Our Wednesday Scribblers Writers Group has begun doing the 100-word challenge. Recently, one of our members looked at my painting of Standley Chasm and suggested that week’s challenge topic would be “Chasm”. So, here’s my variation on the subject.And it is a recent addition to my memoir collection.
Chasm
‘Where does it go?’ Garry asked.
I gazed around the pit. The walls were clay with rocks mixed in. A tunnel was dug at the end, chasm-like, but a tight squeeze.
‘Nowhere,’ I answered. ‘Can you lift me out now?’
Garry reached down, and I reached up, but our hands failed to connect.
‘She’s in too deep, Garry,’ Cathy said. ‘Oh, gawd, now we’re in trouble.’
‘Get me out!’ I cried.
‘I can’t!’ Garry shouted.
‘Hurry!’ Cathy urged. ‘There’s a man watching us.’
We tried again. Using a toe-hold, I lifted myself higher.
T-Team Next Generation — From Alice to Adelaide (1)
[In 2013, the T-Team, next generation embarked on their pilgrimage to Central Australia. Purpose: to scatter Dad’s ashes in his beloved Central Australia, in Ormiston Gorge.
Over the next few months, I will take you on a virtual trip to the Centre and memories of that unforgettable holiday in 2013, with my brother and his family; the T-Team Next Generation.
This time, the T-K Team commences their return to Adelaide from Alice Springs.]
Back to the Big Smoke of the South
After packing up our belongings into our trusty Ford, topping up with petrol, and cash supplies, we departed Alice Springs and headed south to Adelaide. It’s amazing what one discovers retracing our steps to South Australia. In the morning sunlight, there, mini-Ulurus, mini–Kata Tjutas, and mini-Mt Conners.
At Kulgera, we shared lunch with flies. All around us, people swished at their faces. My glasses kept falling off as I fanned the flies away. In the end, I put on my sunnies. Then, when that strategy failed, we retreated into the roadhouse and had coffee in the restaurant. Self-serve for $3.
There, at the border, we parked to check our itinerary of food for fruit and vegetables. Owing to the prevention of bringing any fruit fly infestation into South Australia, fruit and vegetables had to be disposed of in the bins provided. More flies hovered around, joining our forage in the back of the Ford.
A passing Northern American tourist remarked, ‘Are South Australians so precious?’
‘Yes, we are,’ I muttered to Hubby, ‘how else have we kept the scourge of fruit fly out of our state?’
All around us, fellow travellers hauled out their luggage from their cars or four-wheel drive vehicles and disposed of their fresh produce. None of them looked happy.
Sitting on a picnic table, a lad about Son 1’s age, and wearing a fly net, boiled up a pan of canned corn and peas on a portable gas cooker.
Nodding in their direction, I remarked to my husband, ‘Do they think canned vegetables are a problem?’
‘Quiet, Lee-Anne, they might hear you,’ my husband snapped.
‘Maybe someone should tell them that it’s only fresh vegetables that need to be disposed of.’
Hubby shook his head. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’
After depositing the few offensive apples and oranges in the bin, we piled into the Ford and charged forth on our journey south down the Stuart Highway.
With the potatoes securely stored in the cooler hidden in the Ford, we stepped into Marla’s red brick tourist park office. Tent site? No problem. Plenty of room on the grassy park for campers.
However, fearful that the biosecurity police might emerge from under a mini-Ayers rock and ping us with a hefty fine, I was designated to cook up the potatoes and one offending onion, while Anthony pitched the 2-person tent in the middle of the verdant camping reserve. My potato dish was not exactly rösti, though.
While frying up this “contraband” fare, a familiar white van whizzed past. I stepped out of the BBQ shelter and waved to them. The white van turned around.
The T-Team joined us for our potato and onion fry. Our nephew contributed their stash of vegetables to make a stir fry. Mrs. T shared the T-team’s adventures visiting a friend’s cattle station south of Alice the past couple of days.
My older niece was not her usual cheerful self. While helping me wash the dishes in a crummy camp kitchen with little light, Brother T confided in me that she may not have been happy about driving the Oodnadatta track.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘she must know that track is full of tacks to bust tyres.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, yeah! Maybe we won’t go that way…’
We waved the T-Team off on their venture south at around 8.30 pm. Then Hubby crawled into the tent and began tossing out clothes, bags, and stuff into the frigid frosty night.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Where are you hiding the drink bottles?’ he cried.
