Red Dawn

I was wondering on Tuesday night why it’s so long since I’ve written one of these emails.  It occurred to me that maybe I’ve been here too long.  That nothing is really new anymore, that my ability to see it as a foreigner has waned.  There have been other signs that this is the case.  I’m able to watch the news now without guffawing at how perochial it is; I understand the rules of rugby league;  this winter seemed long and cold.  

I went to bed on Tuesday wondering if I’d ever write another letter.  Maybe nothing remarkable would ever happen again.

I’ve mentioned before how most of the ‘lakes’ in Australia are in fact dry.  On Tuesday evening, just as I was thinking about how unremarkable this country has become, gale force winds picked up some dust from the Lake Eyre basin seven hundred miles west of here in northern South Australia.  (There is no state called Central Australia so the country’s dead red heart is made up of northern South Australia, southern Northern Territory and eastern West Australia.  No wonder we, sorry they, call it The Red Centre.)  Anyway, the dust picked up by the wind was then sucked 2 miles into the sky by an intense low-pressure system.  The phenomenom continued over the next 24 hours until millions of tonnes (think about that, millions of tonnes) of dust and dirt had been pulled up into the air.  

Dust storms are fairly frequent in the Red Centre and many of them blow into the country towns of western New South Wales.  In places like Mildura and Broken Hill it’s not that unusual to bring in your laundry dirtier than it went out (and trust me, the laundry doesn’t always go out clean out there).  But even by Australian standards, Tuesday night’s dust storm was a big one, the biggest in seventy years in fact.  At its peak it was picking up 140,000 tonnes of dirt an hour, was 250 miles wide and a thousand miles long.  That’s a big red Great Britain floating towards Sydney.  And me, with the windows just done.

Funnily enough, there was a strange smell in the air when I woke up on Wednesday morning.  More like plaster dust than anything and I wondered if next door were having some work done.  

‘Jesus’ said Oliver, who rarely says anything before 11am.  ‘Look at the sky’.

‘It’s a bushfire’ I said, knowingly and rolled over to wait for the alarm.  But if that was a bushfire it was bloody close so I opened my eyes again.  The sky was corner-to-corner orange.  Not quite the red you may have seen in the papers (every photo I saw had had a red filter applied), more a burnt sienna, a glowering and dangerous colour on a scale I’d not seen before.  

Looking closer, awake and somewhat nervy now, I could see it wasn’t the sky that was red, it was the air.  As if nitrogen were suddenly visible and not quite how you’d imagined it.  The radio calmed me down, 24-hour news already hyperbolic and asking people to ring in with their dust storm stories.  (‘Hi, this is Brenda from the northern rivers.  I was scared.  I turned on the radio.  Now it’s fine.’)  I turned off the lights and wondered around the apartment, looking at what orange light does to the world.  Now it was just dust it was strangely comforting, like being in a cocoon on Mars.

It didn’t last of course.  The orange light came not from the red of the dust but from how it defracted the dawn light (the same reason sunrise is often a little red, just normally on the horizon).  By the time I left for the airport the world was just a little frosted, as if I faintly pink fog had settled.  I was on my way to Perth for work and felt assured my flight would be on time.

Wrong.  

Maybe Surry Hills got off likely, maybe the three inches of dirt on my taxi should have been a sign.  I sat at the airport for six hours reading about what was going on outside.  A normal day in Sydney sees 20 micrograms of air pollution per cubic metre.  A bad bushfire might generate 500 micrograms.  On Wednesday concentration levels reached 15,400 micrograms.  Visibility at the airport was 400 metres and even when flights could leave, they had to wait for the planes and crew which had been turned away for the previous six hours.

I heard some people complaining about it.  Isn’t it awful, how annoying (see, I can hear whingeing now) and I just wanted to say: no, it’s wonderful!  What an incredible, remarkable country.  Where else would I ever have seen that?  It’s great living abroad.

Cat Wars

I had been planning to write an email about the dust storm but my current situation is a little more tense.  You can never beat correspondence from the battlefront so this is what you’re getting instead.

 We have two cats.  Nip is a ginger streetfighter with saggy bellies from long ago.  The vet thinks it was a botched abortion but Ginger (as she prefers to be known) doesn’t like to talk about it so we tell everyone she’s got short legs.  Tuck is black and was born in captivity.  He’s a timid pussyboy who never grew up and thinks his balls are living happily on a farm in the countryside somewhere.  

