Where the water is cool

I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t noticed I had stopped looking out for the baby wallabies and cows, and naming them things like Skip-Dog and Bull-Dog. I was sitting on the verandah to drink my afternoon beer, instead of taking my seat out to the lawn to watch the horses come in. The baby chickens I had been protecting all become teenagers were are no longer cute, so I cancelled their protection plan.

I had been writing the same chapter for over a week. Nothing had changed since I began. I wrote around and around the same ideas and then got bogged in my own well worn track of words.

Then two good friends crossed a very deep river to come visit us for New Year. Tim and Guy brought three eskies full of fresh veggies and fish and beer and an appetite for adventure.

Adam and I had become creatures of cattle station habit, so this was a great opportunity to unlock some of those chained up gates and see some country.

We packed up the cars with bread rolls, boiled eggs, tomatoes and dogs, and headed out towards Wunumurra gorge. It was only a 10km drive on the map.

The road was washed away in areas and then as we climbed onto a plateau it turned into a series of steep hills made up of large rocks. Before every descent, Adam and I got out of the car to assess the risk of bottoming out and getting planted on a boulder. We lugged rocks from the bush and placed them in the gaps where the wheels might lodge. I lurched ungracefully over over the rocks while Adam sucked his breath in loudly and said ‘Jesus!’ and I said ‘Well, it’s ridiculous!’

After an hour of struggling my hands were shaking and Adam’s temper was tested – I didn’t have to drive, I just insisted I needed the practice. Meanwhile, Pearl kept trying to escape from the car.

Just when I thought it was all over, the road in front of us disappeared into what looked like a dried up waterfall. Big boulders fell steeply down and around a sharp corner with trees on both sides and no end in sight. I have never driven over a waterfall before.

‘It’s ridiculous!’

Adam sucked his breath in loudly.

I could see no alternative but to get out of the car and walk from this point.

‘I mean, does it get worse? Where does it end?’

I suggested we wait for the boys to catch up, then they could confirm for me that it was ridiculous.

Tim and Guy are keen plant people, so when they pulled up they weren’t interested in the road fiasco, they were too distracted by the prospect of finding exotic plants in the rocky scrub. We followed them. I’d been concentrating so hard on the struggle I hadn’t had a chance to look at the country yet.

Tim started pointing out all the things I had missed. I hadn’t noticed that there were gubinge trees everywhere. I hadn’t noticed that the fruit was all over the ground and that it was tart and sweet and refreshing. I discovered that there are wild orchids in the trees out there. Some of the orchids grow straight out of the ground! In amongst the spinifex and rocks there are ferns, uncoiling, just like in a rain forrest, remnants of the green lush landscape that used to be here.

When we arrived back at the dried up waterfall Tim took a look at it. I was sure he would agree it was impassable.

‘You’ll be right. I’ll go first and you follow’, and then he drove down the rocks and disappeared around the corner.

I put the car into 4WD low and knocked it into first gear. I took both feet off the pedals and the car lurched forward, all by itself. Adam walked backwards in front of the car, guiding me down. I held my breath. I may have even closed my eyes at one stage. The car bumped and rolled over those boulders like it knew where it was going. I’m not saying it was graceful, I saw Adam grimace when I ignored his instructions and came dangerously close to a tree. And then I was there.

‘Fucking yeeeaaaah! Look at me!’

‘Jesus.’

The gorge was just another hundred metres down the track.

The water was cool and deep, and fed by a thundering waterfall. There were boiled egg sandwiches and christmas cake on a sandy beach. There were animal tracks and a hunt for black bream.

There was the prospect of finding some rock art if we wandered further down the gorge. We climbed through the pandanus, watching out for any signs of ochre on the massive blocks of sandstone above us. They were stacked like a dry wall from the centre of the earth.

And then there they were, the white ochre Wandjinas, just above our heads looking out onto the clear water that ran over the moss. We imagined what a perfect place this would be for mothers to bath in the pools with their babies while the men scratched their ochre onto the stone.

Adam drove on the way back. I sat back with Pearly in my lap and enjoyed the view from the plateau I had missed on the way out. We stopped at a creek and waded about in the water and ate cold apples. The hour went so quickly. It was so much fun

The week went quickly, and then my friends were gone.

I sat back down in front of my chapter. It looked as dull as the day I left it, a whole week ago. It looked like the top of that dried up waterfall. But it didn’t feel impassable anymore. Now, I was feeling playful and adventurous.

I jumped out of the story at every chance and explored the details I had been driving right over. I gave myself the time to drop in and out of anything that made me curious and found myself discovering new stories that I didn’t even know were there. It took another week to finish the chapter, but it felt like a day. I had so much fun.

It’s not just an obvious metaphor. There’s a direct link between the way I live and the way I write. It’s a lesson I’m learning over and over again. The only way to get past the impassable is to stop and enjoy the space you’re in. A sense of adventure will always carry you to the place where the water is cool and the cake is sweet.

I am very lucky to have a companion who is patient enough to sit with me while I search for that space. He knows when I’m struggling and he gives me good advice. Then I insist on doing it my own way and he says, ‘Jesus!’ and waits for me on the other side.