Lloyd looked horrified. “What? Nine miles! That’s a long walk.”
“Yes, but it’ll be beautiful, won’t it?”
Off we set, our picnic lunch and thermos flask stuffed into a shopping bag that we agreed to take turns to carry. We were both in agreement, by the time we got back to the car, that rucksacks were essential. No sooner had 4-year-old Ava and 2-year-old Scott arrived home from their week away than they were off on their first bushwalk. Thereafter, weekend bushwalks became an important part of our family life. It was not long before Ava and Scott would happily do 12 or 15 kilometres in a day on good tracks, between interludes of riding on Lloyd’s shoulders and a nice long break for lunch.
On Sundays, we would be up by six, sitting down to breakfast by half past and out the door well before eight. With the children Lloyd and I were each carrying a load for two rather than one. Where to buy good backpacks that wouldn’t rub too badly? And is there any way of taking some of the weight off the shoulders? (In those days the answer was no.) And what sort of water bottles don’t break or leak when crammed into a pack?
We had been in Brisbane 12 months when Lloyd accepted a promotion that took us to our home city of Melbourne. We joined the old, established (then somewhat male-dominated) Melbourne Bushwalkers’ Club. In Victoria, bushwalking was much more rugged than the nicely graded and maintained National Park tracks of South East Queensland; we upgraded our expectations of adventure and of ourselves.
Questions we’d never thought to ask came thick and fast. Where to buy lightweight sleeping bags, tents, cooking pots, stove, etc? How to find good bushwalking areas and tracks? Where to find topographical maps? What sort of raincoats keep you dry in wet conditions without bathing the body in perspiration when walking up a steep slope? How to have a comfortable night’s sleep on the ground with no pillow and in the days before closed-cell foam or (later, and better still) self-inflating sleeping mats? What’s the minimum clothing for alpine country where the weather can change from blazing sun to freezing blizzard conditions in less than half an hour?
Lloyd and I walked with the club until we’d learned enough to go it alone (with the children). We had all the lightweight gear needed for overnight walks and were keen to go on as many family expeditions as possible. We continued pushing ourselves to enjoy as much bushwalking as feasible with Ava not yet six, Scott just four and me now pregnant.
By this time we had wed and had what felt to me like a fairy tale marriage. I was an eldest girl who had been left to care for her siblings every night of the week from the time I was nine years old until my mid-teens. Inside I felt like a boring little drudge with too much responsibility, appreciated by no-one and always at someone’s beck and call. Marrying Lloyd transformed me into a beautiful, adored fairy tale princess in her own castle. The prince was handsome too, with intense deep blue eyes and an engaging smile. Lloyd had an underlying commanding manner that inspired confidence in his ability to take charge of any situation, mundane or critical. And like my mother, he could turn his hand to anything. Lloyd also enjoyed being involved in a smooth-running household where the children’s needs came first (neither of which was at all like my mother). It was a wonderful relief to no longer feel as if everyone depended on me, and me alone.
The man I’d fallen in love with was different from any man I’d ever known: capable, kind and considerate. In his job as a sales representative, Lloyd was conscientious and highly motivated. I found it truly remarkable how after work, he helped with all the things that needed to be done in the often hectic period at the end of the day with young children. He would run the bath for them, set the table, help cut up vegetables, all without prompting from me. This was amazing; I’d never seen a man do things like that. And being continually acknowledged by Lloyd as a beautiful woman and good mother was all I needed to make me utterly, perfectly happy. I felt loved and appreciated for who I was.
Enter Marcus. Our new son, Marcus, was the gift to end all gifts; life couldn’t possibly get any better. My other two children, from the time of their birth, had been ‘my’ children. In my heart I didn’t truly recognise that they were also of their father’s seed and blood. But Marcus was ‘our’ child, the child born of an intensely romantic love