...continued
Then stuff me if we didn't pack up from that and then proceed to walk for another hour up
hill and down dale in search of another place where we could try and defy the laws of
gravity and threaten to uproot some loosely adhered piece of fauna. And we found it.
This time however we had a new variation. We were going to wear wet suits! Yay! I wondered
if this was a subtle ploy in case I disgraced myself, but when I got up the nerve to look
over the edge of the precipice I realised why. There was water at the bottom. Double joy!
There were no suitable chopsticks standing around so a tree perched on the edge of the
ravine was selected. Not that I wanted to display my knowledge of physics and fulcrums and
things, but I felt duty bound to point out that a tree with half of its roots floating in
the breeze was not a suitable edifice upon which to apply a human body weight. But too no
avail. Greg was over the edge and disappeared into the canyon. Ahhh canyon... I finally
twigged to what this was all about. It's like abseiling but instead of falling off onto
rocks or wombat turds, you fall off into water. Cold water as I found out. Very cold
water. Cold stupid water. So stupid it hadn't figured out that it should in fact be ice.
So once in the canyon, what do you do next? Well you walk along the
canyon until you come out at the other end. My first steps in canyoning were not
auspicious. I put a foot into the cold water assuming that there would be like a bottom.
But that pesky old gravity came back to haunt me. My foot kept going down and down and
then finally struck a solid surface. But it was a surface with such an incredibly low
coefficient of friction that when my foot had finished travelling vertically it then
proceeded to travel horizontally very fast. The rest of my body decided that the options
were a) to spontaneously lose a foot or b) to follow the foot into the frozen water.
Splash. Option b) had clearly been selected with little input from me. Freeze. Retraction
of testicles. Loss of face. Huge loss of face, which I then found again, under the water.
If this was fun, I was having a lot of it.
We followed the canyon along over slippery rocks, over slippery logs, some really
interesting potholes and discovered that shins are the perfect device for locating
submerged objects. Especially very solid and sharp objects. I remember thinking that if it
weren't for the numbing effect of the cold water I would be in a lot of pain. It was not
necessary to walk all of the way, because very soon, there was no path, just deep water
which needed to be swum through. Swimming with a back-pack on was not an experience I will
cherish forever. And more heretofore reliable shins were deprived of their useful function
as the finder of submerged objects. That role now fell to the part of a male's anatomy
that is lowest in the water when you swim.
The trail (ha!) continued through the canyon until all of a sudden there was an
opportunity to return to the path that we had come in on. We availed ourselves of this
god-given opportunity and started the slow journey back to the car. I guess it wouldn't
have been a slow journey for Greg and Dave because they do this sort of thing every
weekend. But for me it was an exercise in torture. I was tired, cold, wet, uncomfortable
and as feeling in my limbs slowly returned I discovered I was actually in quite a bit of
pain. A lot of pain actually. The sort of pain that makes you want to burst into tears and
then beat the living crap out of somebody. But being a gentleman I just quietly wept and
sobbed as I climbed ever upwards to the safe haven of the car.
It seemed like an age. One of those long ages, like the Jurassic or Pleistocene, those big
long suckers.
I was never so happy to see a Pajero as I was to see Dave's car in the middle of nowhere
were we had left it. So now came the time to remove wet suits and put on a dry top.
I managed this quite well seeing as how it did not involve slippery rocks, sudden falls or
tying of knots. Alex was having more trouble and ended up naked as a person without
clothes on, looking for a towel just as a car-load of tourists decided to arrive. Girl
tourists. Impressionable girl tourists. There was a lot of scurrying, ducking, diving,
squealing, wolf whistles and towels hastily draped. I was at least spared that indignity.
I would like to say that we then set off homeward, satisfied that we had conquered things
like fears, canyons and slip knots and had communed with nature in all its glory (Alex
doing especially well on the communing with nature bit). But we didn't.
Blow me if we didn't drive for another half hour in search of another place to leap of a
cliff. Satisfied with a parking space very close to civilisation, we then had a bit of a
hike to find another "nature trail"
This time, Dave was a little unsure of the destination and resorted to looking at a map.
We walked down the nature trail, up the nature trail and then stopped in the middle and
watched Dave scratching his head. Not that I don't mind a bit of a wander out in the fresh
air from time to time but I had had altogether enough fresh air and wasn't sure how much
longer I could go on putting one foot in front of the other one. But, not to worry, Dave
now decided that we were as close to getting lost as we could be and that a good strategy
would be to go back the way we came.
