Kakadu walking again. Is it ever possible to have too much Kakadu?

The road to Gunmarr campground is the world’s least 4wd rd. Nevertheless, we were the only 2wd vehicles there. Our vans weren't going to make the last section though, so our plan was to wander around camp asking for a lift into the falls the next day. We only got as far as asking the host where we could leave the vans. He said he was heading in at 545am if we could be up that early. Yep, we definitely could! He also suggested we move our vans over next to his site so we didn’thave to move them in the morning and it turned out to be quiet and shady.  When I went over to leave our leftover food with some people we had met on the other side, it was like walking into Hades, with the darkness broken by fires, smoke and noise everywhere. Our peace on the our side was only disturbed by some nesting curlews. One would start screaming, then the other reply from the other side of camp. For such a raucous sound, they look very effortless making it. The male barely moved from his pose under the host’s caravan, where he stood so still he could be mistaken for a support post. 

We are up for 545 and start walking in the dark. My deteriorating distance vision turns out to be a major problem walking on uneven ground by torchlight. So, I was slow until the light improved, but we would still have made the top for sunrise, except Abby saw a rainbow pitta. I was ordered to stop and she peered intently, raving about how gorgeous it was and how she’d wanted to see one for ages. I can’t see a thing. I turn my pack over for my glasses and binoculars, and Abby tries to tell me where it is, but have you every tried describing where a tiny bird in a patch of rainforest is? It’s almost impossible. But how is it that I cannot see a rainbow coloured bird? He looks like a leaf, Abby tells me. How can a rainbow look like a leaf in a sea of brown leaf litter? I fail to see it and we move on.

 

Somehow, I’d forgotten all the false creek lines along the top. When we eventually hit the main creek, we are starving for second breakfast and head upstream for a pool and place to make tea. By the time we leave our quiet pool to see the falls, dozens of people are there, but I did get talking to a local walker who gave us some tips on art sites. My eye for art is much better than my eye for birds, and I find 3 sites over the next few kilometres before we spy a shady sand bank on the far side of the creek and call it camp. I had walked in this area with Alison 3 years ago, so my mission was to find different amazing campsites and get to a few places we hadn’t then. Finding art we had missed was an added bonus. 

A spider runs out of the kindling as I am light our fire, and I attempt to relocate him when I demonstrate the limits of my spider tolerance by screaming and dropping the stick as it runs towards me. Abby turns out to have no spider issues at all and picks it up in her hands, coos at how cute it is, has a little conversation with it and carries it away.

The moon that night is full, and so bright we could almost have walked all night by it. Instead we escaped the mozzies and crawled into the tent and Abby beat me at Oh Hell a lot. I may have said a lot of variants of Oh Hell. A strange repeating whoosh whoosh noise passes over head. It doesn’t sound like an animal. More like an animated winged machine sent out to hunt us by the dystopian state formed in a covid ravaged world. Ok, maybe I have been reading too much young adult sci fi. They were fruit bats.

We have a leisurely start, then head off art hunting. We explore a forest of rock sculptures, stumpy little towers with caves and squeeze throughs but only small remnants of art until Abby crawled on her back under a low roof and found the ceiling covered. We stop to swim and spy some large boulders with an overhang, and head up to find a major art site with Bradshaw figures, Mimi art, more recent fish, turtles and kangaroos and some white and yellow art in a style that I have not seen up here before. 

On my first walk here many years ago, we had come across the escarpment to hit the creek just upstream from here at a long deep dark pool lines by pandanus and paperbark. If you were on the flood plains, it would be full of crocs. It’s still hard to rid yourself of the fear of crocs even when you know it is impossible, but having walked up the hill to get here certainly helps.

The creek disappears just down stream of that pool, and on that first trip, I hadn’t yet learnt that creeks often run underground and reappear on the escarpment, so we were quite perturbed. We also ended up on the overflow channel, so it was quite some time before we rediscover the water at a giant y shaped pool. In 2018, we’d decided to cut a few corners here, thinking the creek continued like this. And where we rejoined it, it was like this. Somewhere in the middle is an area known as the monoliths that I didn’t know about at the, which has since closed to walkers so I’ll never be able to seeit now. But there were a few kilometres of creek before then that I hadn’t seen, so we slogged along a buffalo trail by the dark pool. Then I realised I wasn’t wearing my hat. Whilst I am searching my pack for it, I spy a water monitor swimming across the pool. I don’t spy my hat. I must have left it at our last swim, so some other walker will score my Bike Melrose hat, proudly won at the Melrose 18 hour. The next pool (these pools are about 1 km long) is clear and blue, with shady banks on the far side. 

We go for a quick reccy upstream, over massive rock shelves with shallow cascades before making camp. The shallow creek upstream had taken the edge off the water temperature and it was perfect for long swims, with brown honeyeaters zipping down the drink water all around us. We lounge around with tea and gingernuts.

Abby’s mat had gone flat the previous night, so she blows it up, jumps in the water with it and has me laughing hysterically at her antics to get it under water to find the hole. No hole was found. Reading the instructions reveals she had not done the newfangled valve on it up properly. She goes on some bird hunts whilst I do a cryptic. She drags me on bird hunts and I make her learn cryptics. Our peace is constantly disturbed by a wailing kitten, or actually, some bird that evades all Abby’s efforts to find it. 

