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Published: April 8th 2014
A shorter version of this piece was featured on ABC 500 word project.
https://open.abc.net.au/projects/500-words-one-moment-this-yr-22lz1tk/contributions/one-high-moment-27yu9fj We nearly miss the whole walk. The pilot’s garbled message yesterday hadn’t penetrated our holiday brains.
‘It’s a disaster, the bus has left us! Lord Howe is half an hour ahead.’
But the bus returns and we are on the trek, one of Australia’s best day walks.
‘We still need to challenge ourselves as we get older,’ Margaret, one of the walkers tells me.
'Yes, but we also need to know our limits,’ I retort as we scramble up through the forest- covered Mount Gower.
Whatever made me think I could do this? Clinging to the cliff face, helmet clad. Why did I listen to a lithe twenty-six year old who promised it was easy-going? Easy-going up 875m?
Legs feeling distinctly wobbly through fear and exertion I call a halt at the 500m saddle mark. The others keep trudging and I send Graeme off with his share of the picnic. I keep the dolmades and somehow score the chocolate nuts and goji berries.
Perched as I am between Mount Lidgbird and Mount Gower I look to the North,
yesterday’s walk up the Memorial Track to Kim’s Lookout and down Malabar Hill lies dwarfed behind the imposing triple peaks of Mt Lidgbird. The top of the volcanic plug scored and ring-barked like some undesirable growth.
The southerly wind brushes the cloud and leaves me sitting in the sunshine, writing. A good choice. A time to reflect and remember a lifetime of struggling with heights. As a teenager, freezing on the descent from the pyramid temple at Uxmal, in the Yucatan, Mexico, welded to the chain, immobile until my father grabbed each ankle and trod me down until I could collapse into a gibbering heap, heart beating its furious tune to a disobedient body.
Skiing. Faced with steep runs, crying until a kindly Swiss skied backwards gently criss-crossing until we arrived at a learner’s run softly undulating where I ate my muesli bar and recovered the will to ski. And then the recent debacle in Bozi Dar, Czech Republic, unable to ski due to the quaking. I was not born without a ‘fear gene’.
Darker clouds chase the blue sky away, the waters of the lagoon steely. The wind quickens now, swings into my protected spot. Mist
hazes the contours of the Northern range. The rest of the group must be at the summit now, having lunch, congratulating themselves on their achievement while I cower against the unyielding cliff face and contemplate a bite of strawberry-jam-laced muffin.
Providence petrels put on a wheeling display. Tiny fighter planes engaged in dogfights, wingtips nearly touching, below me, to the side and above. Their chattering calls alerting others to the nesting about to take place. Miniature Red Arrows they dare each other as far below the rocky promontories are girdled by sea foam.
And now I sit and look down at the wave-lined lagoon so far away and begin to wonder how I will manage the descent from this airie.
I place a bag of brazil nut butter and strawberry jam laced muffins beside me but a sharp stab at the bag by an all-seeing Kurrawong attempts to snatch it from me, a strand of drool or is it honey gleams from its strong black beak. Startled I grab it back. He sits bold, waiting for another chance until I lay my hand on a nearby stick and wary now he hops back into the twisted, wind
tormented branches.
The petrels continue their wheeling. I like the quiet of this island, the absence of traffic and industrial noise. The night silence broken only by the pounding surf breaking onto the protecting reef and the kentia palms swishing on the tin roof.
I can’t make out the path in that dense green, seemingly impenetrable forest. I am wary of moving far from my stony ledge but scramble up the few metres to view Ball’s Pyramid rising out of the ocean an uncompromising vertical, volcanic stack of 550 metre.
I spot a clump of twisted pandanus, wind-whipped and a brilliant green tree fern bravely spearing the canopy. Giant lily pillies rise high, high above the kentia palms, endemic to the island and once an important industry. The seeds now stripped by rats. The rats themselves now a target of an eradication programme due to start in August 2015 with arial bait drops.
I sit here thanking my mother’s generosity for sending us here as a birthday treat. An island where planes don’t always land but make passes at a landing strip. We were lucky. Two planes arrived the same day we did. One delayed from
the day before. Not as lucky as the couple who as their suitcase didn’t arrive were given $600 to buy clothes. Wouldn’t buy too much with the expense of it all here. I do understand. Really I do. Everything comes from mainland Australia. But $6 for 20 minutes internet? No matter.
If I could find a platform I could practise yoga, in this sublime view point buffeted by wind and engulfed in sea-mist. The sweep of the island gallooned by the reef.
No lying in the sun anymore. Crouched downwind, watching the rainclouds stream past I comfort myself with the thought of a cup of Earl Grey and a hot shower on our return. Return? I placed one foot after the other to get here now I will have to place one after the other to descend. This Level 5 walk is beyond me. Level 4 I can manage.
I promise to read the notice regarding sooty petrels placed at the outset of the walk where a warning sign forbids you to enter the park without a guide. But I think I know all there is to know about their aerial displays.
The cloud falls like
a wet blanket over the highest peak trailing moisture. I imagine I hear voices blown down by the wind as I decide I am ready to begin the gruelling, knee-stinging clamber homeward.
**
Feet normally tucked tidily behind this one braces his as if for landing or to push away an intruder. He cranes his neck, twisting, ungainly, righting himself with a swift upward wingbeat.
Wingtips dipping suddenly altering the soaring flight into a steep dive, swooping, catching a current and back up high their tail rudders fanning, their paler wing tips catching the light as they chase each other in continual flight.
In the afternoon sun they are golden seed pods twirling to earth, but they don’t, they never light, always on the wing from Siberia to Lord Howe.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Incentives
Pushing on & up...spurred on by the thought of a cup of Earl Grey and a hot shower on your return...easy when you know how!