So we walked back the nature trail. Up. Then down. Then for some inexplicable reason we
stopped and headed off into the bush. I guess a really optimistic person would call the
start of this a trail. There were signs that someone had walked here before. But it was
obvious to me that whoever had started this trail had lost interest or died. But Dave is a
fairly determined sort of fellow and had clearly got his heart set on whatever lay at the
other side of this bunch of trees. Beyond the bunch of trees we found tussock mixed in
with prickly stuff and cutty grass to provide hand holds. You know the rule about walking
behind someone in the bush? You leave then enough time to push aside the overhanging
branches and let them spring back into place. So I let Dave get a bit further ahead and
then I lost him. There was no trial to follow, so I took the appropriate action. I
panicked, and charged off wildly in sort of a straight line to be smacked in the face by a
returning branch. Dilemma. Do I
Follow Dave and risk an occasional smack of returning branches or lose Dave and feel that
awful panic of being in the middle of the Blue Mountains bush, cold and tired and without
a clue where I was going and even less where I had been? Occasional smack won the day.
So we continued up hill and through more bush until we found a slow running creek. This
seemed to please Dave enormously. "See, it's the creek", he said.
"Which creek?" I asked.
"Well I don't know which creek, but if we follow it we should come out at the
end".
Well that filled me with a warm comfortable feeling Then again, that might have been an
involuntary bodily discharge, I was getting passed caring.
So we followed the creek as the sides got closer and closer together
until we had about 3ft of head- room from over-hanging trees, shrubs and rocks. The trees
and shrubs could be pushed aside with arms or heads, but the rocks proved a little less
willing to yield right of way. Down the creek we went as my mobile submersed rock and hole
finders worked overtime.
By the time the head room had dropped to 2ft, Dave decided that we had had enough of doing
the Rambo-limbo and ought to strike out for another creek.
"I thought we were going to follow this creek until it ended up somewhere. I was
hoping it might end up somewhere like a car park or a house, something like
civilisation". I was appalled to think that we had not actually been following this
creek to any purpose.
Off we went again in a sort of uppish sort of direction, then in a sort of downish sort of
direction then a sort of through-the-trees direction. Then we stopped, retraced our steps
for a bit and Dave found a creek. Now it may have been the same creek or it may have been
another creek. The 3ft of overhang looked familiar.
"Nearly there", said Dave cheerily.
"Nearly where?" I asked. I had hoped to have avoided sounding petulant but I
don't think I succeeded.
"Well I don't know really" said Dave.
That warm feeling arrived again. I knew it wasn't comfort that I was feeling, perhaps it
was sunstroke. It was by now quite warm. Then I thought about being out in the bush
following some creek (any creek) in the naive belief that it 'must end up somewhere'. I
imagine Scott said much the same in Antarctica. "Just follow along this crevasse
chaps, it must lead somewhere." He was right. It did, it lead them to the place where
they all died. But it was somewhere, so he was right. I hadn't actually considered getting
lost in the bush as one of the life-threatening achievements when I agreed to canyoning.
Back to playing Rambo-limbo in the creek as the trees, shrubs and rocks did their level
best to hinder our progress. And a jolly fine job they did at it too, I might add. We were
considerably delayed at ending up wherever it was going to be that we ended up. Suddenly
Dave halted and I was reminded of Rudolph the brown-nosed reindeer who couldn't stop as
well as the other reindeer, as we all tried to bring our forward progress to a dignified
halt.
Wherever we were, we had arrived. Guess what it was? A waterfall. And the good news is
that we were going to abseil down this cataract in the middle of nowhere. It is not true
to say it was in the middle of nowhere, it was at the end of Crawl-you-hunchbacks Creek. I
stand corrected.
I would have stood except that full erection was prohibited by a nearby overhanging cliff.
Had I but been 3ft tall, I might have been standing upright and in an appropriate
condition to being corrected. Dave went over first this time and pronounced 'very easy'.
Then Alex started his descent when Greg called me over and told me to hold onto the rope
because it looked like the tree that we had attached the rope to was showing signs of
involuntary inversion. So hunched over and using nothing but the slippery creek bed as an
anchor I held on as if Alex's life depended upon it.