Tuck and Ginge arrived at our place in the city within a week of each other, both rescued from death row at the local dog’s home.  Seriously, charity is hardcore over here and the website is clear that Unless This Cat Finds A Home It Will Die.   Tuck’s too stupid to grasp the concept (his best friend is that little black cat in the mirror) but Ginge is pretty grateful.  She knows how tough it is out on the streets and, whilst she misses the fags and booze, she’s more than happy to stay indoors.

Until now.  

Oliver and I have just bought a place up the coast and in our naivety (oh happy, distant days) we thought we’d just take the cats up at the weekends.  Let them explore slowly and get used to the one-hour journey.  And at first everything went much as we thought: Ginge strode out the front and bullied next door’s dog out of his lunch money whilst Tuck hid in the linen cupboard saying ‘there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home’.  Then, after a few weekends, Tuck too started to explore.

He really is too much of a pussy to go anywhere by himself but Ginger gently led him outdoors and showed him the grass and the pavers and the sky.  And then, we don’t know what, but something happened.  

The best way to describe it is to imagine a feline Hannibal Lecter.  The noises coming out of Ginger’s mouth were bizarre, a deep, long growl akin to caterwauling but much more evil than that.  I managed to grab Tuck before she did and threw her into the house and close the patio door behind her.  Have you ever seen a cat throw itself against glass so it can do you harm?  It’s almost as much fun as holding a cat that thinks its life is in danger.  And by the way, those long red scratches aren’t the ones to worry about.  It’s the little red dots where the claw has gone cleanly into your flesh that you really want to avoid.

She attacked him four more times that day (scratches, red dots etc) until timid little Tuck was a quivering and somewhat patchy ball of fluff.  Our Paul, my lovely vet brother-in-law, took a drunken midnight call to offer his advice.  Mine would have been “Don’t call me at midnight when I’m drunk” but he, and subsequent vets, have shed some light on our situation.  

It’s about domination, territory marking, rules changing as environments change.  Your average marriage basically but with regular fights to the death thrown in.  And, just as with trying to save a marriage, there are a number of things we have to try before we give up and give away.  

So now I’m sitting in our living room with Ginger under an upside-down shopping trolley and Tuck barred from running out of the room.  Their mutual cries of fear and imprisonment are breaking my heart. 

And on that last point, if you’re reading this and thinking ‘For goodness sake, it’s just a cat!’ then I in turn am thinking three things about you.  One: you won’t want to hear when we give up on this option and move onto cat family-counselling (three hours, both owners, both cats) or cat prozac.  Two: you don’t have cats.  Or three: you have children, or may one day have children, and you fail to see that even without them the onset of middle-age is beset by pouring your love into ungrateful, heartbreaking and endlessly-expensive little animals.

It’s a wonderful world.

Sydney 1 Melbourne 0

I can’t do it.  I’ve tried and I’ve tried but I’m sorry, I just can’t.  I know I must be in the wrong because everybody – everybody! – keeps telling me so.  But despite everything I just can’t bring myself to like Melbourne.

I can hear those of you in the know gasping.  Has Ged become so shallow that he’s fallen for the fake and easy charms of Sydney?  Is he such a fan of boardshorts, beer and barby (not Barbie) that he prefers the bottle-blond of the nation’s largest city to the sophisticated allure of it’s cultural capital?  Well, yes.

You see, I think Melbourne looks like Birmingham.  And not even Birmingham now, but Birmingham in the 80’s.  It’s dirty and grey and every so often smells of urine.  I know it’s got the laneways and the funky shops and an apparently endless list of seriously cool bars.  But I have a theory about that.  As Big Andrea once pointed out, only countries with really bad climates are good at interior design.  “If you have to create your own environment you tend to do a good job of it”.  Big Andrea’s like that.  She’s always right.

It’s certainly true Melbourne has a bad climate.  It swelters in the summer for weeks on end of 40 degrees plus (those awful bushfires earlier this year were only an hour or so away), and in the winter it freezes (ski fields only three hours away).  Taxi drivers keep telling me Melbourne is in a drought but every time I’ve ever been there it’s been raining under a concrete sky.  Which reminds me of my favourite Birmingham quote.  “Even if you cleared up the dog shit, it’d still be Birmingham”.  That’s how I feel about Melbourne.

