On moratoriums and access

Climbers are all up in arms this week. Not surprisingly really, given that we started with a proposed voluntary moratorium on new routes in the Grampians and progressed to a proposed ban on all climbing in the Victoria Range. What shouldn’t be surprising however, is that we have got to this situation. Climbers have been in denial of their impact on the environment for a long time now. We all like to think we are lovely, caring, green, lefty people. In the meanwhile, climbers drive around gates, ignore closures, drop rubbish, leave literal shit piles, have illegal fires, collect illegal firewood, “clean” cliffs, damage vegetation, the list goes on. Even when we are being responsible, we still have an impact in our use of the park, and the increase in bouldering and accessible sport climbing crags has had a huge effect in recent years. Anyone else remember what Andersons looked like before it was a popular bouldering area?

Bouldering has a lot of people massing around the base, exploring between boulders, flattening landings with pads, then jumping on them. No wonder it ends up cleared. Similarly, sport crags are high traffic areas. There are just more people in general at our crags these days.  Erosion and clearing around the base increases, tracks broaden, chalk becomes even more prolific. We like to think we are an alternative sport, but we are not so much these days. We can’t be a tiny group flying under the radar. We need to step up and take responsibility for managing our impact, and policing other climbers who are not. We need to participate in the solutions, not just waiting for someone else to. Ever just gone climbing when there was a working bee at Arapiles? Time to stop being selfish and do your bit to maintaining our crags. Ever said “someone needs to fix this”? Well, become that someone. If you don’t know how to fix it, offer to help and learn. Climbers are talented at ignoring concerns until they become an access crisis. These issues about development and impact are not new. If you haven’t heard about them until now, well, take it as a lesson to keep yourself better informed in the future and get involved.

I am actually against the moratorium, simply because I think we will spend too much time debating the moratorium rather than getting on with finding solutions. I suspect in 6 months time, we will still be arguing about the moratorium, not discussing the problems leading up to the proposed moratorium in the first place. As you might have noticed, complaining about the moratorium and sledging the VCC, PV, the Greens (hell, why not blame the purple people eater whilst we're about it?) seems to be taking up the majority of conversation at the moment. The rate of new route development is not actually that great that we will risk terrible damage if we leave it be whilst we negotiate access issues. It just angers and distracts climbers from what we need to actually be doing now and as a voluntary moratorium, it’s almost worthless practically. All the people who are currently ignoring other actually legislated restrictions are almost certainly going to keep ignoring voluntary ones.  Its one advantage is that it may send a message to PV that climbers are trying to do something to address their concerns. There are climbers slinging abuse at the VCC and others in classic selfish, thoughtless wanker mode. If you’re one of them, take a chill pill, get some perspective (like permanent crag closures) and see if there’s something constructive you could do instead.

Yes, there are many crags in the Victoria Range that are in Special Protection Areas. This isn’t new and it isn’t news. 2003, remember? It’s just that climbers have never bothered to keep themselves informed. There is an “it will never happen to us” attitude. Whist a small group were talking about the growing concerns from traditional owners, Parks Victoria and other park users, most climbers were just pretending these concerns would go away. That what they did didn’t have an impact because they were just one person. Until we had hundreds of such one persons. Burying your head in the sand has never been particularly effective. Do your bit to minimise your impact. Educate others to do so as well. Speak up when you see people doing the wrong thing.  Join groups working on the negotiations. Engage in adult discussion with PV and TOs about our concerns. Next time you hear a whisper about access issues, check it out and see if there is anything that you can do before it becomes a crisis.

Climbing accidents and climbing culture.

Arapiles saw some terrible accidents the other week. There have been a proliferation of accidents requiring rescues in recent years and in the midst of processing the recent accidents, I have been reflecting on what is happening and what we can do about it. I suspect the increase in accidents result from both the steady stream of new climbers to trad and aspects of climbing culture that feed risk taking in new climbers. Accidents most frequently involve inexperienced trad climbers, poor use of equipment and poor judgement.

Climbing does belittle the bumbly and idolize the hardman (I am using the gendered word intentionally). We can become very grade focussed and people feel inadequate for not climbing hard enough. This leads to people coming into climbing wanting to increase their grades and push their limits sooner than they safely should. Climbing hard is great. I love it and I choose to climb hard stuff most of the time. But I have a long background of climbing behind me that makes it safe for me to do so. When we promote a culture of climbing hard, people want to take shortcuts in the learning process in order to climb hard. They want to climb the same grades on trad as they do on sport or in the gym, and this is just not a realistic place to reach in a hurry.

Back when I was a lad, there were more self limiting factors on progress. When you learnt on rock and on gear, you were developing strength and climbing skills at the same time as leading skills. You only progressed at a rate that the strength and skill developed. This meant we did spend more time on easy and moderate routes in our early climbing career. We couldn’t actually climb hard enough to get ourselves into trouble that quickly. These days, people come into trad from climbing gyms and sport climbing. They are strong. They can pull harder moves. They are physically capable of getting themselves into more dangerous situations.

Learning trad takes time. Fortunately for us, Arapiles has the best easy routes in the world available. There is no reason to skip consolidating skills on easy routes. They are fun. People should be learning to place gear, build belays, read routes, manage the rope, protect for the second etc on easy routes. It’s not about the climbing, it’s about the skills. When people just run up the climb on minimal gear because it’s easy, they cheat themselves of the learning experience. Just place gear. That’s what you are here for. There’s no point in doing miles to practice if you don’t actually use them to practice. I also want you to have enough gear in so that if anything unexpected happens, some of it could turn out to be crap, but you’ll still have other gear there to save you. By the time you’ve romped up hundreds of metres of easy routes, I want you to feel confident to place good gear efficiently enough that you could do it under increasing amounts of duress. We don’t learn well under duress. Our brains are busy just trying to get through. We learn when we are safe and comfortable. So take advantage of our beautiful easy routes.

Climbers are also holding onto a view of themselves as dirtbags. Once upon a time, underemployed climbing bums, students and drop outs may have been a dominant number of climbers. Lots of us have lived hand to mouth out of the Pines. But that is not the main demographic these days. Climbers pay to go to the gym several times a week, then pay for petrol in their fancy SUV to drive out to the crag for the weekend. We have money. Therefore, we could be paying for climbing instruction. But mostly, we don’t. We still like the idea that we will find someone to teach us. Surely someone would love to be our mentor? We think it’s ok to say, hey, I’m a newbie, do you want to teach me?