The agents of the dystopian state rush in again as the sun sets and gorge on the grevillea nectar, its delicious scent released by the warm night, and I’m lounging on the sand writing when Abby points out all the spiders have come out to hunt on the sand bank. I shine my torch around me and discover I am surrounded by wolf spiders. I am slightly less comfortable now. The full moon rises red on the horizon, then mozzies join the fray and we retreat to modern luxury of a tent.

This time we did start early. We were off bearing south over the escarpment and Abby showed me a screen on my GPS I had never seen before. I call it the cheater screen now, because it does everything – the direction you need to go, distance, speed, time to arrival, will there be a cup of tea there …. Walking is cruisy until we hit an area of rock towers. Rocky country here can be easy walking over slabs and gravel or desperate climbing up and down with gullies of spinifex in between. This was the latter. We skirt around the outside, with a few quick dashes in to look for art. Through a thankfully dry swamp, then burnt country making easy walking to our next creek. A half metre wide trench of running water splits the burnt country, but the catchment is tiny and we are at the top of it! Where is all the water coming from? We follow it down and the land flattens, turning to quagmire and buffalo wallow and we find ourselves landlocked. Retreat, then some precarious sludge hopping gets us to dry land again. It’s hard to tell how solid the raised patch you are jumping for is and I am grateful for my waterproof boots, despite the heat.

We decide lunch is in order at the next nice bit of creek in case more boggy, vegetated creek nonsense awaited. It didn’t, and the creek turned into a stunning gorge with perfect rock platforms. We had intended to walk further, but it was hot, and it was a perfect campsite. We stayed.

Second lunch, cups of tea, gingernuts and swims later and we go for an explore. We suss out an exit route on the far side of the gorge but it was desperate rocky nonsense, and continued down towards the edge of the escarpment, dodging giant spiders, snakes and green ants. It soon became too unpleasant to bash further and we retreated. Our dystopian overlords send swarms of black dragon flies to check on us this night.

 

I’m awake at 530 and it’s so light with the full moon I get up and start my tea ritual. It is hard to keep sleeping when you have been in bed for over 10 hours. There’s no need to rush this morning, but there’s something nice about being up for dawn. We head upstream on the escarpment for ease of walking, and after a cruisy 700m, we hit the creek again at some lovely cascades and it looks good to camp. It’s only 8am. We both dump packs and go for an explore, fail to catch up with each other and I’ve wandered a kilometre up stream past almost constant cascades to where the water just disappears. I cross the rock to walk down the far bank when I am stopped short by bog. Endless bog. After 30 minutes of trying to get through, I retreat with tail between my legs. That is where all the water is coming from anyway.

I hadn’t completely lost Abby and we headed down stream. The top gorge is phenomenal, with falls into a squarecut gorge that does a 90 degree turn into more falls and more falls. We relocate camp to the second tier which has a perfect camp shower next to it and we sit under the cascades and make tea on rocky ledges overlooking the lower gorge.

A drone whines in the distance. We’ve heard this before, and Abby is not buying my dystopian fiction. She thinks the drone is a chestnut button quail. Abby realises she has lost her sunnies and decides to follow the gorge down to our last camp (it is only a few hundred metres as the crow flies). We climb down a chimney, paddle across some pools, scramble down another gully and eventually pop out in the section beneath our last camp. No sign of sunnies, so Abby reverses our whole morning whilst I chill out at camp, to no avail.

 

My memory is a very fickle thing. I often have detailed recall of where I’ve walked, trails I’ve ridden, routes I’ve climbed. Of course, I can never remember where I’ve put my keys, but still, I’m good with the important things. So, it always comes as a shock to me when I don’t remember something. On this occasion, it was the entire section of gorge we were at. I’d walked across here from Twin Falls in 2006, and it had been quite dry that year, so it had been a long, long day until we found water somewhere in those cascades up stream. I remember the cascades. We collapsed and camped with relief. It’s the next day that does my head in. We had walked down the gorge, there was lots of rockhopping with heavy packs and not a lot of room to navigate between rock, water, pandanus and orb spiders. I was super tired and after nearly walking into yet another spider bigger than my hand, I was so traumatised we escaped up the next creek line. So, I have walked down this creek before, but all I could remember was the trauma!

 

Our early start was slightly delayed by not hearing the sound of the alarm over the cascades, but we were still walking by 0640. There’s a lot of rock and complicated looking terrain on the map, with the possibility of not having any water and needing to continue on to Twin falls. We are buoyed at the first creek we hoped to find water in because it is a gorgeous trickle in a little glade where we stop to refresh and skull. Beautiful rock country like an enchanted forest of rock towers gives way to not so beautiful waist high spinifex in chunky loose boulders.

Hopeful creek number 2 is dry, but we do find some art. There’s probably more but we don’t have time to hunt. We come to the creek of disappointment around midday. It is a dry bed in thick rainforest, heading towards falls off the edge of the escarpment, which are currently 100m cliffs with a manky pool above them. Abby sits in the dry creek bed to eat as it’s the least infested place with green ants.

 

Make do with treating manky water and no swimming? The decision is made to keep slogging on towards Twin Creek. We head up stream; it’s hot and muggy in the rainforest and after 2 near misses with orb spiders, I send Abby ahead as spider warden. We make it out and are relieved to find some easy walking as we are knackered. We make waypoints to keep us motivated to continue a while before collapsing again. Sometimes they are only 600m apart.