Admittedly, the last few times I’ve been there it has been for work and a long-distance commute does few cities any favours.  The only thing worse than airport-taxi-office-airport is airport-taxi-novotel-office-airport.  But this time I spent an extra day there, hung out with my cousin Millie who took me to best tapas bar I’ve seen outside of Spain and to an exhibition by an amazing artist I’d never heard of.

So I’ll give you the bars and the galleries.  And the cafes.  And the funky little boutiques, the seriously cool graffiti and the different little restaurant every time you go.  It costs $10,000 to open a bar in Victoria, $250,000 in New South Wales and that, until recently, explained the different experience of visiting the two cities.  They get off-the-wall holes-in-the-wall, we get mega-sportsbars.  But didn’t legislation change that last year?  Everyone seems to think so but no one’s quite sure.  Certainly there’s nowhere yet serving alcohol in Sydney that could be described as funky or cool.

But so what?  Even if we’d got Wicked! instead of Priscilla, art instead of Andre Rieu, skiing less than six hours away, the Australian Open, the Grand Prix, Kath & Kim, a half-decent casino, I’d still prefer Sydney.  Walk with me for ten minutes by great rolling ocean, swim out with me in crystalline water, sail on our harbour and tell me there’s any city, anywhere in the world* that has anything to compare.   See.  You can’t.

*South Africa doesn’t count, Brazil’s too violent and Marseille lost its allure years ago.  Always read washing instructions.  Your home may be at risk if you do not keep up payments on a loan taken out against it.

Just another league sex scandal

In a group-sex session between nine huge men and one “immature 19-year-old woman” is each of the men individually responsible for checking he’s not taking part in gang rape?  This is the question which currently divides Australia

Or to be precise: when a woman agrees to have a threesome with two rugby players and six other players turn up and decide they want to take part, at what point does it become rape?  If the woman at first “brags” about the act the next morning, but then later comes to regret it, does that mean it couldn’t have been rape? 

Australia is currently having a mass debate about this issue because the men were all rugby players.  Or rather, because one in particular – one of the original two – is a huge rugby star.  His name is Matthew Johns and he and his brother Joey are NRL royalty.  

The L stands for League, and to get your head around this whole issue you have to understand how big Rugby League is out here.  It’s bigger than football in England, bigger than “football” in the States.  It’s huge.

As are the men who play it.  League is a big violent game where necks and brains are unwelcome diversions from the ferocity of running into and through the only men around as big as you.  The physicality of the game has been used by some academics here to explain the peculiar nature of League sex scandals.  You see, no one is surprised when these unintelligent young men spend the money that is thrown at them on fast cars and alcohol, nor that they attract a certain type of attention.  

But what is surprising is that when these men copulate drunkenly in hotel bedrooms, they tend to do it in each other’s company.  “Personally,” my mate Kurt tells me, “the sight of my best mate’s bum banging up and down would be the biggest turn off in the world”.  Not so for League players.

When Matthew Johns and a “fellow, unnamed player” accompanied a 19-year-old New Zealand woman to her hotel room during a 2002 tour, neither of them thought it strange when their team mates came barging in for a piece of the action.  Or so they say.  The girl (operating under a pseudonym which confounds those claiming she just wants attention) says John’s took her to a taxi later and said “he hoped things hadn’t got too out of hand in there”.  Now why would he think that?

What I find most shocking about this debate is the views of those around me.  Women above all keep telling me “she obviously wanted it”.  Even Kurt, who’s played a bit of rugby in his time, confirms that it’s a difficult issue because there are so many predatory women who’ll follow a tour.  But my favourite quote of the debate is from a player from another team who said “The best way to avoid these scandals is to treat the girl right afterwards, make sure she gets a taxi for example”.

It’s not clear why this story has emerged only now, seven years after the event.  What is clear is that the girl involved blames the events of that night for the collapse of her life.  “If I had a gun I’d kill them all” she says. “I hate them.”

It is doubtful whether she will get an opportunity with a shotgun but she may well have done for the club.  LG have withdrawn their sponsorship of the Cronulla Sharks and the club is suddenly facing bankruptcy.  In the current climate no other sponsor is likely to step in and few expect the club to survive.

With Telstra (our telecom) threatening to withdraw its league-wide sponsorship, the entire sport is looking shakey right now.  Peter Fitzsimmons, everybody’s favourite sports writer, wrote before this scandal broke that “unless NRL can drag itself into the 21^st century its fan-base will desert it and it will die”.  Few expected his words to come true so soon.

