Make Like a Bear

After my cockatoo encounter of terror, I felt I'd seen it all and was ready to face the wilderness. Nothing could phase me now. Like a wearisome warrior, with the echoes of battle still ringing in my ears and a faraway look in my eyes, I literally got back on the bike and cycled to the nearest Grampian trail. Ten minutes later, I was at the foot of the path up Mount Sturgeon.

Well that was easy, I thought, slightly embarrassed. Makes all the anxious preparation seem a tad ridiculous. Deranged birds and getting lost in the wild?... - pff, what was I so worried about?! With that, I began climbing. This was my first real hike, and what I'd been preparing for. In my trip planning stage, the intention was for hiking to feature heavily, particularly when I reach New Zealand later on, and I needed to get my sea legs, before attempting a several day tramp. Here was a well-trodden trail, frequented by day-trippers, young and frail alike. This should do me.

The path was steep and winding, and for the first couple of hours I was on an exposed incline. The sun was beating down and I was hacking my way through low shrubs and thorny bushes. No other hikers could be seen. At times I wondered whether the trail was a true one, but other than a couple of retraction incidents, I managed to stay on it. I kept a sharp eye out for snakes, but couldn't spot any, although I'd been warned they are everywhere, all I noticed were a couple of lizards. In fact, I'd been warned Australia was full of deadly animals. Lies, clearly.

On reaching the top, view was magnificent. I stopped for a short break, taking deep breaths and squinting in the sun.




Top of the Mount

Mt Sturgeon Trail Map

As I picked up the trail at the alternative starting point, as above, I had to return the way I came, a somewhat unnerving experience, the trail being as it was rocky, thorny, slippery and mainly steep. Incredibly, other than a grazed knee, I carried on unscathed. Gradually, as I got lower down, the trees began to surround me and the trail was more shaded and level.

I turned around when I heard a whoosh sound in the foliage, in time to see a gang of emus meandering down the slope just behind me. They were so bizarre and large, so out of place amongst the trees, and clashing with my own complacent ease of being all on my own, that I was immediately transported to a state of primal awe. My life of safety in a country where the most dangerous encounter with the wild, would be with a particularly bad tempered goat at the petting zoo, or a mangy urban fox, has all at once been put into perspective of how little I know of this world.

Odd bird

This encounter left me in a heightened state of awareness, which was just as well. For, following the path a little further down, I felt the blood in my veins turn icy as a 7 foot kangaroo loomed a few meters ahead of me. The animal was a good bit larger than those I'd seen until now - either harmlessly viewed from the safe distance of Margie's back garden, or roadkill by the side of the road. Alive it was, and entirely aware of my presence too. We both froze, and whatever ancient reflexes still flow in me clicked fully on. I knew that I need to remain still. Although in no way a bear, nor a dangerously carnivorous animal, I'd heard that roos in the wild would attack if feel under threat. And this being a particularly large specimen, I didn't wish to test my luck. I stood, watching it with my head slightly lowered, trying to steady my breath, and let it watch me, until I could sense that It knew I was no danger. After what seemed like an eternity, it looked away and hurried off.

Dangerous wild animal

Still standing there, the adrenaline coursing through my body, I was no longer the old me - I was now cave me, interacting with fauna, at one with nature. All that excitement and high hormonal release had an unexpected side effect, which was now becoming an urgency. Evidently, upon seeing a 7ft roo when alone in the wild for the first time, one is lucky not to soil oneself. Realising, I winced in horror - no, not here! Not now!... but to no avail, it was do or die. I listened out for human chatter or crackling of feet upon twigs, ensuring I was alone. Remembering conscientious respectful travel advice for the adventurer, I quickly dug a hole, and followed my gut instinct, as it were. Covering my little shame-grave, I felt quite the opposite, surprisingly. Like a child first boasting to their parents with pride - look, mummy, daddy, look what I made! - I felt even more alive. I was now literally part of nature. Had I not have been in a rush to get back to the main road before dark, I would've shed all my clothes there and then and frolicked in the woods as nature intended, celebrating my pagan joy.

