The Only Way Home. Liz Byron

roasted buckwheat, dried mixed fruit and powdered whole milk; and to every breakfast I added a tablespoon of sesame seeds for calcium. Breakfast grains (quinoa, amaranth and roasted buckwheat) were cooked as extra with dinner the night before and dried fruit I soaked overnight so that there was no need to cook in the mornings. As usual when purchasing bulk foods it was by weight but, for convenience on the trail, I measured items out by volume. Part of preparing my food plans was to identify for every item, volume per meal vis a vis weight; a major endeavour but well worthwhile.

      I had no intention of touching a computer on my trek and carried enough hard copies to fill in the ‘order’ column for faxing the spreadsheet. All I had to do was count the number of weeks, select the meals for each week, add up the total meals and note the total weight for each item; if an item was out of stock John’s staff could identify an appropriate substitute from the rest of the spreadsheet. Dried vegetables I had purchased separately but these too were stored at Mountain Wholefoods, as were the rather expensive packages of ‘Complete Meals’ for occasions when short of energy or time. The first test of my system was at Mossman. It worked just as I’d hoped, to avoid having to switch out of trekking mode into intellectual activities like working out food lists and shopping for supplies.

      For two days I was busy sorting, packing and trudging backwards and forwards from Mossman showground to the Post Office with large plastic boxes in my arms. I organised consumables for the next 2 to 3 weeks. Once sorted, food was packed into drawstring bags according to categories of breakfast, dinner, lunch or nibbles. Vegemite and other items from my bulk foods box were decanted, the remainder repacked and forwarded to Mount Molloy, my next supply collection point.

      The whole exercise took most of the first two days, so I planned to spend a third day relaxing. That idea went out the window when I arose to find Grace looking miserable and unable to withstand weight on her left leg. I learned from people in and around the showground that the best person to help was David Johnston who lived in the mountains at Julatten, a day’s walk from Mossman. Everyone who mentioned his name said David was a remarkable vet, especially with equines.

      I couldn’t get David to come to Mossman and resorted to the local vet, a young woman fresh out of university who used a special instrument to do the ‘pinch test’ on Grace’s hoof to be sure she didn’t have laminitis. The young vet otherwise didn’t seem any more capable than I was of diagnosing the problem. It was particularly painful for Grace to walk over hard ground. She spent most of her time standing or lying down in one of the covered showground stalls with a thick sandy floor. The vet picked up no clues as to what was wrong. Her best guess was a strain or a sprain and advised at least seven days’ rest to recover.

      My shelter at Mossman Showground stalls was comfortable for three days but for another seven I preferred the convenience of a table and chair. On my first night out of Mossman I was aiming for Julatten where I learned of a caravan park. On hearing of my plight, the owner Ron Hogan said I could have his one and only spare van for five dollars a night. He also organised a local woman to collect us with a float. It all happened so easily I could hardly believe it.

      A notice on the window of Nine Mile Caravan Park office said: Ring the bell for attention. If the office is unattended, find a suitable site and we’ll be back soon. I laughed out loud. The sign said it all: a charming van park with a relaxed energy and appearance, set amongst shady rainforest trees. Ron showed me to an old but comfortable van I could stay in for as long as I wanted; and he had organised a neighbouring paddock for the donkeys. When I’d finished unloading and unpacking —“No hurry, when you’re ready”—he would show the donkeys and me to the paddock. But Grace was worse and I felt the need to have my donkeys close by so I could keep an eye on her.

      Grace’s leg progressively worsened over the next two days. The vet David Johnston was very busy and really hard to get; I kept phoning and leaving messages. On the morning of my third day at Julatten I got a message that David would be here in an hour or so. I burst into tears with relief.

      The vet was a tall, lean man with kind, soft eyes framed by a ruggedly handsome face. People said he was in his 60s but David didn’t look a day over 45. Watching him at work was what I imagined it might be like watching Jesus Christ heal. David asked me to tell him from the beginning where we’d been, what the donkeys had been doing before the symptoms showed and exactly what symptoms I saw. He constantly probed with further questions that found me clarifying most of the detail he needed for diagnosis. I couldn’t imagine a more thorough examination. He turned Grace’s leg this way and that, pressing and prodding various parts of the joints; all the while continuing to ply me with questions. By this time I’d forgotten that when the problem first showed up, hard surfaces were worse for her.

      When eventually this information was elicited in response to his continuous questioning, David straightaway asked, “What does that tell you then about where the problem is?”

      I didn’t know the answer; neither had the young vet in Mossman.

      “The foot,” he said and picked up a little metal hammer with which he tapped delicately on different parts of the underside of her hoof testing for the tiniest reaction.

      As I held my donkey’s hoof, David pointed to the subtlest little movement in a part of her thigh indicating which part of the hoof had reacted to the tap of the hammer. I would never have seen the tiny movement had it not been pointed out to me. He scraped away at exactly this spot on the hoof until he found the way into the problem: a little speck about a millimetre across from which drops of pus oozed when pressed. She had an abscess in the wall of her hoof. I heaved a huge sigh of relief; the problem found, it could be treated.

      I continued to hold her hoof while David treated the abscess at the same time as instructing me—ever so clearly and simply—what he was doing and why. He allowed me to put a couple of drops of my deeply cleansing essential oil into the abscess before squirting pure iodine in it and around the hoof-line. Iodine, he explained, is an excellent antibacterial and drying agent.

      David then poured Epson Salts over the whole of the hoof, sprayed it lightly with disinfectant and explained how wetting the salts activated magnesium, the drawing agent in the crystals. He then covered the whole hoof with several layers of gauze to make the neatest bandage imaginable; just like a little boot. Grace needed to walk around as much as possible to give the abscess a chance to drain, so she also got a painkiller injected into the skin.

      The coup d’etat was in the way David gave an antibiotic injection into the donkey’s large neck muscle (which would hurt). It took my breath away. The place to insert the injection to avoid any veins was a palm-width forward of Grace’s shoulder blade. David then showed me how to use the fingers of both hands to massage the left side of her neck. With his left hand he rubbed the other side of her neck. After removing the needle from the syringe, and while Grace was enjoying her ‘massage’, David used his right hand to insert the needle. He then added the syringe before injecting the warmed medication (that he had given to one of the onlookers to hold for this purpose). Grace didn’t notice a thing!

      David had done his work. He then gave careful and clear instructions about what I must do over the next few days: keep up the pain killers, replace the bandage and give her a second antibiotic injection.

      By the second day after David’s treatment, Grace was limping only very slightly. It looked as if she would be well enough to load again in 2 or 3 days. I could now enjoy a bit of socialising with my Caravan Park neighbours whom I had come to know in the course of the constant stream of sincerely interested enquiries about Grace’s progress.