‘Are they in the car?’
‘No, I’ve looked there.’
‘Sure, they’re not in the BBQ hut?’
‘No, where have you hidden them?’
‘I don’t remember, “hiding” them. They must be left somewhere,’ I said. ‘It’s too dark to look for them now, so you might just have to be satisfied with the thermos.’
With a grunt, he, who is always right, shrugged on an extra coat, sat outside the tent, sipping hot chocolate from the thermos, and playing with his phone. Wrapped in my sleeping bag, I sat beside the man who had lost his water bottle and wrote my diary by torchlight. Ours was one lonely tent in an expanse of couch grass.
Having lost the battle to mourn the temporary loss of his water bottle alone, Hubby crawled into bed at 10 pm. Soon after, I followed him, and in the warmth of the thermal sleeping bag, I soon fell asleep.
Jack woke and rubbed his eyes. ‘What’s happening?’
‘What are you doing?’ Mitch asked.
‘What do ya think?’ Rick said as he slowed to the 60 km/h speed limit of the town.
Mitch pointed the other way, out of town. ‘Couldn’t we just…’
‘No,’ Rick said.
‘Cordelia’s going to be sick,’ I chimed in.
Rick slammed on the brakes and skidded on the rubble on the side of the road.
‘Not yet,’ Cordelia said in a soft voice. ‘But I need a hospital.’
None of us asked the reason we needed a hospital for Cordelia. Under the light of the newly functioning headlights, I studied the strip map for the district hospital. Not much joy there. The map only showed the strip of road or highway from town A to town B, no diversions. However, we did find a 24-hour service station where Mitch asked for directions to the hospital.
Upon arriving, Cordelia insisted on entering the premises on her own while the rest of us waited in the car park. Making the most of the opportunity not to be cramped up in the car, we sat or paced around the car in the balmy night.
An hour or so later, Cordelia emerged feeling better. No explanation.
And once more, we piled in the car and headed for Sydney.
‘If we drive through the night, we’ll reach Sydney by morning,’ Mitch said. ‘Plenty of time for the conference.’
Rick adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and grunted. ‘As long as nothing else happens.’
I squeezed myself against the back passenger door. I had lost my place in the front with Rick to Cordelia. I had been relegated to the back seat with Mitch and Jack.
The gentle rocking of the drive lulled me to sleep.
Lost in Sydney
I yawned and stretched.
‘Hey, watch it!’ Mitch said and pushed my hand away.
‘Sorry.’ I covered my mouth and yawned again.
The Charger crawled along following bumper-to-bumper traffic. High-rise buildings towered over the narrow road, and every side street garnered either a black and white “One Way” sign or red and white “No Entry” sign. Sydney Harbour bridge, appearing like a giant coat hanger, peeped through a gap in the buildings.
‘Oh, Sydney,’ I said. ‘How come we’re not at the conference?’
‘You tell me,’ Rick muttered.
‘We’re having trouble …’ Mitch began.
‘It’s all these one-way streets,’ Rick said. ‘Whoever designed Sydney must’ve had rocks in their head.’
Jack suggested we head for Bondi Beach for a swim as it’s so bleeping hot, reasoning that if we hadn’t had the car trouble, we’d have had a day to take in the sights and go for a swim.
‘Aren’t we late for the conference?’ I asked.
Rick rolled his eyes. ‘Rate we’re going, we’ll never get there.’
‘But, if we go to Bondi,’ Mitch said, ‘perhaps we can find a park and work out where we are and how to get to the conference.’
‘But how do we do that?’ Rick asked. He moved the car at the speed of a tortoise along the road chock-full of nearly stationary vehicles.
I pointed at a sign which read, “Bondi”. Head east, follow that sign. I’d given up on attending the conference, and, believing we’d be stuck in Sydney city traffic forever, resolved to content myself with the promise of the beach sometime in the next week. Not sure how Dad would feel about us not turning up, though. He’d made it his mission to persuade our little tribe to come. And, here we were, lost in the city traffic, wandering in circles around one-way streets.
I imagined Dad pacing the floor of the conference centre, wearing a groove in the carpet, glancing at his watch, and peering out the window. ‘Where are those children?’ he’d be saying, ‘They should be here by now.’
‘Where, exactly, is the conference?’ I asked. ‘Is it near Bondi?’