Margie was going away that weekend, but had guests booked at the B&B. She called for reinforcement in the form of her not unattractive son Scott, to help with the registering, cleaning, cooking and to generally have someone there making sure I don't tear the place apart in an unexplained frenzy. It all went beautifully smoothly and we even organised a nice BBQ in the conservatory, chatting and drinking, and being The Good Hosts.

The next morning I cooked my scrambled eggs for the guests' breakfast, receiving accolades to my great relief. Scrambled eggs are difficult to get right to everyone's taste, and I'm not one to pander to those erring on the side of overcooking them. It is simply an insult to the eggs, especially freshly laid ones. They must be still creamy and with a sheen, not gravelly and dry.

Having fulfilled our duties of a thorough clean up and animal husbandry, we decided to go for a drive to Boroka lookout near Halls Gap. The drive itself was spectacular - Alpine dense green forests heavy with ferns lushly spilling over, tall fragrant trees, and hundreds of cicadas singing insanely everywhere. Here I got a proper view of the Grampians national park from the observation point. The only slight downer was how badly burned some areas were, consumed by massive fires, a constant risk. We wanted to climb up even higher to the fireman's hut for an even better view, but it too had burned down.

Grampians' Lookout

Getting back Scott and I just had time to say our goodbyes, before I had couple of precious hours to myself alone at the house, which felt pleasantly luxurious. Or so they should've been, but although it was the middle of the day, I couldn't ignore the heavy cloak of aloneness, which would take, I reckoned, a lot getting used to; every little noise was weird and every creak scary. The whole thing became spookier by the minute, not helped by the fact i found Manhunter, the book The Silence of the Lambs is based on, in Margy's library and was trying to relax with some light reading...

Red Dragon

Contrasting nicely with my overdose of nature and isolation, the next day Margie and I drove to the nearest town, Hamilton, where she was teaching her pottery class. I had the pleasure of feeling pavement under my feet, idly window-shopping, and scaring the locals with my obvious otherness. The chilly spring nights pushed me into the local department store to purchase a pair of long johns, which helped me through the remaining few days at the farm. Once Margie had finished her class, we rounded off the day at a "mingler" in the Dunkeld pub, where I was introduced to her smorgasbord of odd types she called friends. Several pints and bonding experiences later, we got back in her car and drove wobbilily back. Similarly the rest of the sodden ragtag crew made their merry way home. No surprise about the vast numbers of roadkill then.

My stay at Margie's was the perfect first Wwoofing experience - I got to get stuck in with some hard work, but not too punishingly so, hiked, climbed, mingled with the locals and had a good old fashioned Aussie barbie. I also began to fathom the complex Wwoofer-Wwoofee relationship, although being me, assumed I'd be smart enough to circumvent it next time... what a fool I was.

I managed to get a thank-you gift for Margie at dull but harmless Hamilton, and we had a cosy final dinner together, watching the sun setting over the southern tip of the Grampians one last time, kangaroos hopping around the surrounding paddocks and cockatoo calling in the sweet air. Goodbye Grampians.

Wwoofin' and a-trampin' in the Grampians

The bus journey north felt very long, but, still suffering from jetlag daze, I kept snoozily dropping off and great big chunks of the way disappeared. I got my first glimpses of kangaroos on the way, through my droopy eyelids. Some living, some not so much. After a few days spent trying to find my way around brand new environments, it was lovely having a break, letting go of the controls, and entrusting the bus driver with getting us to our destination, through the immense landscape.

I was met by my cousin and his van in Narrabri. We knew virtually nothing about each other's current lives, and as we caught up I had flashbacks to how much I enjoyed playing with him as kids, whenever my family would visit his family in their rural home, usually for a whole weekend of running barefoot on the grass, visiting farmyard animals and going swimming in the nearby lake. He was a very sweet child, and as it turns out, an utter sweetheart as an adult too!  