Well, as one of those potential mentors, I can say the number of requests well exceeds my interest in mentoring. There are so many people coming into climbing these days that the number, time and goodwill of potential mentors is not able to keep up. Teaching climbing is a skill and doing so takes away from our time to climb for ourselves. I am becoming old, cynical and selfish and you have to be a pretty special person before I’m going to spend my precious time teaching you these days. We should be prepared to pay for instruction the way we pay for other things. Besides, relying on meeting mentors risks meeting crap mentors. There are in fact more than a few not so competent wannabe mentors out there. And if you don’t know what you are doing, how can you assess the quality of teaching you are getting from your newfound mentor? Or the youtube videos you are watching? Suck it up and pay for a course. A few hundred dollars will set you up for a long life of climbing. You’ll still need to gain loads of experience and still need to find competent climbing partners and assess the value of information provided by others, but at least you will have a grounding of good information to base that on.

Another foible of climbing culture is the tendency to romanticise our own rough and rocky road to climbing competency. Many of us didn’t learn in ideal conditions. We threw together a hotchpotch of gear and information, we got ourselves into messes, we somehow got out of them and we can tell an unfortunate number of stories about stupid mistakes and near misses. This isn’t actually anything to be proud of. But you will hear people say they survived it, it was good for them. Like people say about smacking children. But I really think we could do better. We know a lot more about the learning process, teaching skills and we have abundant good, affordable gear available these days. You don’t need to buy a nylon rope from the hardware store and tie it around your waist anymore.

The other much underutilised skill in climbing is judgement. The idealisation of hard and bold can get in the way of people exercising judgement. Rather than just encouraging people to push their limits, we need to teach people to recognise when it is safe to push their limits and to be aware of when they are putting themselves into a risky situation. People can be crap at assessing risk. When we encourage new climbers to climb harder, we don’t teach them to assess when they are ready to climb harder. Talk with them about their climbing, their gear, their skills. Point out risks and things to consider when choosing climbs, placing gear, managing the rope. Direct them to safe climbs to progress on, discuss why they are safer choices so they learn to assess the relative safety of climbs they will do in the future.

Climbing has inherent risks. There is a tendency to want to go around making climbing safe for everybody these days. More bolts, more anchors, more reinforcing of routes. Sport and indoor climbing have created a community of people who think trad is scary and dangerous. When we only think of trad being scary and dangerous, we underestimate the risk involved in other forms of climbing. Creating a bunch of easy sport crags is not only not possible, but isn’t going to prevent accidents anyway. People still hurt themselves on sport. The amount of rock and routes around are far greater than the number of climbers around.  It’s just not possible to safe up the cliffs for people. The most practical way of making climbing safer is teaching people to be safe climbers.

Minimum unit pricing is a minimal step toward addressing alcohol misuse.

This month, the NT brought in a minimum unit price on alcohol. This is being lauded as great leadership in the battle against alcohol related harms, but what price based strategies like this seem to miss, is that problem drinking is not just a "let's have another drink" choice. These people are drinking as a result of other issues in their lives and they have an addiction. They will keep drinking until they are able to find healthy, functional ways of dealing with the issues in their lives, and they will need to come off alcohol slowly, under medical supervision. They already spend a fortune on alcohol. What bright spark thinks they will just stop because it costs a little bit more? Do we drive less because petrol costs a lot more than it used to? Did increasing the price of alcopops reduce teen binge drinking? Anyone noticed the current smoking rates despite the massive increase in cost? Similarly, sugar taxes are a crap way of addressing obesity.  Drinking coke and eating mars bars already cost a lot more than water and fruit. That does not stop people who want to drink coke and eat mars bars from choosing them. Does the illegality and cost of smack stop an addict using it? Do people only drink because it's cheap? What a ridiculous concept.

Those of us who do not a a drinking problem are mostly capable of rational thought about it. We can think, shit, I can't really afford another drink tonight. But imagine if you have an addiction. Physical symptoms that kick in if you don't drink enough. A mental health problem you are self medicating. You feel like you can't cope with the world if you don't have another drink. Are you going to think, oh dear, this all costs a bit much, I might just stop now? Of course not. You are going to drink away all the money you have available, then probably feel even worse about yourself, your life, your drinking, letting down your family or friends and want to drink more.

Price targeted interventions are like the GST. They are touted as fair things, effecting everyone, regardless of income. Did no one stop to think about the relative impacts? A bottle of cheap wine in the NT will cost $10 instead of $6.  That $4 will be meaningless to a well off alcoholic, but a much bigger issue for someone in poverty. For an impoverished person with a drinking problem, they are going to keep drinking, except now they will have even less money for food, housing, clothing, medication, you know, life essentials. They will resort to crime or begging in order to get the money to keep drinking, lose any housing they have managed to hold onto, forego food, because continuing drinking is not really a choice until the underlying issues are addressed. Price increases only add to the socioeconomic costs of problem drinking.

Price related interventions are a classic example of individualising problems in our society. We will punish the people who make poor choices by increasing the cost. If that has other negative impacts on their life, that's their fault because they made that choice. They should realise the consequences of their decision. The underlying message of individualising broader social problems is that people who drink are bad, people who are poor are bad, people who are obese are bad.

Truly great leadership would promote social and structural change. It would address poverty, violence, dispossession, isolation, mental health issues, racism and homophobia. It would fund support services and rehabilitation. It would challenge toxic masculinity. It would target the companies making money out of alcohol. It would restrict advertising. It would challenge the Australian culture of drinking. It would work to disassociate binge drinking from sport, parties, nights out, bbqs and other celebrations. Increasing the price of alcohol is an easy way of looking like they are doing something about the problem without actually addressing any of the fundamental causes that take drinking from a recreational pastime into a problem and not stepping on the toes of big business who make money out of alcohol.

The "great achievement" of this government - axing the tampon tax.

I have ignored the whole tampon tax campaign for years. It's one of those incredibly mainstream feminist campaigns that I've never been able to give two hoots about. The last few days, my feeds are full of people saying what a great achievement axing the tampon tax is. Now, I get it's kinda weird to have condoms and lube and an assortment of "natural remedies" listed as essential items that are GST free as well, but to be honest, condoms and lube are rather useful items and I've saved a lot more GST off them than I would have on tampons. Women's sanitary products are not only expensive, but an incredible source of landfill. About 11000 pads or tampons per woman in her lifetime, each one taking 500+ years to break down. There are about 12.1 million women in Australia. Making for 133.1 billion pads or tampons produced and thrown out by these women. Does that sound like a lot of rubbish yet?

This is why I can't get excited about the tampon tax campaign. Reusable menstrual products have moved on from the old rags used back in the day. The menstrual cup, washable pads and period undies are all comfortable, accessible, convenient, and much more sustainable than disposable products. They also happen to be much cheaper. So who gives a shit about the GST? If the money is an issue, buy a reusable product. I don't expect to spend another cent on menstrual products for the rest of my life. Making the total cost of managing menstruation from about ages 20 to 50 coming to less than $100. But the monetary cost isn't really the main issue. It's the 10500 or so pads or tampons I have not used. The government is claiming it will loose $30 million in GST each year from the tax. I'd rather they spent that money on giving women reusable menstrual products. That would acknowledge that they are an essential item whilst not supporting an industry of waste products.