David Iredale

In December last year 17-year old David Iredale decided to hike across Mount Solitary in the Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney.  These mountains, which get scatters of snow through the winter but never enough for skiing, are deceptively pretty, their rocky faces smoothed by the eucalypts which give them their name.  

David and two school friends had thought the treck across Mount Solitary might contribute to their Duke of Edinburgh award.  When they told this to the teacher at their school who administered the award program, he was about as interested as any teacher is when a pupil tells him what they’re doing over the weekend.  This didn’t surprise them.  This was the teacher, after all, who had been promising for weeks to bring them a GPS but kept forgetting to put it in his bag.

Mount Solitary is a three-day hike along a well-marked track.  It’s heavy going, especially the second day when a walker needs to climb 810 metres to the top of the mountain.  It might not sound much, but remember December is mid-summer in Australia and it gets bloody hot that far from the coast.  Walking anywhere can be tough.

My mate Kurt, who’s quite the outdoor-expert, told me recently than when you are walking in the mountains you should carry three litres of water a day per person.  Plus a litre or two for cooking at night, plus extra if you want to wash.  David Iredale was carrying two litres for the entire trip and, unsuprisingly, ran out on the first afternoon of his hike.  Undeterred, he and his friends pushed on to the next day’s climb.  The maps they’d brought with them showed fine blue lines trailing down each side of Mount Solitary and they assumed these were creeks where they could fill up their bottles.  Big mistake.  

Blue on an Australian map is mostly a suggestion of what might occur.  Open an atlas and you’d be forgiven for thinking lakes dot the centre and south of this country.  But one of those lakes, Lake Eyre, has water in it now and tour companies are selling “once in a lifetime flights” to view it.  

Creeks in the Blue Mountains are not quite so rare and most winters can guarantee a trickle somewhere close to the fine blue line on the map.  But you should never rely on them, especially not in mid-Summer.

At the top of the mountain David left a hand-written note which read “Got to the top!  Haven’t had H2O for a whole day but river coming up! Enjoy the view”.  Needless to say, no river came up.

At some point in the following hours David “cracked the shits” with his two mates and walked ahead down the path.  What happened next is on the one hand unclear, but on the other recorded in painful detail.  

The unclear part is why or how David left the path and ended up 200 metres to the north on a rocky incline.  If he was looking for water why did he leave the path which appeared to be heading towards it?  Dehydration probably, delirium perhaps.

The all-too-clear part of those dry and desparate hours was played to a packed court-house at an inquiry last week.  Five calls to the Emergency Services in 16 minutes.  Five different operators refusing to help David because, although he said he was on the Mount Solitary walking track, he was unable to name a cross-street.  His calls were audio-recorded but not entered onto the computer system as the operators didn’t think they were worth it.  The last person he spoke to said “OK, so you’ve just wandered into the middle of nowhere.  Is that what you’re saying?”.

David’s body was found nine days later.  That delay shows more than anything how easily you can get lost in the thick undergrowth of the mountains.  But no one in Australia is blaming the mountains just now.  They are just wondering why until this week, five months after David died, the emergency services had still not reveiwed their operating procedures.

Victoria Bush Fires

Radio 3AW presenter:  We have on the line Rhiannon from Kinglake.  So what's your situation Rhiannon?

Rhiannon: (very young but calm) Er..well.the property we've moved to is completely surrounded by fire and we're just waiting for it to hit.  Um..er..we've seen no emergency people and we really need help right now.  

P: How many of you are there Rhiannon?

R:  Well, there's eight kids, all under the age of ten.  Two elderly ladies.  Four adults.there's quite a lot of us.  And.

P: And how far is the front of the fire from you do you think?

R: Half a kilometre.  Not even.

P: And it's burning towards you at the moment?

R:  That's correct yes.

P:  And is there any capacity at that property in terms of water and pumps and. 

R: We have pumps and sprinklers going but.uh.I don't know if that's enough.   We really.we heard that there's a strikeforce or something, some fire engines being sent up Chum Creek Road, Heath Road.  And if they are there now we really need help.

P:  We'll see what we can do.  We'll see if we can get some action.  Unfortunately there.

R: It's only minutes away.

P:  We'll do what we can.  What you guys need to do is..er.if possible try and find somewhere in the house.