 

The next creeks are dry, but we are so excited to discover the land burnt. Easy kms pass until we hit the final creek down to Twin. Just as we are nearly there, things fall into fiasco. We lose our shit over green ants. We kinda give up on navigating and just bash through the direct line to the creek. I twist my ankle and by the time we are on the last slope to the creek I have a little tanty when Abby says there are only 10m to go. Then there is water and pristine camp. On the far bank. Abby offers to ferry the packs around and I swim for camp in all my clothes. I am so itchy from all the bush bashing, hot, filthy, sweaty and my ankle hurts. I put a fire on to make tea for Abby and as we collapse for the afternoon tea ritual realise it’s nearly 5. That was 10 hours. 

Kakadu mixes serious walking in with serious resting. The next day we lounge in the shade, drink tea, play games, draw and I read an entire book. I love the little rituals of camp life. Collecting wood, tending fire, making tea and damper. We follow the shade around our sandy bank and make occasional runs across burning sand for the water. Over the days we camp here, the birds get used to our presence. The pied cormorant swims in the pool in front of us, then hangs it’s wings out to dry in a tree. A forest kingfisher perches in a tree above the campfire. Friar birds frolic in the rain forest patch behind camp and a bower bird serenades us with its horrendous squawk and a red goshawk chases a banded fruit dove over our heads. I think it got away as we didn’t hear any sounds of carnage.

The soles of my boots are falling off and my ankle still hurts, so the universal fix all of strapping tapeis applied to both. We take a day trip up stream, and it’s fascinating to see how the gorge has changed with the passage of 3 wet seasons since I was last here. Sand banks morph, pools grow and shrink. Baby vegetation sprouts and it’s incredible how any of them get a foothold in the few months before they are under a torrent of water. It’s the start of freshwater crocodile nesting season and we discover tracks and diggings where they have left the water to lay in the sand. Abby spies our first snake of the trip. Well, our second. I nearly trod on a tiny python, but it was dead. A pleasant change from the trip to the Kimberly where I nearly trod on 4 living snakes.

There’s a massive pool where our creek tumbles over wide falls at a convergence. It’s formed by the massive turmoil that must occur here as the 2 creeks collide in the wet. Swimming across it is a psychological feat. You know there is a 100m cliff between here and any person eating crocodiles, but it’s a deep, dark pool. I remember that walking across the top of it was a dire battle with rock and spinifex that took an hour to cover 100m. So we choose to boulder across. Shallow water soloing is kinda dumb, but it’s not hard and kinda fun. The we climb up beside the fall for a quick meander across the top, which has beautiful polished rock slabs spreading 50m wide. The first time I was here, we had set up camp opposite the falls and a group of school girls appear at the top and their guide made them throw their packs in and jump. It is the quickest way! The guide turned out to be a friend of a friend in Natimuk, in the way that Natimuk really is connected to everywhere.

My ankle is still not loving life, so we bailed on the final day walk and rest my ankle for the long slog out. See, I was sensible! It happens sometimes. Abby goes for an explore and I go back to serious resting. I’m ready to return to civilisation. We are day dreaming of Darwin markets full of tropical fruit and barra burgers at Cooinda. A cold pinot gris. Hot showers and our cosy vans. But also wondering what we’ll be able to do when we get out – will the NT be in lockdown too? Will we be able to travel home and where should we go if we have lockdown? Then a helicopter flies overhead and we conclude the NT can’t be in lockdown if scenic flights are on.

 After the heat of the day has passed, we decide to move camp a few kms downstream, to save time on our final day. Another perfect campsite is found, I continue my history of almost treading on snakes and scream as the tree snake dashes for the water. They really can swim as we watch it make the 20m crossing with ease. Abby gets up on a rock to get a better look and scares a freshy which also dives into the water. She hops in the water, then out again saying it was different when you actually see a crocodile in the water, even when you knew it wouldn’t eat you.

 

We make an early start which is soon lost to hunting for white throated honey eaters. Abby has been trying to find one for the whole time we’ve been up here, and she thinks she may have heard it. The bird app recording is played a few times to try and draw it out and we search around the rocky spinifex above the waterway which is its habitat. No joy. Then the creek disappears underground, coming out half way down the falls over the escarpment and joining the crocodile fest below.

We pick up the old walking trail down and I finally see a rainbow pitta in a rainforesty side creek.  We have a quick splash and wet our shirts in a shallow section of creek that looks relatively safe then it’s 5 km down the fireroad, a bash across a side creek where we were thankful for the feral pigs and buffalo clearing a track for us and then back over Jim Jim creek above the croc zone. We hit the road, hit the ground and put our thumbs out. No way were we walking the last 5k back to our vans.

 

 

Please just stop. Surprisingly enough, being a thoughtful and considerate person might be good for both cultural heritage and climbing.

Whilst everyone is busy writing submissions to PV, I’d like to point out that they have already been swamped in letters, emails, interviews, meetings, submissions etc etc saying the same things that everyone seems keen to restate now – eg. Climbers do not damage cultural heritage; climbers have a connection to the land; the closures have an economic impact; oh, but what about all the other damage to cultural heritage in the world; we need a more nuanced approach than blanket bans, etc etc. In case you hadn’t noticed, it isn’t working. Maybe it's time for more people to join the reconciliation approach, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it might actually lead to mutually beneficial outcomes?