So I'm just going to give menstrual cups a little spruik. They rock. Never again carry used tampons out from the crag, or for days on a remote bushwalk, or find someway to deal with them in developing countries. No wrapping and bagging and finding a bin. Or doing what a distressful number seem to, chucking them in the bush. Just empty, replace, go. Wash them once a day. They are silicon, it's a 2 second job. That's it. And your risk of toxic shock syndrome will basically disappear. Search for them on ebay, where you can get them for less than a single packet of tampons and wonder why the hell you have been forking out for tampons and getting worked up about the GST all these years. They were good value when you had to pay $40 for them. They are incredible value at $4. That $4 will last you 10+ years. Tell the government and the sanitary product industry where they can put their tampons.

Axing the tampon tax is not a great achievement. Surely it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to picture things which might be greater achievements for women? The vote, legal abortion, sexual assault centres, anti-discrimination legislation, the tampon tax. Maybe we should refer our government to Sesame Street, because one of these things is not like the others. It's a token nod to women whilst failing to address a major source of waste and missed opportunity to promote sustainable (and affordable!) alternatives. But I guess it would be a fair depiction of this government that the best thing they did for women was remove the GST from tampons.

Queer travels

I’ve been doing a lot of driving lately. Somehow I ended up spending most of that time listening to queer and feminist podcasts. In fact, I got so caught up in one that I managed to get lost driving home from Byaduk. I don’t want to think about what that suggests about how much I am distracted from driving whilst listening to funny, quirky and political podcasts, because they make driving so much better.

Identity labels are controversial these days. I’m afraid I’m old fashioned. I know, it’s odd to hear me say that. Or maybe it’s not. Afterall, I am still a trad climber not driving around in a suburu and owning a cheap and nasty phone. Plus I can’t speak emoji, or say anything meaningful within 280 characters. But what I am oldfashioned about today is the label bisexual. I’m afraid I just can’t jump on board with pansexual. Even when I try and get over images of horny goat men ,

Who could forget Anthony's Pan from Feeling the Ceiling?

there are the fry pans. But other than my distaste for whatever the linguistic equivalent of aesthetics is, there is the somewhat more important issue of the politics.

People with non-exclusive sexual identities have long been invisible, ostracised and belittled by parts of both hetero and homosexual communities. We are too straight, too gay, undecided, pretending, dabbling, or judged by whatever partnership we are currently in. What useful purpose is there is fighting amongst ourselves over bi vs pan? The argument for pansexual is that bi reinforces gender binaries and pansexuality is about people not gender. Strangely enough, bisexuals have been talking about attraction to people not gender for, well, 50 years or so? In practice, bi identifying people are far from reinforcing gender binaries. But bi has been the rallying term in a long fought battle for recognition as an authentic orientation. Afterall, it's a phase some of us have been going through for a long time now! Bi was the word around when I was a young adult, and I've come to be quite fond of it. I don't want to give it up now, and I certainly don't want to be told I am reinforcing gender binaries through using it. Hell, I am a gender denialist. We have chromosomes, hormones and body parts. Physiological shit usually called sex, of which there are actually more than the standard 2 combinations promoted. All the rest is socialised nonsense and I can get ultra grumpy about what is called "feminine". But that's a whole other long rant.

You may have noticed Bivisibility Day last week. Or maybe not, in which case, the visibility aspect of it is obviously still lacking. But being bi can be a blurred road of passing and invisibility. You may never need to come out, or you have to come out again and again and again. Bi people seen with a single partner anywhere will always need to come out as not straight or not gay. Or to just let it pass. Did any of my workmates who met my male partners ever realise I have a history of female partners as well? Does that matter? Am I doing myself and the bi community a disservice if I don't care if they work it out or not? I do tend to not give a shit about what people think about me. I'd really like a world where people don't have to give a fuck about this stuff. One day, we might reach a point where no one makes assumptions about sexuality. But until then, is not coming out participating in heteronormalisation?

Coming out is one of those key passages in queer identities. No one comes out as straight. But when I think back on it, I don't think I ever came out. I don't have a coming out story. I just do stuff and I guess eventually people notice that I don't do the done thing. I don't even remember ever telling my family. But in the way that I also just talk about stuff, I expect I just told my Mum over dinner one night about the first girl I picked up. She turned out to be a little nutty, so I've entertained people over dinner with that story a lot since. I have no recollection of Mum's response, but, knowing my mother, she probably just asked if the sex was any good.

One of the things I love about modern teen fiction (for I have an embarrassingly large soft spot) is the way queer characters are completely normalised. They aren't token. They don't even stand out as a statement. They just exist. Major characters, minor characters, random cameos. Where were any of these in Nancy Drew or Sweet Valley High? This weaving of queer stories into popular literary worlds may be a powerful step in the move to noone having to come out, or for perhaps everyone having to come out. Perhaps it is a sign that we may yet reach a place where people don't make assumptions and are not shocked at whatever is revealed in the course of people just doing whatever it is they do. I expect I have been reading the outliers of modern teen fiction and that there's no shortage of heteronormative stuff out there, but let me have a little delusion that the world is changing. I am cynical enough already.

All this conflict over a few words brings me to the idea of solidarity. The LGBTIQ+ alphabet soup is continually growing. P and A are certainly on the agenda to be thrown in. There's a call from K and BDSM to join up too. A few extra Ps and Qs to mind. At what point does becoming all inclusive lose the power of solidarity? What are the common grounds we are rallying under here? The issues across this group are already super broad and this question would lead me off on another thousand word tangent, but my point is the P and B parts of the soup have an almost entire overlap. I don't go around arguing the semantics of whether pan as a prefix meaning all/everything really means you could be attracted to not only frypans and mythological creatures, but, say, dinosaurs or apricots. So please don't insist that bi reinforces binary sex and gender stereotypes. Instead, let's look at the shared issues arising from a non-exclusive sexuality in a world where people still assume an exclusive sexuality. A world in which bi/pan/omni/ambi/poly/whateveryouwanttocallit-sexuals suffer disproportionately high rates of mental health issues and violence. Fighting over semantics amongst ourselves seems an unlikely priority here.

Noodling around on the internet makes me pissed off about stuff.

No one would go climbing with me the other day. A responsible adult might take that opportunity to get shit done. I tried, I guess. I spread a bunch of essay notes out on the table. I did some washing. Then it rained. The house is sort of clean. I went for a run. But far more typically, I noodled around on the internet and got pissed off about stuff.