R: We're in a house.  And the idea that we're, we're putting into place is going to the centre of the house where there's a bathroom and just covering ourselves with wet towels and to stop the smoke or anything like that.

P: Absolutely.  And make sure you've got no synthetic clothing on.  It needs to be woollen.  If you have synthetic clothing then get rid of it.  Endeavour to fill the bath so that you have water there as much as you can.

R: Yep (shouting in the background)

P: How far are the flames away now Rhiannon?

R: I can't see, there's too much smoke now.

P: Rhiannon, we'll see what we can do.

R: (crying) Please send help.

P: You're ok.

R: What?

P: You're ok.

R: Well, yes for now.

P: What can you see?

R: Not a lot.  There's so much smoke  (dog starts barking). The house we were in is now engulfed in flames and..oh.there are still people in that house.

P: There are people still in the house that's on fire?

R: (upset) Yes, we're going to back for them.  Maybe cut through the paddock.

P:  Rhiannon, Mary's on the line who's in Heath Road and her husband's trying to come up with a tank of water on a trailer.  Can you speak to Mary?  She's on the line now.  Are you there Mary?

Mary: Yes I am.

P: Can you hear Mary, Rhiannon?

R:  Yes I can.

Line goes dead.

P: We've lost them.

Woman interviewed outside community centre:

We managed to save..um.the horses and neighbouring sheep and, I think, the cattle.  Um.but Pete lost his house and all his tools and everything.  While we were in a safe spot because the grass fire had gone through the open paddock and we'd parked everything down there.um.a  man came down with his daughter and they were really badly burnt..um.and he'd lost his wife and other children.    And we got separated because they came into town in the ambulance.with his daughter. I.er..(upset) She was only about two or three years old.

Man interviewed on the radio:

(North English accent).  We moved here because we wanted to live in paradise.  We lived in a caravan while we built our house.  Then we leant that caravan to new neighbours when they came and built their houses.  We were off the mountain because we went to pick up my daughter from the airport.  My house is gone.  It's only treasure, it's only junk.  But my neighbours, they're all in their houses.  They're all dead.  They're all dead.

Radio 3AW presenter a few hours later:

P: We have on the line Mark, Rhiannon's dad.

Mark: (crying) Oh man, yes I am.  

P: What's the situation Mark?

M: Rhiannon's safe.  Her brother saved her.

P: Oh fantastic.

M: (very upset) Oh mate, you've no idea.  You've got no idea how happy I am.

P: Oh Mark.  That's great, we're so happy to hear from you.

M: You ain't go no idea.  (crying).  Her brother, he's an absolute legend.  He's gone down through the burning paddock, cut his way through to the other house and got 'em all out on a little tractor with a little pump on the back of it.  And he's got 'em out of the house.  And I think the house is burnt.  He's got 'em all out, they're all safe.

P: And he did that single-handedly.

M: (crying) He's a legend.  With his brother, or his cousin, I'm not sure who it was.  It's a tiny little tractor and he's dragged them all out and put 'em all on it and got them back to safety.

P: How old is he Mark?

M:  He's 18.

P: And how old is Rhiannon?

M: It's her 21st next Sunday.  

P: Well, Mark, you give her our love and say (crying) we're very relieved here because.

M: You've no idea how happy I am.

P: (crying) It was so distressing.

M: Can I just say too please, I spoke to a woman at the fire brigade at Hillsow and she's a legend that woman.  She's done everything she possibly could and I.the CFA goes much further than firefighters.  This woman in the office, mate, she had everything under control and she organised it and I really take my hat off to those guys.  And also those guys working in the CFA office.  I just thank them so much.

The CFA is the Country Fire Association.  It's entirely voluntary.  There have been many reports of CFA firefighters protecting neighbours' home whilst watching their own burn.

So far, 171 dead bodies have been discovered.  

Death of a Dream

Grief is the most tenacious of emotions.  It only feigns defeat so it can reappear, fresh-armed and stronger than before, and when you are least expecting it.  I was waiting for the bus this morning, watching crazies stumble through the sunshine of Crown Street, when suddenly I was immensely sad.  Weak and tired under the weight of the emotion I thought I’d buried last month.  I’d forgotten that grief, like any emotion, only intensifies when you bury it.  Deny it, ignore it, look the other way and that elephant will just grow and grow.  I see now that yesterday afternoon it was squeezing me hard against the wall on the beach, pressing me harder with every smile I forced and every ball I served.  