A town called Ma... er Narrabri

Him and his wife, a New-Zealander, whom I've met for the first time, both lovingly looked after me for the next days. I was a good-for-nothing rag, sleeping a lot and unable to do much else, other than exploring the neighbourhood, reading, and sleeping some more. Their kids – a one year old boy and a 3 year old girl - were sweet as pie and I enjoyed their cheery company.

Realising how badly jetlagged I still was, even a week after landing, I was fortunate to have this time to get my body clock in order. The house was right on a lake so I gradually took longer walks, went into town, visited my hosts' workplaces, but generally chilled out. Stimulation was thin on the ground in this one horse town, unless you get excited by the cotton industry. A good thing too, in my current state of mind. 

 

 

Lake Narrabri

In actuality, though, this was also time for the realisation of how hard my sister's breast cancer diagnosis had hit me - indeed I was shocked at my own reaction, when, at times, hours were spent sobbing uncontrollably, which must have been a delight for my patient hosts. I am not a crier - to a worryingly robotic extent some would say - but here I was clueless as to how I can come to terms with the situation - on a trip of a lifetime, having to find some way of enjoying it, whilst being entirely pre-occupied with worry over possible developments. I contacted home whenever I could, which was not often, this being an era slightly preceding ease of online instant messaging, but of course, that could not entirely assuage my, nor my family's, concerns. After a few days of sombre meandering, and certainly not a moment too soon for the my cousin's family's continuing peaceful existence, I left Narrabri to carry on with my plans, rested, grateful and apprehensive.

The next stop was to be my first Wwoofing experience, in the Grampians National Park, a beautiful nature reserve, roughly the size of Mauritius, but a mere speck on the map of Australia. I would be based at a bed and breakfast and farm on the outskirts of the small village of Dunkeld, Victoria, not far from Melbourne. Well, I say not far – in real terms about 4 hours' journey away. It's hard to convey just how mindbogglingly big this country is, the area covered so far being a teeny-tiny part of it, and yet I’ve already travelled almost 30 hours in total!

Sunrise on Serra B&B

Margaret was friendly enough when we discussed arrangements and expectations on the phone prior to my arrival. Like many in the Wwoofing community, she was very much into all things new-age - apart from the B&B she ran - Sunrise on Serra, so named after the one of the Grampian mountain ranges visible from her house - she also worked teaching pottery to adults with learning difficulties and practiced Reiki. She had a sweet horse called Gypsy - my first ever horsey friend, a cow called Sunny and two Siamese cats - Ninja and Ling.

She seemed really happy with me being there and wasn't too bothered about working me too hard, which was nice, this being my first experience. From reading people's accounts, at times farm owners try to take advantage of Wwoofers, demanding that they work longer than the maximum 6 hours per day, 6 days a week, and providing minimal conditions. Some even try to supplement and even replace their actual paid labour with this free resource, exploiting naïve Wwoofers. As the scheme is intended as a mutually beneficial and balanced arrangement, whereby backpackers could still use some of their time to explore the area they are visiting, it utterly defeats the object and is extremely unfair, particularly as even after 6 hours of manual labour one would usually be too exhausted to go on, say, a proper trek, let alone if being pressured into working any longer than that. Yes, the farming industry is a difficult and fragile one to survive in, some farm owners literally going hand to mouth, but there needs to be a clear trade or the whole thing falls apart, and those who took advantage got banned from participating. Similarly, workers not fulfilling their part of the deal got asked to leave by the farm owners, reported to the head office, and faced having their membership revoked.

From my correspondence with the various farm owners, I managed to get a good feel for the sort of person I was dealing with and their implied expectations. I sensed that my next farm stay was to be stricter and not as flexible, and was dreading it slightly, and therefore grateful for this soft initiation. However, I was not going to speculate and would reserve judgement for now.

My accommodation at Margaret's was a little soldier's cottage at the end of the garden, full of old gardening tools and other dust covered items, a mosquito net over a lumpy but ingratiating bed - it felt very much like a secluded hut in the jungle, with the sounds of night creatures all around me. It was very peaceful. Each morning I would wake at dawn and go to the main house, stopping on the way at the chicken coop to pick up a couple of eggs for our breakfast, then in the garden to pick some tomatoes. We'd have our delicious orange yolky and plump red nourishment with some toast, then get to work.