This time I am pissed about aged care. Again. I’m not even sure where to start on how pissed the general discussion about aged care makes me. Actually, it’s not just about aged care. Let me take the opportunity to be grumpy about a lot of things. A few needles in strawberries and increasing food saboteur jail terms is on table. Some white kid gets punched in Kings Cross and voila, king hit legislation with, let’s guess, longer jail terms. A few black kids die being chased by police … nothing. A black woman dies in custody … nothing. A woman dies every week at the hand of an intimate partner, well, we’ll throw a few words at it, but basically, … nothing. Horror stories about some aged care facilities have been surfacing for years, and after many years of …. nothing ….  for some reason, the government throws some money, not at actual services, but at investigation. It shits me that things are ignored until they become politically expedient. And all those longer jail terms as a solution? I’ll come back to that one.

I could save our government a few billion in running a royal commission if they’d like. It’s pretty easy to sum up. Stop privatising essential services!!!!! What do they expect to happen when they hand over the care of our elderly for people to make money off? Victorian public aged care facilities have legislated nurse ratios. They are the only ones that do and they not the source of these horror stories. They still aren’t perfect. I would love to see more staff in dementia facilities, where one on one interaction is one of the best ways of managing agitated, distressed and wandering behaviours.  The movement towards supporting people to stay at home and aging in place is leading to an aged care population with increasingly high needs, whilst the staff ratios don’t change. But even public facilities are at the mercy of the complicated bloody funding system that doesn’t even see managing dementia as a complicated medical condition. All aged care is complicated. You’d be hard pressed to find a resident with less than four of the following: multiple comorbidities, polypharmacy, chronic pain, cognitive impairment, communication difficulties, nearing end of life or mental health issues. Not to mention normal grieving for moving out of home, loss of independence, loss of peers and family, approaching death. Or supporting families. Does that look like a simple care to you?

But despite the limitations of the system, most nursing homes provide good care. I’ve worked in 5 of them. I’ve had grandparents in them. The staff are dedicated and doing the best they can in a flawed system. Let’s not start a demonization of the predominantly female, underprivileged, overworked and underpaid workforce in aged care. Perhaps the billions of dollars on a royal commission could just be spent on improving services and providing regulation and monitoring in line with the recommendations of experts that already exist? As an aside, what are we going to call these incredibly expensive investigative whims of government when we eventually become a republic?

Articles and news programs “revealing the truth” about aged care are all the rage this week. They are full of the emotional language of shock journalism. Who cares if someone was a WW2 veteran? That does not make them more worthy of care than another person. And can we at least get our bloody information straight?  One of the kafuddles is about the food. And, yes, the food is not perfect. But minced moist is not a meal. It is a texture. It is a texture recommended by a speech pathologist based on a person’s capacity to chew and swallow. They are a high risk for choking and aspiration without it. Many, many foods can be made minced moist. It just so happens that most of what is made in nursing homes is some variation on meat and three veg. As many Australians are not as vehemently opposed to meat and three veg as I am, they probably won’t have a problem with that. They all look kinda similar when they’ve gone through a blender, but they are actually real meat and real vegetables. Residents who are able can choose from a menu (sandwiches and salad are always available as well as a hot meal), others are chosen by staff based on what they know about the resident’s tastes. Yes, sometimes there are party pies. Most people have junk meals occasionally, and let’s be honest, we quite like it.

I’d love to see a more culturally diverse diet, and more vegetarian and vegan foods. This will come, as the next generations who have had a lifetime of greater food diversity and have a bunch of food fetishes age. But some of them will still need their curry served minced moist. Kale smoothies will be suitable for all textures, although we may need to add thickener. Green gloop. I can’t wait.

Shock journalism loves dramatic statements. Like that 75% of residents are on psychiatric meds, then talking about antipsychotics as if that is what the 75% are on. Antipsychotics and sedatives are a last resort, and strangely enough, higher staff ratios provide for more nonpharmacological interventions further reducing their use. But antidepressants are also a psychiatric drug. We all know people who take them. Older people also take them. Others have sedatives for sleep or anxiety or epilepsy. Some even have antipsychotics for, well, psychosis. Schizophrenia. Borderline personality disorder. Mood stabilisation in bipolar disorder. I don’t know if the 75% figure has any basis, but I’m very happy saying that they are not all on psychiatric drugs for behaviour management. And personal carers cannot give drugs “at their discretion”. Only a registered nurse can, and only in line with the conditions set out in the doctor’s order. So let’s not all panic about staff with 12 weeks training handing out drugs willy nilly.

Then there is the 50% suffer from malnutrition. It’s probably true. The simple fact is that it is really hard to maintain a healthy weight in old age. As bodily systems slow down, food is not well digested. Chewing and swallowing becomes increasingly difficult. Tissue repair is not as good. Muscle mass is lost, and lost quicker with loss of mobility. Any illness will knock you around. Cachexia. The recommendation of going into old age with a BMI of 22-25 is in consideration of the fact that you will need a buffer to help maintain weight. The food provided in nursing homes is not the major issue. In fact, we feed, feed, feed residents. Breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper. 3 courses are offered for lunch and dinner. Residents are put on high energy high protein diets at the first sign of weight loss. Supplement drinks on top of the normal meal regime. And still they lose weight.

A few years ago, there was a meme going around about how we treat our prisoners better than our elderly. How typical as we continue to grow our prison population that we make these comparisons. I don’t think we should treat our prison population poorly. Being locked up is their punishment, not being made to suffer any more whilst in there. In fact, I think most of our prison population shouldn’t even be there. The government will probably call a presidential commission into the prison overpopulation crisis at some point in the future, at which time I could also save them a few billion by pointing out the many recommendations by experts that already exist, saying that rehabilitation, reparation and reconciliation is the most effective way to deal with offenders. And maybe address the socioeconomic issues feeding crime whilst we are at it. Locking people up for longer is about as evidenced a deterrent for crime as is “just say no” to drug use. Oh fuck, they’re on that bandwagon again this week as well, aren’t they? But anyway, without further digression into those rants, the meme was in fact, incredibly wrong about the care provided in most nursing facilities.

Neoliberalism is the source of our current problems in aged care. You know, those myths that the private sector will provide the best services for the best cost, and we as consumers exercise choice that keeps it that way? Yeah, right. When you need a bed for your grandmother in a crisis, you end up taking the bed available. Choice is a luxury when the demand for services outweighs their provision and takes away any dubious advantage that competition provides in the provision of essential services. After the government has wasted some more time and money investigating things that professionals, academics and people on the ground in the field already know, maybe they will eventually heed that public provision and regulation of essential services leads to much better outcomes than the free market. But I won’t hold my breath.

Irresponsible shoulder rehab 2018 road trip part 4

In the editing down of the pack, the binoculars were amongst the vices left behind. I came to regret that regularly. I did go with the jar of Nutella though. We got an early start from the campground and Alison had a ball getting the not-SUV to the car park. We even caught up with a real 4WD, who then pulled over to let us pass. Alison is a hoon.