Saying climbing does not damage cultural heritage continues to demonstrate that climbers are not listening. It is not our position to say whether we have damaged cultural heritage or caused offence. The traditional owners are saying that we have. Insisting we haven’t just demonstrates we are not listening. Please just stop. No conversation about sharing space can happen until we acknowledge that. Try instead saying that we didn’t intend to cause harm, we are sorry we caused harm, we would like together to find ways to share these places without causing harm. How can we hope to be listened to when we aren’t listening either?

Those people trying to compare the relative value of different people’s connection to land, please just stop. It’s not possible to compare these things, it’s incredibly rude, presumptive and condescending, it causes hurt and offense, and continues to demonstrate my previous point, that climbers are not listening. It’s also kinda irrelevant. The legislation is about indigenous cultural heritage, not post-invasion cultural heritage. It’s trying to take the focus away from what the discussion is actually about, on protecting indigenous cultural heritage.

Accusing PV of trying to make money out of climbing is just as evidenced as some of their accusations of climbers causing damage. It’s the same sort of slander and just as unhelpful. Also, like climbing heritage, the economic impacts are kinda irrelevant. The legislation is about protecting cultural heritage, not the economy. Talking about the economic impacts again is taking the discussion away from the actual topic. Please just stop.

Yes, there is a bunch of damage to cultural heritage across the country and the whole country has cultural heritage, but this too is kinda irrelevant. Native title legislation only applies to a very small amount of land. Mining and private property rights override any native title claims. Hence, it is really only in our public lands that the legislation has any effect. So, outrageous as Juukan Gorge was, it has no relevance on our situation. Carrying on about the Peaks Trail is also pointless, because this has already gone through the process of considering cultural heritage and reached conclusions about what can be done to minimise impact. You might not agree with the consolidation of trails and campgrounds to minimise impacts, but that is the choice of the land managers, and it is, again, not our situation. Stop trying to talk about other stuff!!!! It demonstrates that we are, again, not listening, and also, that we are failing to take responsibility for our own stuff. Can we move on from this as well?

Much as you wouldn’t think so for the carrying on, PV have actually listened to climbers about selective closures. They haven’t said “the entire Victoria Range is closed”. They have gone through every single crag recorded, most of which none of us have every heard of, let alone been to, and given a crag by crag assessment. A whole bunch of them are still under consideration. You may not like the outcome at some of them, but they have tried to do what we asked for, and have said they will consider further focussing of closures. Try saying thank you, you appreciate they have changed the blanket ban approach, and a lot of work has gone into reviewing many areas, but there are places where the area covered by the crag is extensive, and we would appreciate if they could be broken down into smaller areas to review if some of the crag was still appropriate to climb at, that we would like to be involved in the assessment of areas. The traditional owners are also saying they want to support recreational use of their land where possible. This is in fact a positive step forward. Work with it. Of course, we will never be involved in the assessment of areas if we don’t stop doing all of those things I pointed out earlier, because climbers are burning bridges with traditional owners at a great rate. There is a reason why the reconciliation network are the only climbers invited into the discussions. 

The majority of climbers have spent the past 18 months yelling and screaming, and it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. This situation isn’t going to go away because it makes us upset, uncomfortable, challenges how we have been, what we do and where we go.  It isn’t just Victoria.  Moving to Queensland, or voting for a liberal government (seriously, why would you throw health, welfare, education and the environment to the wind and vote liberal over cultural heritage?) will not make it go away. Climbers say they want to protect cultural heritage and work with the traditional owners. Start actually doing what you say then, by listening to the traditional owners, by acknowledging what they say, because this is the very first step to having a conversation. And please stop doing the opposite –protest climbs and legal challenges are blatantly rude to the traditional owners and it’s impossible have respectful conversations when you are busily causing even more offense than you did in the first place.

It’s also very easy to go into a conversation with set ideas about its resolution. Think about how you feel when you have a problem, you tell it to someone and they instantly start telling you what to do about it. You don’t feel listened to and acknowledged. You don’t feel like they have asked how you feel, what you would like to happen or what your preferred outcome is. You feel like they have imposed their solutions on you and assumed that you don’t have your own solutions to your problem and they know better than you. That is kinda what we do when we go into these conversations with our solutions to reconciling climbing and cultural heritage already formed. Solutions need to be formed together, and conversations need to start from a position without expectations first. Climbers have been doing a bunch of whitesplaining.

There is a whole range of problematic behaviour amongst the climbing community throughout this – from outright racism, to unconscious racism, simple lack of awareness and thoughtlessness, a lack of empathy, and defensive privilege. Please stop calling the reconciliation approach “woke”, “brown-nosing”, or “giving up climbing”. It’s actually just called being a decent human being, and incidentally, the only way we are going to be able to move forward. Yes, I am offended by words and actions of many climbers around this. But I am also frustrated because I, too. want to be able to climb, and these actions and words aren’t just offensive. They are ruining our chance to build relationships that will be the foundation of our access in the future.

For Mum. Life goes on, but is never the same.

When I was a child, Mum used to play Tammy Wynette whilst doing the housework. I hate Tammy Wynette. I blame this early conditioning for my minimal domestic skills. What’s particularly ironic about Mum’s taste for Tammy Wynette’s old fashioned whining about life and relationships, is Mum was really a radical in hiding. She also had a thing for Tom Jones and his hip wriggle in his tight, tight pants. I often wondered how different Mum’s life would have been had she been born a decade or 2 later, or even if she had been at university through the massive shake ups of the world post 1968.  I don’t think it was by chance that she raised 2 children whose lives have not exactly been conventional.