View of the Grampians' Serra range

Margaret had me doing some gardening, a little housework and masses of manure shifting – that stuff is fantastic for the garden, and I became an expert in transfer techniques of cow and horse-pat, first shovelled into the rusty wheelbarrow, then on to the vegetable and flower garden. It's a skill! The relationship with Gypsy was particularly gratifying, as it took several days to gain trust, but bit by bit she relaxed, and by the end would gallop towards me in glee whenever I was approaching and nudge me affectionately. Sunny the cow maintained respectful tolerance of my presence, but kept her distance.

In the evenings we would sit at the back of the house, watching kangaroos grazing at the edge of her land, sharing a glass of wine in the dusky sunset's diminishing light. She would tell me about her relationship history, fraught with challenging characters, and I would share alike about my troubled marriage. This is where I learned that getting close with your host could be a tricky line to tread. These were, at times, people thirsty for closeness and human contact, yet at the same time they had a business to run. The relationship formed was one of subordinate and master, disturbed by personal shades, making it difficult to manoeuvre and maintain boundaries. In this instance, the closer we got, the more Margaret was relying on me for answers to her personal problems, I had to work very hard to draw a line. This caused some tension and ultimately a degree of mistrust, a problem I later found to repeat.

In the meantime, though, I enjoyed my time there and was eager to see as much of the area as I could. At the first change I get, I planned to climb one of the mountain ranges, as the farm was right at the foot of the national park. To do so I had to use the farm bike to get to the start of the trail. This proved harder than anticipated... Being more of a rambler than a cyclist, I've always found cycling punishing and the cause of much deep bruising, scraping and slight but increasing panic throughout. As a child, I loved cycling, but only for short distances. It is possible I didn't do it enough to ever feel truly at home with it. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, when the roads were clear of traffic for 24 hours, my dad and I would embark on a cycling trip. Off we'd set, but as much as I wished for it to be an experience both bonding and cherished, I habitually came back feeling I'd let the man down with my low cycling capacity. As a rule we'd have to turn around and go back earlier than planned. And the slight sense of breathless exertion to keep up hounds me to this day.

In order to acclimatise to cycling again, I decided it would be easier to visit nearby Dunkeld first, supposedly a straightforward and quick trip. Internet access was scarce, and I needed to find an internet café so I could check emails and send updates to family and friends. Having memorised the map (not that there were many routes to choose from), I took off, trying to feel the wind in my hair, the sun on my face and revel in the rush of the open road. Somehow, though, I managed to take a wrong turn.

I found myself in a strange suburban labyrinth of cul-de-sacs, with the roads no longer paved, and paths so new they weren't even mapped yet. I cycled to and fro, getting deeper and deeper into the net of back alleys, a kind of white picket fence rural hell. Not a soul could be seen anywhere.  

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks. Something was wrong. It was very quiet. The kind of quiet where no birds nor insects are audible. I looked ahead of me, and right there, on the path which just sort of carried on into the open horizon of mountains and forests, in an already disquieting scene of civilisation melting into wilderness, there were cockatoos. Dead ones. Lots and lots of large, white, dead cockatoos. There must have been 30 or 40 of them, scattered all around the path.

I froze, overwhelmed with odd terror. I looked around - still not a soul. Then I looked up. On the trees on both sides of the path, along the branches, were dozens of cockatoos, alive and ominously quiet. They were all staring at me. I couldn't work out whether they were sat in mourning over their fallen comrades, or am I witnessing the aftermath of some great tribal battle, the victorious side gloating over the corpses of the defeated.



Menace

slowly, as if facing a growling panther, I backed down the path, never taking my eyes off the trees. It was only when I reached the corner of the path that I dared turn the bike around and cycle away as fast as I could. I had to go a fair way before I got back on the main road, and managed to find my way into the village.

This was to be my first, and relatively tame, close encounter with the wild, within the same week.