Walking up to the top of Jim Jim Falls with a 14 day pack is a slog. Once we hit the creek, we turned up stream to find the nearest campsite, as per the new leisurely walk plan and jumped in. Alison again asked if I am sure the pool is croc free. I reminded her of the 180m of height we gained in the past hour. Alison is wearing nothing but a neckerchief. When I tease her about the scout look, she pulls a sultry pose on the water’s edge. She getting good at these. I fill my water bottle from the creek and go to drink only to find a tiny shrimp in it. 

I get to work on gourmet dampers. Today is cranberry and Nutella. Read, draw, write, drink tea, swim, do shoulder exercises, get sunburnt. I had even remembered how quickly I get sunburnt up here, and still I manage to get burnt on the first day. I have a unique tan line now. I discovered if you want to get a full body tan, you need to just lie there on your back. When you are a more casual nudist wandering around camp doing stuff, you get burnt on the top of your breasts only. We wander down to the top of the falls sporting the classic sarong and walking boots look.  We are forced into the tent early by mozzies, and lounge around discussing sex parties and sex work. The conversation never deviates far. There’s no weight in the vice of talking about sex.

Despite a leisurely start the next day, we are at our proposed camp by 910. It’s not entirely because we are lazy. We threw the extra days from the missed walk into this one, with the intention of lazing around and exploring. Given that we would have to commit ourselves to another 9 km if kept walking from here, we settling in for luxuriating. By 10, we have set up camp, been for a swim and settled in for some naked reading. Cheese and onion dampers are made. They are yummy. The blow flies agree. Most people don’t really think of bush walking as relaxing, but it is really enforced rest. We are miles from anywhere. No phone. No internet. No work. No responsibilities. Nothing to do but walk, swim, chill and eat.

Despite this, I sleep badly overnight, do way too much thinking about shit and have a melt down the next morning. I seem to operate on two extremes. Highly functional and non-functional. 3 days into a long walk really is not good timing for a batch of non-functional, let alone on a day a 9km bash away from the creek requiring an early start. Fortunately, after crying on Alison for half an hour, we resume packing. Then Alison can’t find her hat. Somehow, we still get away by 730.

Outside of the rocky country, Jim Jim Creek becomes long, still, dark pools, lined with overhanging trees, edged with water lilies. It looks like prime croc habitat. The first time I saw them, I had come over the escarpment and they are the first bit of Jim Jim you see. Not so inviting. At least when you have come up from the base, you have the reassurance that there is no way a croc would have gotten up that terrain. 10-12k of these pools is not so exciting though, so we were cutting a couple of corners and heading straight to the next interesting bit of topography. It’s pretty cruisy, mostly flat, not too rocky, light vegetation. Still, I feel a bit like a rolling drunk walking cross country like this. Whilst you are following a bearing and using the sun to keep you in line, you are constantly weaving around vegetation, then weaving back on course and in the end, you wonder how the hell you managed to actually keep a straight line, but somehow it has worked. Our drunken straight line successfully leads us back to the creek 4.5km later and we jump in. It still looks incredibly croccy.

We cut another corner through a fairy tale stone forest, where tall eucalypts and grevilleas full of tipsy honeyeaters create a surprisingly shady environment full of micro rock towers that look like ruins. Alison tells me I sound like an elephant charging through the bush. I scare 3 dragons and a goanna. Hopefully it scares the snakes away too. Being basically a baby elephant, I continue making enough racket to disturb our first ferals of the trip, sending a herd of cattle running. Pest animals, however, do us the favour of creating walking pads through the thick grasses, and they sometimes even turn out to be in a useful direction. It’s so much easier than bashing down the grasses ourselves that I frequently gamble on following any remotely close to the right direction.

It's starting to get a bit too warm, we are getting a bit over it and my feet are rather sore. I swear my feet are too small for me. They don’t have the surface area to hold the weight of an adult, let alone an adult with a pack. So, it is a joyous moment when we thrash out of the shrubbery and look onto the creek again. It is not croccy. It looks like a tropical resort. The water is a clear turquoise, white sandy banks grace the edges, and grevillea and paperbarks provide shade. Pack and clothes are off before you can say “this will do” and we are in the water.

Walking early in the morning is really lush. It’s also necessary as by lunchtime, it’s way too hot to walk. So, we are up just before first light. It’s a beautiful time with the feel of the air and the changing light. First light brings glorious colours that reflect off the water as I tend the fire and make tea. The pandanus make striking silhouettes (they really are lovely when you don’t have to walk through them and just lean appealingly over the water’s edge).  We are awake before the first birds. It’s like the birds all wake up together. It’s completely silent, then there’s one bird call, then they are going berko. These early mornings are like a brief moment in paradise. Until first flies.

The heat seems to bring out the scent in the grevilleas. It’s the first thing I notice walking near them. It’s a warm, sweet, rich, almost tasty smell, and I look around for the tree. The orange flowers are dripping with nectar. On most flowers, nectar is something you don’t notice unless you’re a bird or a bee. Not these grevilleas. Visible drops of it inspire you to lick them (and yes, they taste great too, although if you don’t notice a green ant on there you can get an unpleasant surprise).  They are so effusive, they drip off the tree, leaving a sticky crust on the ground underneath them. No wonder the honeyeaters are drunk.

Walking through woodland again and a random branch falls from a tree just missing me. If a branch falls on a Wendy in the forest and nobody hears her scream, did it really happen? We find a mini Nourlangie in the rocky country just before we rejoin the creek. The art to finding rock art is to be near good water, but far enough away to be out of the flood zone and spy a good cave or sheltered face. Using these principles, I scrambled up to one cave, and there it was. The surrounding area turned out to be full of art until we had to stop looking or we would never have made it to camp.

As it was, camp turned out to be perfect but still not quite good enough. A deep blue pool, sandy banks, rock tables, but Alison had come to expect perfection and suggested it could have more shade and been more sheltered from the wind. The map suggested the next kilometre of creek should have plenty of potential campsites, so we meandered on. Turns out, it didn’t. We find a site we could make work, but then Alison thought it would have mozzies. On we continue – surely the next confluence will have a good site. Then there we were at the confluence. About 13 years ago I did a walk in Litchfield where we had to camp in a recently burnt patch. It was filthy. We were filthy. Our stuff was filthy. We called it Fest Fest and I even made a commemorative shirt by writing that on my (already filthy) walking shirt in charcoal. This campsite at the confluence is Fest Fest 2, also known as the Feral Farm, as Alison has scared off 2 cows and a pig already. It is quite pretty if we ignore all that though. We covered 10.5 k today to get here. Alison is getting pretty good at the bush bashing business.