In the 1960s, Mum earned a scholarship to study nuclear physics. But the world being as it was back then, she wasn’t able to stay in Tasmania alone to study and moved back to Adelaide where she started teaching. I often laugh at how many career changes I’ve had in 30 years, but Mum out did me. In the space of 3 years, she’d gone from nuclear physics, to teaching to nursing, then somewhere in the midst of sneaking out of the nurse’s quarters to party, she met Dad and thus found herself mothering. Later in life she went on to study art and feminist theory.

I suspect nuclear physics would have been easier than raising me. Firstly I nearly kill us both being born. Then I scream non-stop for 3 years and the only way I would sleep was if they drove me around the block. I figure it was carbon monoxide poisoning. In desperation, they put me in care, but as soon as Mum had had a chance to sleep, she felt so guilty she brought me home again 2 days later. I have no idea why she had another child given what a nightmare her first one was.

I might I lulled her into a false sense of security for a few years in the middle, before the real monster in me reared its head again as a teenager. When my friends are struggling with nightmare teenagers, I reassure them that I was a shocker, and somehow come out of it a reasonable human being and incredibly close to my mother.

Mum and I could talk about anything. That’s a particularly good thing as I discovered at some point that she’d known every time I’d lied to her as a teenager. Mum described me as not just a daughter but a best friend. I could say we were lucky to have the relationship we did, but luck would not be giving Mum credit for the work involved in the formation of both me and our relationship.

In a world where women are under constant pressure about their appearance and behaviour, Mum brought me up to be confident and comfortable with myself, capable of doing whatever I decided to do and to throw social expectations and stereotypes to the wind. I don’t know how she managed to do that, but I’m eternally grateful. As I grew up to have a somewhat wild life and interests, Mum was always loving and supportive. Even proud of funny old me. Except when I shaved my head. Then she told me I looked like a concentration camp victim.

Just as I seemed to be becoming functional adult, I nearly died in a canyoning accident. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to get that phone call to say your daughter was in intensive care. I guess that was the start of Mum’s continued mothering of her adult daughter. I’m a prime example of how mothering never ends. Mum looked after me after my accident, after my shoulder surgeries, when my mental health was struggling. Whilst I was a miserable sod after one of the shoulder surgeries, Mum assured Douglas I had been a terrible sick person as a child, and nothing had changed. She had to cut up my food, put my hair up and tie up my shoe laces, and we laughed about how it was just like old times. 

Mum struggled with physical health issues all her life. I don’t know how she coped really. I fall to pieces the moment I’m unable to do all the things I want to. She always said her body had never been that reliable, but what would be intolerable to her was losing her cognitive capacity. Over the past few years, she’d stress that her memory wasn’t what it was, that she’d lose track of words, or where she’d put things, and I’d tease her that I must have been becoming demented all my life if this was a sign to worry about. 

She’d still beat me at Scrabble and get all the cryptic crossword clues. Douglas would joke that it was time to play Scrabble when Mum was tired, so at least we’d be in with a chance. Despite her own struggles, Mum was always there to do things for the people she loved, spending a lot of time supporting Nan over the past years as well as helping out people in the community. Whilst she was unable to work, she would still be out volunteering.

Mum hadn’t really cared about whether she became a grandmother or not. Which considering how Malcolm and I were looking, was probably a good thing. But in an unlikely turn of events, Malcolm provided the goods and Mum discovered that being Nanna was great, and Malcolm and Kristy raised Lola to be as into family as Mum was. Whilst she cried when they moved to the States, they remained in close contact over the years and Lola was a source of pride and pleasure for Mum.

We went through boxes of childhood remnants together over the past few months, and discovered terrible poetry I had written for her as a child. Mum’s poetry was much better than mine.

I wonder what I was thinking with some of those metaphors, but I get the chocolate ice cream. Everyone loves chocolate ice cream, and everyone loved Mum.

I always knew I’d come to care for Mum when she needed it. It didn’t make it any easier when it happened. For all the radical paths her life may have taken in other circumstances, Mum never regretted meeting Dad and having Malcolm and me. Well, I expect the thought crossed her mind a few times over the years, but overall … Whilst covid 19 restricted what she could do with her last months, having her family around her was important to her, and family flocked around her. And she still beat us at Scrabble.

Despite all the difficulties in her life, Mum requested we play What a Wonderful World at her funeral, because she did think life had been wonderful. I can’t imagine anybody won’t be in tears by the end of it.

 

 

 

 

Rambling memories part 3: Moon Safari

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyGF4pvTwW4_GYk3jSZy4IGXT7hW1PkdB

Douglas has music on constantly. He also has slight hearing loss, so I had to make him put his phone underneath the pillow each night because the music playing from it was too loud for me to sleep. I have long since lost count of how many nights I feel asleep to Moon Safari. Air are really a band for all occasions. They do dinner parties, relaxing, dance, sex … although these days, they are so strongly associated with happy times with Douglas, they also make me cry.

In his early 20s, Douglas had long red hair. I have a massive thing for men with long red hair. Did you know that only 1.5% of the population have red hair? Then half that for the number of men, then think about how many men have long hair … ok, it’s a specialist field. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t know Douglas then. He and Natasha moved into Natimuk at pretty much the same time Jason and I did. Douglas’s hair was still long, but he wasn’t dying it anymore. Does dyed red hair count? I never got the chance to find out anyway. That was 20 years ago.

