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There was Corrie’s frequent cry of ‘That’s not fu
If I’m going to be honest I’d better admit that I managed to a
My worst fight was really stupid. I don’t know, maybe all fights are really stupid. We started talking about the colours of cars, which ones are the most conspicuous and which ones the least. Kevin said white was the most conspicuous and black the least; Lee said yellow and green; I said red and khaki; I forget what the others said. Suddenly it got quite heated. ‘Why do you think they paint ambulances and police cars white?’ Kevin yelled. ‘Why do you think they paint fire engines red?’ I yelled back. ‘Why do you think they have so many yellow taxis?’ Lee yelled a bit, although I don’t think his heart was in it. It went on and on. I thought I was on safe ground with khaki for inconspicuous, because that’s what the Army uses, but Kevin told some long story about how he nearly had a head-on with a black car a week after he got his P’s. ‘That doesn’t prove black’s hard to see,’ I said, ‘it just proves you shouldn’t be allowed on the roads.’ I can’t even remember how it ended, which goes to show how stupid it was.
But on our last night, sitting around the fire playing True Confessions, Robyn unexpectedly said, ‘I don’t want to go back. This is the best place and this has been the best week.’
‘Yeah,’ Lee said. ‘It’s been great.’
‘I’m looking forward to a hot shower though,’ Fi said. ‘And decent food.’
‘Let’s do this again,’ Corrie said. ‘Back here in the same place with the same people.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ Homer said, obviously thinking of another five days to spend adoring Fi.
‘Let’s keep this place a secret,’ Robyn said. ‘Otherwise everyone’ll start using it and it’ll be wrecked in no time.’
‘It is a good campsite,’ I said. ‘Next time we should have a proper search for where the hermit lived.’
‘He might have just had a shelter here and it’s fallen down,’ Lee said.
‘But he built that bridge so well. You’d think he’d build his shelter even better.’
‘Well maybe he just lived in a cave or something.’
True Confessions resumed, but I went to bed before they could make me confess to all the things I’d done with Steve. I figured I’d told enough already, so I got out while the going was good. But I still didn’t sleep well. Like I said, normally I was a heavy sleeper, but the last few nights I just couldn’t settle down to it. To my own surprise I realised I was quite anxious to get home, to see how things were, to make sure it was all OK. I did feel some kind of strange anxiety.
In the morning everyone got moving early, but it’s a fu
It was a steep climb, and we soon began to realise why we hadn’t been too keen to do day trips back up onto Tailor’s Stitch. Our biggest motivation, apart from Fi’s enthusiasm for showers and food, was to see where the track started at the top. We couldn’t figure out how we – and all those other people over the years – had missed it. So we kept plugging along, sweating and grunting up the hardest bits, sometimes pushing the person in front through a narrow gap in Satan’s Steps. I noticed Homer stayed close to Fi, giving her helpful pushes whenever he got the chance, and she’d smile at him and he’d go red. Could she possibly like him, maybe? I wondered. Or was she enjoying stringing him along? It’d serve Homer right if a girl did that to him. One girl could get revenge for all of us.
Our packs were lighter, thanks to all the food we’d eaten, though after a short time they felt as heavy as ever. But soon enough we were close to the top, and looking ahead to see where we’d come out. The answer, when we got close enough to tell, was surprising. The track suddenly veered right away from Satan’s Steps and struck out across a landslide of loose gravel and rocks. This was the first time we’d been out in the open since leaving the campsite. It took a few minutes to find it again on the other side, because it was much fainter and thi
It continued to wind upwards then, finishing at a big old gum tree near Wombegonoo. The last hundred metres were through scrub so thick that we had to bend double to get along the path. It was almost like a tu
We took a break on Wombegonoo, not for long because we had virtually no food left and we’d all been too lazy to carry any water up from the creek. It was about a forty minute walk to the faithful Landrover, which we found where we’d left it, backed in under the shady trees, patiently waiting. We fell upon it with cries of delight, getting into the water first, then pigging out on the food, even the healthy stuff that we’d rejected five days earlier. It’s amazing how quickly your attitudes can change. I remember hearing on the radio someone saying how prisoners of war had been so grateful for any little scrap of food when they were liberated at the end of World War Two, then two days later they were complaining because they got chicken noodle soup instead of tomato. That was just like us – and still is. That day at the Landie I was dreaming of an ice cream I’d chucked out from the fridge at home a week earlier, because it had too many little ice crystals sticking to it. I’d have given anything to have had it back in my hand. I couldn’t believe how casually I’d thrown it away. But after an hour or two at home I guess I would have thrown it away again.
Once we got to the Landrover it seemed like the others lost any sense of urgency to get home. It was a hot day, humid, with quite a lot of low cloud drifting past. You couldn’t see the coast at all. It was the kind of weather that sapped your energy. That wasn’t really true for me though. I was still a bit uneasy, keen to get back, wanting to check that everything was OK. But I couldn’t force the others to go at my pace. I was affected by Robyn telling me just that morning that I was bossy. I was a bit hurt by that, especially coming from Robyn, who didn’t normally say unkind things. So I kept quiet while everyone lay around in the patchy sunlight, sleeping off the effects of all the food we’d just eaten.