‘Have you got rocks in your head?’ Rick said. His face was flushed with beads of perspiration dripping from his temples. ‘Of course it’s not. And at this rate, no matter where it is, we won’t get there. We’re stuck.’
‘Um,’ Jack interrupted Rick’s rant, ‘I think it’s at Randwick Racecourse.’
‘And where’s that?’ I chimed in.
‘Perhaps, if we go to Bondi, find a park, then we can study the map, and work out where to go,’ Mitch said.
‘Or we could lob into a corner shop and ask someone directions,’ I suggested.
The guys ignored my idea, as guys do. All this time Cordelia remained silent, contributing nothing to the discussion. Perhaps to be more popular with the boys, as Cordelia certainly was, I considered I should remain silent. But me, being me, I just couldn’t help myself. Being one of the “lads” and voicing my opinion, that is.
We reached Bondi. Early afternoon.
I remember the weather. Warm, cloudy, and humid. Specks of rain assaulted the windscreen. Despite the inclement weather by my Adelaide standards, the streets around this beachside suburb were cluttered with more cars and even more people. It seemed to me that Bondi was crowded with the entire rest of the population of Sydney, the ones who were not still stuck in traffic in the city centre.
As a result, no parks. Nowhere. Not a thin strip anywhere to put the Charger.
Rick sighed and drove through the park-less and crowded Bondi, along some coastal road, and then up a road heading east again.
Jack, who had been studying a simple map of Sydney that the RAA strip map provided, pointed at a road on the map. ‘I’m pretty sure if we turn down Anzac Parade and follow it all the way down, we will reach our destination.’
Rick followed Jack’s directions, and we arrived at the conference just in time for afternoon tea. And, I might add, a roasting from Dad who could not understand how we could get lost in Sydney.
Mitch, though, was philosophical. ‘It could’ve been worse, but I was praying the whole time, and God got us here safe and sound.’
Dad sniffed and tapped his trouser pocket. ‘Hmm, yes, you are right, Mitch. Ah, well, praise the Lord.’
Want more, but now, probably due to current world events, (Again! Sigh!) too impossible to travel down under? Why not escape all the world drama and take a virtual journey back in time and space, with the T-Team Adventures in Australia?
As it is the Easter weekend and in keeping with Arty Friday, a story of my Easter break camping in the Gammon Ranges with my father and then future husband.
THE BIRTH OF “BUNYIP CHASM”—THE PAINTING
You need to loosen up with your painting,’ my art teacher said.
So, with a palette-knife, I did with…
Over the Easter break in 1986, Dad took my boyfriend (future husband) and me to the Gammon Ranges. Dad had gone there the previously with his photographer friend and he was keen to show us some of the scenic secrets these ranges held.
We bumped and rolled in Dad’s four-wheel drive Daihatsu down the track into the Gammon Ranges. We camped near Grindell’s Hut, backpackers’ accommodation. A murder-mystery from the early Twentieth Century involving the hut’s owner, spiced our discussion around the campfire that night. Then we set up a tent, for boyfriend, on the ground above the bank of the creek. I placed my bedding also above the creek under the stars. Dad opted for his “trillion-star” site underneath a river gum. No tent for him, either.
The next day Dad guided us along the Balcanoona creek bed shaded by native pines to Bunyip Chasm. After an hour or two of hobbling over rounded river stones, we arrived at a dead-end of high cliffs.
‘Come on, we better get back,’ Dad said and then started to hike back the way we came.
We trailed after Dad. Although native pine trees shaded our path, the hiking made me thirst for a waterhole in which to swim. I gazed up at the lacework of deep blue green against the sky and then, my boot caught on a rock. I stumbled. My ankle rolled and twisted. I cried out. ‘Wait!’
After about ten minutes, with my ankle still swollen and sore, I hobbled after the men. We climbed down a short waterfall and at the base, I looked back. The weathered trunk of an old gum tree leaned over the stream, three saplings basked in the late-afternoon sunlight against the sienna-coloured rocks, and clear water rushed and frothed over the cascading boulders and into pond mirroring the trees and rocks above.
Then holding hands, we hiked along the creek leading to our campsite and Dad.
‘I’m going to paint that little waterfall,’ I said.
We walked in silence, enjoying the scenery painted just for us—the waves of pale river stones, the dappled sunlight through the pines, and a soft breeze kissing our skin.
[In memory of my father Clement David Trudinger (13-1-1928—25-8-2012)]
Tru-Kling Creations 