Natimuk being Natimuk, we went climbing, we socialised and Douglas and Natasha demonstrated some fine outfits. I should add a nudity warning here. There may be a bit of Douglas flesh in these photos. Of course, Douglas being Douglas, you’ve probably seen it all before. If it wasn’t some skimpy costume, skinny dipping or life modelling, you may have caught a glimpse of the time he and Natasha road the tandem naked to the fire dam for a swim.

Douglas followed me up the delightful Power without Glory once. That’s the squeeze chimney, off width roof thing with a skull and crossbones on it at Black Ian’s. Despite that experience, he still fell in love with me 10 or so years later. Maybe that’s how long it takes to forget what you are getting yourself in for.

Thus at some point in time, we found ourselves on a climbing trip to Flinders Island.  It was very impromptu. Douglas rang me from the island to talk me into flying down in 2 days’ time. And who am I to say no to random adventures? It turned out to be a rare week of idyllic weather in Bass Straight, and well, what do you expect to happen between 2 people skinny dipping on stunning isolated beaches in between dying of terror on rarely repeated routes of mediocre gear and friable rock? Or maybe Douglas was overcome by the undeniable attraction of a future filled with thrutching.

So we went as friends and returned as lovers.  But it wasn’t until a month or 2 later, when I came home to find Douglas washing my dishes attired only in my 1950s style frilly apron that I decided I really was in love with him. Fortunately for you all, I don’t have a photo of that outfit. But I did find this one to fill in the gap. I mean, you can see how irresistible he could be …. Ok , again, I have specialist tastes.

Somewhere in those heady early days, I left a pair of shoes at the top of a route at Barbican Wall. I warned Douglas that it was worst rock you’d ever encounter on a 2 star Grampian route, plus the track in was overgrown with spikey hakeas. Douglas later said in the haze of early love, he’d have eaten cat food if I said it as a good idea. So even though I admitted it was a bad idea, he came to rescue my shoes with me, but declared it was the most scared he’s ever been on second.

The relationship was full of fun and adventures. Buffalo, Moonarie, Frog, Hook Island, Nowra, Blueys, Tasmania. In the years before we got together, Douglas had lost his way a little. Been tempted away from the straight and narrow by the vices of making art and making money. These things were separate, as any artist will know. Douglas’s art was well received despite the lack of financial gain, winning several prizes over the years.

As a result of art and work though, he had done little climbing in the preceding 5 years. I fixed that. Back in those long red headed days, Douglas was a climbing machine.  At least his break from climbing meant I wasn’t being left behind. The adventures continued – Townsville, Kakadu, Red River Gorge, Indian Creek.

But really, it must have been the trenches that did it for Douglas – how else did we end up on The Ogive 

or doing the til then unrepeated Citizen Kane, an overhanging gnarly crack in Townsville? It doesn’t take much to turn a natural climber back into a climbing machine though and this is an incredibly excited Douglas having just sent Citizen Kane, his first 27 about 10 years.

Douglas’s glory in the Ogive was more in his outfit however

One of the things I loved about being with Douglas was the way conversations would just start from something random and escalate into a world of silly. We started one of those just before a day’s climbing with Ben, and by the time Ben was there to pick us up, Douglas was all kitted up, a bag of props and costume changes ready and Ben was thrown unwittingly into some low grade film making.

Douglas started our relationship owning 1 pair of hotpants. I have lost track of how many he owned by the end of it. Hell, there are probably even more now.

Douglas was responsible for my decent into decadence. Fancy wine. Fancy cheese. Fancy beer. Fancy places to stay. Fancy places to eat out. Gradually he wore down my decades of dirtbagging. For my part, I dragged him to off widths and made him bash through the wilderness for weeks on end. 

He made me stay in beachside bed and breakfasts.I  suspect I got the better end of that exchange. He did make me look at birds a lot though.  I spent evenings wistfully staring at the tent roof whilst Douglas was lost in the bird app. Turn around to see where he was on the trail to find he had turned his pack upside down to find the binoculars because there was some small brown bird to identify.

I would spend all my money on climbing gear and survive on scummy old electronic devices. Douglas was the reverse. His rack still looked like the early 90s, whilst he had the latest apple gadgets. I gave Douglas decent climbing gear and he gave me electronic toys and we made each other drink champagne. Actually, Douglas’s rack seemed to miraculously disappear and mine went out even when climbing without me. He was also responsible for my addiction to dishwashers, air conditioners and cleaners. He got me hooked on snorkelling, modern board games and an assortment of trashy computer games.

I don’t have any regrets about any of these addictions really. But despite all his best efforts, he failed to convert me to birdwatching. I doubt he has given up hope though.

Of course, we all know Douglas became incredibly ill in there as well.  Life was pretty bloody hard for both of us in there. There were many times when we’d both just end up on the floor crying. I’m not going to dwell on it, because I’m not the dwelling on shit kinda person. Instead I’m going to dwell over how silly he is. How much laughing we did together. Remember instead sitting on the couch crying with laughter over Bill Wither’s singing “Hot, hot”. The cheesy breathiness of it had us in fits of laughter. I guess you probably had to be there .. but I still laugh everytime I hear it, in the way that many memories of Douglas make me laugh.