We suffered through a morning of serious bush bashing the next day. 2km had taken us 2 hours. Alison commented how you’d never get this sort of work out in a gym and we started designing the bush bash gym workout. Lots of things to push through with various degrees of resistance and capacity to flick back at you. Things to step over or under or stomp down. Preferably at inconvenient heights for doing any of the above. About waist height is good for that. Things to sink into like a pile of flood debris, stuff to climb over and things that grab at you and refuse to let you go. Then we got mean and added things with spikes and itchy powder that could fall on you if you weren’t careful and things that nipped at you. Somewhere in this, we saw our second snake of the walk, thus making twice as many snakes as kangaroos or wallabies we had seen out here. After these tedious 2 hours, we emerged at a massive (think football field size) deep blue pool coming out of a gorge. Swim break was called.

Then I pushed my luck a little too far. Sure, bush bashing was probably not what the surgeon ordered, but I’d been getting away with it. I’d slipped over twice already. Once on a boulder in a creek that moved, sending me into the water on my left side. The shoulder, the camera and the map came out of that unscathed.  Next was slipping on the sandy film covering a slab. 3^rd time unlucky, I got my feet tangled in a vine, tried to recover, failed and thudded forward onto both arms. It didn’t hurt at the time, but movement at extension felt a bit tender as the afternoon went on. I didn’t even have the pack on, just going for a reccy for a potential campsite, and in the end, we camp back where I’d left Alison anyway. Fortunately, it was gorgeous, so we took a rest day to see how the shoulder fared. I made sprouted mung bean, onion and tomato dampers to comfort myself. Emergency mat repairs were made and watching the incredibly clear skies at night, we invented new astrological signs.

We are walking before sun to get over to the Twin Falls catchment. I didn’t expect water in the final creek, but there it was. We cut a corner, find the creek again, and there’s still water. It soon turned into a treelined sandy corridor, impossible to get lost in and as easy as walking in sand ever gets.   Pools still appeared occasionally, eventually a long one forcing us onto the banks with the pandanus and green ants until we said fuck it, and chose the spinifex instead. We climbed out of the gorge over rocks surrounded by spinifex so thick we couldn’t see if there was anything beneath it to stand on and end up sinking waist deep in it. On reaching the top, we discovered the country had been burnt and rejoiced.

Burnt country is a walker’s blessing. I completely understand why the aboriginal people burnt the ground before them when travelling. We wove through a maze of rock towers on the cleared ground until we crossed the creek at the very top of its catchment – to discover a pool of water beneath a dry waterfall even there, followed by another 3 k across the top. It’s mostly burnt, flat country until we come to a line of rock towers, little fortresses guarding the descent. In time honoured short person behaviour, I climb up to the highest point, and spy where our creek descends the other side of the valley. We weave our way down the cliff and hit the creek. It’s dry. HTF can that be? Twin is a massive catchment. The last pissy little catchment was wet to the last few hundred metres. Have we hit the tributary just before where we thought we were? I go for a quick reccy. Nope, this is it. Wide swathes of rock drop into remnant pools. It would be stunning if it was running. I give up and return to Alison. Lunch, swim and a rethink are declared. Nutella tortillas were eaten. You can almost convince yourself they are as good as crepes at this stage of a walk.

We dub this “the creek of disappointment”.  After all the lush, flowing water on Jim Jim, we expected this to be similar, if not better, because Twin Falls flow much later in the season than Jim Jim Falls. I obviously don’t understand hydrogeology. The original plan to go upstream was abandoned and downstream we go. Shortly we find another pool with a nice camp site. As we are contemplating if we should stay there, Alison points out that if we came across this site in Victoria, we’d be rapt with it. We stay.

Twin Falls continues to be the creek of disappointment. The day did start with a lovely gorge, but the map looked like it could be hard going, narrow, steep sided and an ominous shade of dark green. It could actually have been worse. A little serious bush bashing, but mostly clear rock hopping and some long rock ledges that made us very happy. Early on, I walked into a web and missed a giant orb spider by an unexaggerated 3 mm. I armed myself with a spider stick after that. There were more close encounters with giant spiders in that gorge than kangaroos spotted all trip. Alison is quite distressed by the lack of kangaroos, but there is no shortage of dingos. Whilst we did not see any, almost every sandy bank had prints and we heard enough howling to suggest large packs at night.

At the end of the gorge, the creek formed a long still pond. On one side was vegetated flood plain nonsense, on the other, steep rocky spinifex. Hmmm …. Boggy pandanus and green ants or spinifex? It was a unanimous vote for spinifex, and as we scramble on more rock than spinifex, we were very happy with the choice. The ground opened up towards the next confluence and we find a random pair of socks. Some group has been desperate enough to make camp here. It doesn’t bode well for camp potential downstream. They are nice socks though, so I grab them. As we cringe at further flood plain in our path, I spy some burnt ground. Burnt ground doesn’t sound very exciting, I know, but when your other option is bashing through head high cane grass hiding vicious pandanus, it is great.

This is where the day starts to go on and on and on and on. 8 km of alternating flood plain and burnt land and not a decent camp site seen. The creek is flat as a tack here. It drops a single contour line in those 8km, so it’s like an elongated wetland, with vegetation so thick, we can’t get within 100m of it. We bash through to the water to fill bottles and wet shirts whilst precariously balanced on a pile of flood debris then retreat back to burnt country.

After 11km, we find a small clearing and hear running water. That’s the first movement in the creek for a long time. There’s a tiny pool formed where the water is funnelled through some pandanus. It’s actually incredibly cute. We have a long deliberation about whether to camp. It will be another Fest Fest. But as the creek drops only another 10m in the next 11km, this might be it.

The next day we were congratulating ourselves on our decision. It was another 4.5k to the next decent campsite and we were so glad we hadn’t slogged on. It would have been a lush campsite though, with little cascades running between sand banks with shady melaleucas.  From this point onwards, it stopped being the creek of disappointment. The creek was more open, with tannin coloured translucent pools in white sand and intermittent rocky cascades. It was nice to be able to see something other than the cane grass/pandanus nightmare. The walking was easy, following our noses between animal pads and previous walkers’ pads. It is a definite benefit from ferals, when they have bashed down the grasses for you. Despite this, my feet were caning. Alison’s neck was sore. 9 days in, but we are still smiling.

We decide the next pool is relatively close in the scheme of things. What’s a kilometre, when we are 30+k still from the car? Compared to the 3000+ ks from Natimuk, we are basically there. Or the 16000 k or so from London, we are actually swimming in it now. We find another cascade dividing 2 huge pools and settle onto the convenient sand bank for an afternoon of what we really came here for. Alison is concerned that the bank is covered in snake tracks. I am much more excited when I see them. There are either a lot of thirsty goannas making a beeline for the water, or our pool is home to a healthy population of freshwater crocodiles.

We finished walking at 9am the next day. I know, it seems like we could barely have started. But we’d done 3.5k and serendipitously hit the creek again at a perfect campsite, and who were we to say no? At this point, I develop the Rule of Gingernuts. That is, no walk can be longer than the supply of gingernuts allows. I have a little ritual of making tea and dunking gingernuts in it when we arrive at camp each day. On the current schedule, we are going to breach that rule by at least 1 day. 