So I’m trying to un-deny it today, to admit to my grief and my broken heart.  But it’s difficult you see because if I’m honest I’m embarrassed.  Embarrassed that my grief is for a dream that has died, not a person.  Embarrassed I ever really had the dream.  On the bus it occurred to me that perhaps I need a funeral.   That’s what we do with people isn’t it?  Acknowledge the loss, vaunt our sadness.  It’s one of the few times in our lives when being unhappy is socially acceptable and we embrace it with black garb and weeping.  Which is why I’m writing this really.  This letter is my refusal to be ashamed.  My confession of a silly ambition, but one which I really believed in and which I mourn now it is gone.

I’ve always loved volleyball.  When I was 19 and living in Germany one of the few sporty things I ever did was join a volleyball club for a week or two.  Years later I played in a gay volleyball team (The Volley Partons) in London, attended tournaments in Prague, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona.  It wasn’t a very high standard and we only ever won the Miss Congeniality prize but it was fun.  It was volleyball.

When I got to Australia five years ago I discovered the combination of volleyball and the beach and immediately fell in love.  I found myself thinking that the utter pleasure I experienced when playing beach volleyball was more intense than any I’d ever known outside of love and making love.  It was so concentrated and complete, such a technical team sport (name any other where two players pass a ball back and forth), so…whatever.  It doesn’t matter really does it?   I just loved it immediately.

I soon realised I wanted to be really good at this game.  I was fed up of losing the court to better players (King of the Court is the rule on beaches around the world).  And then that ambition, combined with (take your pick here) looming middle-age;  a never-very-far need for validation;  a refusal to live life locked in an office;  a desire to be recognised as a fully-signed-up member of the male tribe;  competitivity;  trying to escape from the meaninglessness of life;  wondering if now – at last – I could achieve something in life, bla bla bla….anyway, it combined with a bundle of emotions and I decided to Go For It.  

Here’s the reasoning:  No one in Britain can play beach volleyball.  In 2012 London will host the Olympics.  Host nations like to be represented in every sport.  Host nation teams by-pass normal qualification procedures.  If I worked really hard for six years I could represent Britain in beach volleyball at the London Olympics.  Don’t laugh.  OK, laugh, see if I care.

Bizarrely my coach thought this was just about feasible too.  He thought it would take two years to get me to AA level, another to go interstate and then another to go international.  No other Brits are on the international tour.  Why shouldn’t this work?

Well, here’s why not.  The less you know about something the less aware you are of how little you know.  Just because a sport is not popular does not mean its athletes are any less able.  After three tired, disciplined, emotionally draining years I only now realise  I’m not a natural athlete.  This is not self-pity, it’s level-headed fact.  I don’t have any natural sporting talent.  I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be thick and now, at last, I know.  Also I’m not 19 (although that’s less of a factor).  And now I’m sick of doing nothing but beach volleyball every day.  In October of last year I actually realised I’d come to hate the game.  

All different ways of saying I’m just not good enough and – gulp – never will be.  I play against tourists who played a lot in high school and see they are better than I will ever be.  Admitting that is tough but denying it has been a lot tougher.  Watching them makes even admitting my ambition embarrassing.  I, who had the temerity to think I could represent my nation, will never be good as a good tourist.

So I’m burying my ambition.  This letter is its funeral.  But I’m not burying the emotion that goes around it.  I am sad, I’ve lost a dream which I really believed in, and I’m embarrassed that I ever had it.

The farewell has its advantages of course.  I’m learning to surf, I’m mountain biking when it’s not too hot.  I could go home and read the paper all afternoon if I chose.  And I’m learning to love the game again.  Maybe I’m even improving faster now that the pressure is off.  But it’s not all rosy in my heart just now.  Which is fine.  It’s OK to be sad.  OK to be normal and not over-achieve.

Canyoning

I was sitting in a meeting room on the thirty-fifth floor the other day when suddenly my heart began to hurt.  A British Airways jet had risen from the airport and I watched it circle lazily and disappear over the hazy blue horizon. 