I really wanted Douglas’s illness to be psychiatric. It didn’t make it any less hard going, but at least there was hope for a cure. In some ways, I still can’t believe it is a terminal illness, because, well, I don’t want to. I can’t imagine losing an old friend and lover this young. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a rapidly degenerating illness. I imagine all of us struggle to imagine coming to terms with hearing a diagnosis like that. I want a world where Douglas and I get to finish projecting the Ogive together in outrageous outfits. 

At least Douglas can still wear outrageous outfits, and I will happily push him in his wheelchair in whatever set of hotpants takes his fancy. In fact, I found him the finest hotpants that Horsham could provide. 

                                                                                                                                            

More rambling memories inspired by music - Bat out of Hell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QGMCSCFoKA

I fucking hate this song. I didn't listen to that link, and feel free not to yourself. However, this song is an integral part of my housesharing with Ken. I think it may have been the only tape (yes, tape, that's how long ago this was) he owned. He used to play it particularly loud when he was pissed off with me. Which was usually because the house was a mess. When the kitchen was a mess, he would bring home a massive steak and stink the kitchen out with in it revenge. I was a staunch vegetarian at the time. That I can't stand this song is sort of appropriate, because Ken and I vacillate between adoring each other and driving each other insane.  I would come home at times to find Ken in the lounge ensconced in porn videos (yes, actual videos that he hired from the sex shop in Katoomba. That is showing our age). He didn't have a VHS player in his room. I'm pretty sure he come home once to catch Jason and I having sex in the lounge, so I suppose we are even.

I loved sharehousing in my 20s. We lived our own version of He Died with a Felafal in his Hand, but I also formed lifelong friendships from it. It's so often mad and chaotic and messy and loud and intrusive but it's also fun and caring and like your own weird family. Moving out of home in suburban Adelaide and into inner city Sydney share housing was quite the step. There was the house where the upstairs bath tub crashed through the floor with someone in it. The flatmate who broke a rib and was sent home ED with panadiene forte, then cracked open a bottle of red, so by the time I came home, he was a grinning idiot unable to move on the couch. I confiscated the wine and threw a blanket over him. He later moved out because he had to go to London to start the Marxist revolution. I'm still waiting for that revolution. The one whom we found dead in her room. That story is rather sad. Another who developed a speed habit, then moved her boyfriend in and painted her room purple whilst I was away on a climbing trip, then just disappeared. John and I spent hours painting the room back to rose pink to get our bond back. That incident did lead me to moving in with Bili and Corisse, so all worked out well.

Ken and I met out of the Mt when I was 17. Apparently he had a massive crush on me, but I was oblivious to that at the time. We were both into climbing cracks, so we set out on a mission to do Boy Racer. We simulclimbed up to the ledge on Syrinx, got rained on, got swooped by birds and stared trepidously at the route. I magnanimously said Ken could go first. He said, oh, no, you can. No really, I mean it, you can have this one. No, no, you can. I made an attempt and bailed off, a gibbering wreck and sent Ken up to save the day. He disappeared out of sight into deadly silence until finally I hear a pitiful sounding "safe". Normally Ken bellows. I battle up after him and as I pop into his sight, he asks if I had cried under that roof, because he had been.

Ken and I have been through rocky rides together in both of our lives. He knew me through my reckless younger years, and my messy 20s coming to terms with trauma. His deep depression in his 40s. I think I may have been the only person he saw outside of his work for a few years there, because I would just turn up from Victoria on his doorstep and insist we go climbing. Until he didn't have the head for climbing anymore and we would just do dinner.

We were both around for many random adventures. He has enough Wendy stories to dine out on for years, as I do Ken stories. He was renowned for getting his kit off. I discovered he has a bald triangle on his perineum courtesy of a day when he decided he would just climb naked. You can't help but notice these things when he is bridging above you. And then every climber on Serenity Crack the day we did it knows all about Ken's adventures in the sex clubs of San Francisco. He doesn't have a quiet voice when he's excited. There was the day when he was guiding a group in Sydney for the Mardi Gras through a canyon, and he cut the arse cheeks out of his wetsuit for the occasion. He made more in tips than his wage that day. We had a party that he couldn't make not long after that, and so we made an alter to Ken out of his wetsuit. Ken has always been a lot of fun and loving in his awkward backhanded fashioned when he's not being a grumpy fucked up bastard (his words!). He's a total contrast of outrageous and blokey, and a soft gooey centre that he's done a lot of work to get in touch with in recent years. I do adore him, and it is fun to talk back to the outrageous and blokey. We have been continually playfighting for nearly 30 years.

Last winter, I finally got Ken back climbing with Bili and Shaun from our old circle from the 90s after his years of exile. It was also the first time I'd seen Shaun in about 15 years. Our day at the cliff was straight back to the old days. The same old bad jokes. The sun was shining, we were laughing, climbing was happening and the world was great.

I may have destroyed the Bat Out of Hell tape in a fit of pique. Ken's mostly forgiven me.