Again, we are treated to easy walking. Vast flat slabs worn by the wet season torrent, broken by convenient steps.When not on the slabs, there’s a pedestrian pad. We are very close to civilisation again now, and the tourist helicopters reappear. It’s a good thing it’s easy, as we are tired. Then suddenly, it’s not at all easy. There’s a major waterfall to a massive pool.

12 years ago, I was camped opposite these falls when a gaggle of school girls appeared above it, and their leader made them throw their packs in, jump and swim across. We had decided that walking around was better. So today I confidently say, yep, we can climb around this, no worries. Well, baby elephants do seem to forget. There is a lot of spinifex. Head high spinifex between rock lumps and it’s all scrambling up then down then swimming through the spinifex to the next one. Swimming across the pool was starting to look like the wiser option. An hour later, we make it down the creek on the far side of the pool and contemplate what chaos this pool must be in the wet with a 20m wide torrent coming in from the south and a 10m one from the north whilst they both tried and exit to the west.

We find still more freshy tracks on the sandy banks, and this time they are ending in obvious diggings. Freshies nest in the late dry, burying their eggs in the sandy banks. We weave our way down the side of the gorge, once even hanging off trees to avoid getting in the water and settle on a raised sandbank with stunning views down the gorge. Alison comments how it doesn’t feel real. We’ve been transported to somewhere that doesn’t actually exist. Some tropical island maybe. I ask if there are hot waiters bringing us cocktails anytime soon on this tropical island?

I can’t believe I didn’t remember this gorge from 2006. I honestly don’t know what I’ve done with my brain cells. For the last few km above the falls and now down here, the landscape is, well, massive. It’s large scale water, erosion, rock, falls, pools, gores, boulders – everything is so striking. It’s certainly making up for being the creek of disappointment. Or maybe it’s even better for it. I run screaming down the sandbank and dive into the pool. On my second run, I stub my toe on a rock in the sand and decide maybe I didn’t need to do that again before I had to walk out with a broken toe.

I am continually embarrassed by my memory on this section. At the end of the gorge, a massive boulder in the creek prevents us getting across without getting wet or climbing. Did I remember having to swim? No. I drop the pack and put my hands lovingly into the crack up the boulder. Yippee! I am doing a few moves of real climbing! It’s maybe 15. Alison chooses the water and passes the packs up to me and wades around. Then about 500m before the falls, the creek goes underground. You can hear it running beneath the boulders. Nevertheless, I don’t think twice about it, because I seem to have early onset Alzheimer’s.  You’d think something as crucial as “there is no water at the top of the falls” might stick in my memory. Apparantly not. We admire the view (and again, the rock architecture of the falls is stunning, although the water is running out of the cliff inaccessibly 15m beneath us) and resign ourselves to walking back to fill our water bottles for the walk down.

When we left Jim Jim Falls, the road to Twin Falls was still closed due to high water level at the crossing. The ranger thought it would open soon. So, we were hoping it would have opened in our absence and we could just hitch down the road. No joy. We have lunch at the car park and contemplate camping or walking out in the heat. I was out of gingernuts. Alison was out of nut bars. We couldn’t stop thinking about barramundi and gin and tonics. We wet our shirts and started slogging down the road. 8km later, we hit the crossing. Such a little way across. A little wade in 800mm deep crocodile infested water. We sigh and turn up stream, through head high cane grass. A side creek creates a thickly vegetated confluence and after hopefully heading upstream to find a clearing, we give up, dive into the nightmare, climb a tree fallen across the creek and eventually find a bit of Jim Jim we can boulder hop across. At the car, we eat half a fruitcake and half a box of cheezels each, then head for gin and tonics.

2018 irresponsible shoulder rehabilitation road trip part 3

Alison and I don’t do things by halves. We left Katherine, procured coffee at the last known source in Pine Creek and motored on into Yirmikmik. Enjoyed a last lunch of fresh salad, then started walking at 12. Not the ideal time of day, but it was only going to be an hour or so, and our packs are ridiculously light. About 10 kg. Walking up north is so good. 4 ks later, we arrive at Motor Car Falls. The falls still trickle this late in the season after the massive wet this year, and have a deep plunge pool beneath them. Did I mention, walking up north is so good? I’m about to jump in when Alison ask about crocs. I hadn’t given them a second thought, because it really isn’t croc territory, but the thought is in my head now, and I double check the map. There’s the South Alligator (definite croc territory), but there’s a set of falls marked between here and there. Crocs can’t climb, I reassure Alison (and myself). Besides, there are no big fish for them to eat, and no banks to bask on. Can I guarantee there are no crocs? Well, um, no, but …. we go swimming. Nothing eats us. We make a fire and lounge around with cups of tea and ginger nuts. Well, I eat ginger nuts. They are so good to dip into tea whilst lounging around rockholes. It’s a vice I haven’t converted Alison to. These vices only seem to travel one way. I appear to be a vice sponge.

It’s 3pm and we are deliberating whether to camp here or continue to Kurrundie Falls. The sound of music makes the decision easy. A large, noisy group turns up (the price you pay for having a walking track) and we leave. The track ended at Motor Car, so Alison gets her first bush bash. It’s pretty easy as someone else has been here and there’s an intermittent pad through the cane grass. We hit the creek and boulder hop up to the falls, where massive conglomerate boulders block the way. We climb under and over them to arrive at the base of the falls, a double tiered set plunging into a steep sided pool. I don’t think this was what my shoulder surgeon ordered, but I seem to be getting away with it.  I am still doing my exercises. I brought the theraband. All 30g of it.

The boulders weren’t providing any camping space so we retreated a few 100m to some sandy patches suited to a tent and a fire pit. We rehydrate the first meal of the trip. They are yummy, but they have the appearance and texture of baby food. They should actually be nutritious though, given the amount of vegies and tofu I put through the blender and dehydrator in the weeks leading up to this. We discover the pool contains feet eating fish and stand in it laughing at them swarming around us. Mozzies drive us into the tent early and the night is hot. Definitely no more suffering in the cold for us.

The next day provides a more in depth bush bashing experience for Alison. A steep, loose, vegetated climb, followed by traversing across a spinifex covered slab. Whilst pulling on trees, pushing back shrubs and climbing over rocks, it again occurs to me this was not really what I told the surgeon I’d be doing. At the end of it though is a long gorge leading back to the waterfalls. We jump in and swim back to the top of the falls. At least the swimming is going well with the shoulder. It’s already feeling stronger and swimming breaststroke down the long pools is fine. At least, I’m pretty sure they said breaststroke was fine from 3 months … Alison declines to peek over, but the water falls freely over the mouth of a deep chimney into a lower pool before the fall visible from the bottom. Alison slips over getting out of the water on the return journey. There’s a moment of panic from both of us as she hits her face on the slab and falls back in the water, but she’s on her feet again before I can get to her. No bleeding, minimal pain, eyes equal and reactive, GCS 15. Is her GCS normally 15? We’ve been pretty loopy this trip … She seems fine and after a rest we go on.