I’ve been missing people a lot recently.  Maybe because so many friends and family have big-0 birthdays this year.  Lots of gatherings of people who it saddens me not to see.  Or maybe because we’ve just celebrated our fifth anniversary of living in Australia and that feels like a long time.  Or maybe no reason.  Anyway, I’m missing everyone and wish so much…well, not that I was there with you but rather that you were here with me.  Blue skies, clear ocean, crashing waves.  You get the picture.  Anyway, back to that hazy blue horizon.  Hazy because of pollution or heat inversion depending on who you talk to.  Blue because of the mountains.  

The Blue Mountains start 50km west of Sydney and shoot up from the Cumberland Plain in a solid wall of sandstone.  The first white settlers considered the mountains “insurmountable” which says more about their arrogance than anything else.  It was only after 20 years of failed expeditions that someone thought to ask the aborigines how they did it.  Easy.  Don’t walk up the valleys as in Europe or America, that way only leads to treachorous cliffs and deceptive dead-ends.  Instead, walk up the ridge lines, the song lines where generations-old songs will guide you the way.  

Still today, asphalt and tarmac smoothing the way, you can see what an incredible job it was to cross the Great Dividing Range, even with that invaluable advice.  The land regularly dips away to reveal infinite eucalypts rolling to the horizon, their leaves reacting with the heat to produce the blue haze which gives the mountains their name.  Every so often, the endless forest is cut by a line of nothing as it falls into a canyon upto 760 metres deep.  Picture that, it’s deep.  Sandstone is soft you see and after ten million years even the tiniest creek can etch deep into the bowels of the earth.  Well, OK, maybe not the bowels of the earth but it certainly feels that way when you’re down there.  Did I mention I went canyoning this week?

At first it felt like a normal bush walk, slugging through the wilderness with heavy packs.  We gawked at the 300 metre cliffs that appeared through the trees and wondered at the silence of the Australian bush (it’s already hot by 9am and all the birds, insects, marsupials, everything is hiding in the shade and trying not to move).  Unlike most walks though,  this one didn’t end when the path disappeared over a ledge.

“Ever abseiled before?” asked my mate Kurt, pulling ropes off his back.  I sort of knew he was an outdoorsy person so was sure it would be fine.  Walking backwards over a cliff ten minutes later I wondered if I should have asked about his qualifications.

At the bottom of the first 20 metre abseil, once I’d stopped kissing the ground and followed Kurt and his mate Zen down the creek until we hit one of those famous dead ends.  Except, what’s that tiny hole under that rock?  That black abyss full of water?  We climbed down into it, the 14 degree water making me gasp.  As instructed I had two layers of thermals on underneath my wetsuit, and as predicted it wasn’t enough.  The woolly hat under my helmet helped, as did the woollen socks inside my shoes.  But after watching me shiver Kurt soon gave me his diving gloves too.  Together with the abseiling harness I looked like I’d walked out of an outdoor equipment store unable to decide what to buy.

It took a while to get used to swimming in a cave that had never seen sunlight but the glow-worms helped, little blue stars littering the ceiling better than an african sky.  Lovely, it’s freezing, let’s go.  And so on (and on) we went.  The sunlight, when we found it again, had turned green through the filter of ancient ferns.  We abseiled again into unknown pools, not combat-style with two wide feet down a flat wall, but crawling and scraping so as not to swing in under the overhang and slam into the jagged rockface underneath.  

We walked the floor of wrinkles two feet wide and a hundred feet high, huge rocks split in two by the gently flowing water.  We found a red-bellied black snake (one of the most poisonous in the world), several spiders, a marsupial that looked like a mouse.  And then more green pools, black swimming caves which probably, hopefully led further down.  

I have never before felt like this - a visitor to a world made neither by nor for humans.  We were alone and far from home down there, freezing in the gloom and looking up at the baking sky.  And oh it was beautiful.  Trees which three hundred years ago had started their journey up to the light buttressed out of the rock above us.  Fish which didn’t know to fear us swam around our feet.  Bright red yabbies, somewhere between a prawn and a lobster, were gnarly and happy to attack intruders.  Our bodies and breath steamed in the green and golden sunlight.

After six hours we splashed out of the canyon and into the main river, its waters joyfully warm after the black creek of the caves.  We swam still deep between red cliffs for an hour or so until at last we found our path.  Then we slogged up the harsh hill, wetsuits wet and clothes damp, back packs heavier than ever.   I am sore all over today and all the happier for it.  Have I ever forgotten to mention before?  Australia is a land of endless beauty.  So, yes I miss you all, but I miss you here, not there.