Rambling memories inspired by music: The Clouds

Much as I am tempted to keep writing about covid 19, I am diversifying before it drives all of us insane. You're not out of the warzone however, I might yet start ranting about the police state! In the meanwhile, I am moving onto another highly popular internet theme that I've always found rather annoying, which is chain posting of "10 albums that changed your life" or "10 photos" or "10 books", no words, no explanation. The thing that annoys me about them, is that these things are interesting for the stories behind them. What makes them meaningful? What memories do they stir? How did they change your life?  I don't want to just see an album cover. I want to hear about it's context. So strap in, I'm about to verbosely write all about some music that always takes me back to certain places, people, times in my life, starting with the Clouds.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA247F35B040D7533









The Clouds exemplify a genre of music that I call "Kylie music". Kylie and I have known each other for 32 years now. Fuck that seems like a long time. I had a very mobile childhood, with my father being in the RAAF, and as a result, I don't have those lifelong friends from primary school that most people have. Kylie is my oldest friend. We met briefly when we were both in Venturers, before I became on off the rails teenager, then when I got back on the rails again, we reconnected through Adelaide Uni Mountain Club. We were both very young to be at Uni, and came from the ill reputed north eastern suburbs of Adelaide where university was a whole different world.  Uni really was a lifechanging experience.

Those years at Adelaide Uni really  made me who I am today (you can thank them or curse them).  I started a suburban bogan with little perspective on the world and left a radical, post modern feminist climbing bum. I still remember the lecturer who explained the difference between Freud and Lacan by acting out how Freud worshipped the giant penis up on a pedestal, whilst Lacan actually though he was a giant penis and she danced around the lectern with her arms shaped above her head as a phallus to demonstrate this.

In those days, student activism was still a big thing. We had street protests, rallies and strikes. We had a strong student union and a vibrant community of all sorts of clubs and societies, from the Society for Creative Anachronisms beating each other up in medieval costumes in the courtyard, to feminist, anarchist and antiracist groups plotting in cellars on how to change the world, and of course, the Mountain Club.  We were a funny group of social oddities now I look back at us, but we became each others network in a way our course mates never did. This was the vehicle by which I became an obsessed climber, there were endless adventures and parties and I nearly dropped out of uni entirely just to climb. Instead I started picking my subjects based around how much climbing time they would afford me. Much as I acknowledge we were dodgy as fuck at times, we all survived and we loved it. It's amazing feeling young and immortal! I still don't advocate learning to climb the way I did though.

In those days of social irresponsibility, the Uni Bar served us all, including still 17 year old Kylie and me, and Friday nights were inevitably spent seeing live bands there. Hence where we discovered the Clouds.  It was a great venue, and even my dodgy long term memory takes me back to the crowded, smokey dance floor, dim lighting tinged with red, the black and purple cloak that I virtually lived in then (I still have it, I can't bear to throw it away), and Kylie's A line mini skirts. I still have a crotchet top of hers that she gave me when she moved overseas for a few years. It also is impossible to throw out. Uni social clubs had lock in parties, where you paid your $20 entry and could drink all the beer you wanted or tricycle relays with compulsory beer sculling before you could hand over the baton. So problematic in hindsight, but such good times!

I'm sad that the radicalism of our universities has disappeared. Voluntary student unionism, HECS, a general return to conservatism in the world and the pressure of rising costs of housing all fed a change to university being a mechanism to earn money, rather than a place of learning, exploration and growth. Students became focused on getting a job that would repay their mammoth HECS debts and their mammoth mortgage. There was no space for radicalism anymore. I am loving seeing young people out on the streets protesting again now. It's like young people tried to play the capitalist game we are told to play for more than a decade there, but now they are looking at the world and realising that it's a game they can never win. Here I am, feeling like a doting aging activist, nodding approvingly at the climate strikes, at slut walk, and the gun violence protests in the States, all of which young people of have been integral to. I love the young adult fiction showing rebellion against the conservative regimes that take control after the apocalypse. Maybe popular culture will become the hotbed of modern radicalism in the ways that higher education once was.

Kylie and I are such different women in some ways. But here we are all these years later. Probably I have Kylie to thank for it. She is always incredibly good at keeping in touch. We haven't lived near each other since the mid 90s, but through all that she checks in on me, she makes time to visit, she welcomes me to stay, she invites me on trips. History is important to Kylie, and despite all the changes in our lives, we have history. Kylie became a librarian, and the seeds of it were there all along. She has diary entries and photos all ordered and accessible to remind us of events in our lives, not to mention a far better memory than I have. About this time last year, she sent me a photo of  me in the Pines in 1999 wishing me a happy 20 year anniversary of living in Nati. Of course, I had been unable to remember even if it was 98, 99 or 2000 that I moved to Nati. Kylie knew down to the month. This, she told me was our last trip camping at the Mt before I moved into Natimuk. I look so young! The gear and the tent so old! The pines so empty of people, but also so full of trees.

Music has always been a big thing for Kylie. She was over visiting for Invasion Day long weekend this year, and made me listen to the Triple J hottest 100, which she follows obsessively each year. I don't think I knew a single song on it, until they played an excerpt of the 1999 Hottest 100 which they were going to revisit on Double J. Those songs, I remember well. Maybe it's because the 90s were really my formative years, and the connection of music to memories are stronger for it. They were fun and amazing but also tumultuous and traumatic years, and I wouldn't live them again if you paid me!

Kylie is the epitomy of nice. I mean that in a genuinely lovely way. I feel terribly cantankerous and impatient in comparison. It's hard to imagine Kylie ever hurting a fly.  She's devoted to her friends and family, and to her community work such as the Climbing Club of SA and Amnesty International. On the outside, she can appear to be a sweet and respectable product of an all girl Catholic school, but I know the wild Kylie as well. In someways, she's a bit like the music I associate with her. Sweet female vocals over grunge guitar. Whilst Kylie is The Clouds, I am more like Bikini Kill. Outright swearing and rebellion against the world. But I love her to bits and we'll still be sharing our lives in another 32 years.