The gorge requires swimming constantly. A green tree snake falls from a tree into the water just before we commit to swimming. At least I didn’t nearly step on it, which was the story of my last Kimberly trip. It did mean that the snake was in the water that we were about to be in. Oh well, it’s only a green tree snake. Shoes and day pack are abandoned to explore a few pools up before we head back to camp. On the way down, Alison turns an ankle. We truss it up like a turkey in my ankle brace and she keeps going. Then for the trifecta, she walks into a green ant nest. Green ants are aggressive little bastards that swarm onto you and bite if you disturb them. They hurt. The standard reaction is scream, swear and do a mad dance of slapping everywhere, throwing off your pack and clothing and getting someone to check they are all gone. It’s the least erotic variation on the dance of the seven veils you’re ever likely to see. Green ants are also not really green. They are 2/3s yellow, with a green bum. Green tree snakes are also yellow. I think someone in the Territory has yellow-green colour blindness.

The next day we are up early to walk out before it gets hot. This is the latest in the season I have ever been up here. I was at least trying to give the shoulder enough time to be ready for this. The days are really hot. And there are more mozzies. But thanks to the enormous wet season, there’s no shortage of water yet. We stuff our faces with almost fresh salad at the car and go to suss out our next walk. I am already thinking about another walk exploring further sections of Motor Car and Kurundie. This was my first foray into this section of the park, and it has more potential than I expected.

Unfortuneately, we are foiled at the next walk. Koolpin Creek is too high for the not-SUV to cross, and there’s nowhere to stash the car and walk in from there. Leaving the car on the side of the road for 4 days in a state full of burnt out cars on the roadside doesn’t seem the wisest idea. We retreat to Gunlom to rethink plans. Maps get thrown out on the ground again and more schedules drawn up. We decide to add the extra days to our Jim Jim Falls walk and take 14-5 days to explore there. I’m ready to settle at Gunlom for the night, have a rest day there to make sure Alison’s ankle has recovered and head for Jim Jim the next day, but Alison is afraid she’ll be bored. Did I mention she’s a task master? So in the car we get again (this is still the same day we walked 7k out from Kurrundie) and drive towards Nourlangie Rock, so I can have more art lessons the next day. And go to Jabiru for coffee.

The last 6km into Sandy Billabong provide the most exciting driving the not-SUV has done yet. Alison hoons around sandy corners and tells me how much fun this is. I tease her that recreational 4wding will become her new pastime. She declined to experience the joy of doing that road again though and we camped at the murella billabong.

Alison feeds the vice sponge cheezels and wine once we finally set up camp. The next morning, it’s Douglas’s vice I’ve taken on, as I make Alison get up before dawn to go birdwatching. Actually, only the birdwatching part is channelling Douglas. I’m not sure if even birds will get him up and functional at dawn. We wander down to the wetlands walk and discover a large “area closed due to dangerous conditions” sign. Right next to the crocodile and buffalo warning signs. Are the dangerous conditions some particularly hostile megafauna? It’s still quite dark and we decide that perhaps a stroll down to the boat ramp will suffice until a little lighter. I wander back in a bit (do I have more of the stupid and naughty genes than Alison?) and head down. The path descends from dry woodland into a patch of rainforest and as both the light and temperature drops, it feeds a little fear of volatile megafauna. I look around, laugh at myself and continue on. At the wetland is a very weathered stone bench, more than half covered in plants. I’m not sure what made them put a bench in the flood zone, but it looks like where birdwatchers come to die. The wetland is full of birds and I excitedly watch magpie geese, jacanas, a gazillion sorts of duck and even see a jabiru. Big birds. I am excited by big birds. My first ever birdwatching goal was a cassowary. Emus make me happy. The bustard in breeding plumage was a highlight of my Alice Springs desert park visit.

Nourlangie is a beautiful field of rocks. The path winds between and around them, and still more loom over from above. If a tribe of climbers had found it instead of Aboriginal people, it could be our Fontainbleau. Or maybe I’m just getting seriously delusional from lack of climbing. But it is gorgeous. The rock, the caves, the way they are scattered and form caves and tunnels. It feels cool and inviting and if I was living on the land up here, I’d want to hang out there. We come cross a ranger talk at one cave and listen to a story about a man who kidnapped and raped a woman then blamed them both for breaking kinship laws. They didn’t use such specific language. But the story had both of us angry about how a woman is blamed for being kidnapped and raped, and when the man was punished, it was for breaking kinship laws, not for abusing the woman. There was some discussion about cultural differences. I am not a cultural relativist. Abuse is abuse and stories that perpetuate victim blaming and fail to recognise abuse are not OK, whether in my cultural group or another. Alison performs a little hat slapping and hopping dance to fend off mosquitos. There’s some discussion about whether Aboriginal art can be appreciated without know the stories behind it. I ask if all art doesn’t have stories and intention behind it, yet we still apply our own interpretation and appreciation (or lack there of) to it. Sometimes serious conversations interrupt the otherwise constant flow of talk about sex.

We head into Jabiru to source real coffee and replacement thongs. I am a shoe destructionist. My thongs did not survive walk no. 1. My last walk in the Kimberly, I had to hold the sole of my boots on with strapping tape for a week. My latest boots are displaying a distressing peeling of the rand already. Thongs are a high demand item in Jabiru. Nothing remained between a kid’s size 1 and men’s size 7. I decided slightly short thongs were better than flippers. I could choose between Spiderman or Disney princess thongs. Alison thought I needed to reclaim the word princess. So I am a radical punk slut princess who refuses to marry the boring older man (real life princesses never got handsome princes) and produce an heir. I’d like a whole swathe of handsome princes and princesses, thanks. I’m not sure about whether I want to become ruler of the world or hand it over to anarchy though.

Alison and I have been on the road a month today and we haven’t yet fought nor slept together. Some people might find that disappointing.  Although Alison did say if I was a 6 foot tall man, she’d definitely sleep with me. What is a 5 foot tall girl to do with that? I have no chance. Devastating.

We’re up to about 6100km driven and 190km walked, 27 square metres of food and stuff had to be sorted a second time, about 30 litres of coffee has been drunk and despite how much I carry on about them, we might have only gotten through 6 boxes of cheezels. The number of mozzie bites are rapidly catching up to the number of photos taken. 5 hours of my life have been lost to shoulder stretching and 24 300 theraband exercises performed. No, I am not exaggerating this time. Don’t hurt your shoulder. The tedium of theraband will kill you.