Then it was my turn. So with confidence based on nothing more than a faint hope that it
couldn't be that far I tackled the water fall. Funny thing about waterfalls. Where there
is water and oxygen and a suitable substrate, vegetation will prevail. And this little
waterfall was no exception. It had a very healthy looking algal bloom which not only
looked a particularly fetching shade of forest green but also had the added bonus of offer
very little friction. So I assumed the position (horizontal) clutched the rope (I didn't
even want to think about trees spontaneously uprooting ) and started my descent. It
actually went a lot faster than I imagined because halfway down my feet slipped. Such was
the combination of ropes and gravity, that my feet actually slipped upwards and I ended up
upside down and banged the back of my head on the rock face. That's something you don't
read about in guide- books. "Hang upside down in an algal filled waterfall as your
friends look at you and shake their heads". I didn't dare shake my head for fear that
it would either fall off or upset the very delicate balance that I had achieved. In the
end I just let go of all ropes and hoped that whatever was at the bottom wasn't too cold
or hard. It wasn't.
Greg climbed down, then climbed back up again and replanted the tree, then climbed back
down again.
Now the really good thing about this waterfall was that it was actually part of the Nature
Trail that we had originally started out on and so there was something that looked like a
path leading in a direction that I hoped would be civilised. So off we trotted safe in the
knowledge that paths must lead somewhere.
But this was too much for Dave and Greg, there was just one more cliff that they felt
would round out the day. So we left the path and started clambering over boulders, jumped
in a large pool of water, and then got stuck at what looked like an impassable collection
of boulders, pools, rocks and a tree that looked like it was about to fall over. Greg
demonstrated his genetic pedigree and disappeared down the little ravine and announced
that it was easy once you got past the first step. The first step was bigger than me. At
what point do steps cease to become steps and become cliffs? I thought about this a bit
and asked which was the way out of here.
"Same way we came in", came the reply.
"So, in other words we have to climb back up this thing, this ahh step as you call
it?"
"Yes"
I put a tentative foot over and heard the reassuring sound of Greg; "I've got you, I
can take the weight". So I put a bit more weight on his hand which went further down.
"I thought you said you could take my weight", I yelled. I had to yell because
the sound of cascading water made communication very difficult.Also I had such a low level
of blood in my adrenalin that speaking in a normal voice was simply not an option.
"Yes, I've got it" he said as my foot and his hand went down even further.
The next thing I did was one of the bravest things I have ever done. I said "No.
That's it for me. I have passed the point where I have control over my body. My legs are
wobbly, I cannot grip anything with one of my hands. I am having cold flushes and hot
sweats. I am filled with dread that anytime soon I am going to asked to leap off yet
another poxy, slippery waterfall or kung-fu my way through a mile of virgin scrub. I have
had enough, I am going to turn around and find that path and I am going to walk up that
path and follow signs until I reach civilisation. If I have sufficient energy left I will
ring the police and ask what are the conditions for attempted manslaughter".
With that I scrabbled back to a more secure footing and looked down at Greg.
"What did you say?" he yelled.
"It doesn't matter", I said. "You guys go on without me, I'm bushed".
Dave was nice enough to accompany me back to the path. We had to climb up (why is it
always up to get home.... answer because if you are at the bottom of a ravine, there are
very few places in a downward direction), and up and up and up until Dave found a bridge
that went down to the ravine again.
"You know we could just abseil off the bridge and meet up with those guys".
"Yes we could" I agreed, with my remaining good hand firmly affixed to his neck.
"But I think that it would be better to carry on up the path".
Whilst we were waiting at the bridge, a very sprightly Greg arrived followed by a somewhat
bruised and bleeding Alex.
"It got a bit tricky so we decided to come back" he said.
Never too late to start making sense I've always said. Well not exactly always. In fact
that was probably the first time I have ever said that, but it seemed like such a good
thing to anchor in on that I adopted it as my lifelong phrase.
How we ever got back to the Pajero I don't know. But once we got there it was time for the
putting on of dry clothes. I think by this stage neither Alex nor I were at all concerned
about car or even bus-loads of impressionable tourists seeing us without clothes. I figure
if you can survive being upside down in a waterfall with nothing but a poorly roped
sapling between you and death, even potentially derisive tourists pose little threat.
Warm and a little drier it was a thrill to be driving on the road again, but the
conversation was a little less manic this time. In fact Greg dozed off in the front seat
and Alex dropped off to sleep on my shoulder. I had to assume that Dave stayed awake
because before I knew it, it was 5 o'clock and we were looking at a lot of knocked over
rubbish bins.
"Bloody vandals", said Dave.
I just smiled and knew that once I had managed to get passed that freaking railway line, I
was going home.
