Lofty

Anzac Day, Monday April 25, 2022
10am — 3pm
Mt. Lofty

Dan

While old diggers swilled down beer in RSL clubs around the nation, Dan led an intrepid group of friends up the steep steps of Waterfall Gully. A perfect day for a hike, he considered. And to do some snooping for El’s requested cold case being the mystery of the missing men, Jan von Erikson and Percy Edwards.
First, he’d invited El to join him. He was confident that El could sense ghosts and point him in the right direction to find “souvenirs”. But then, El’s partner, Francis Renard asked to join the expedition, followed swiftly with a request that his newly found daughter Zoe Thomas come along too. Sven had then wanted to join the party. But at the last minute, he bowed out as he had a catch-up tutorial for students who had failed their first assignment.

Dan stopped at the viewing stand and, after glancing at the waterfall trickling a meagre offering of water down its cliffs, he watched his troupe of followers crawl up the steps. He chuckled remembering the times he’d taken his family on this same route up to Adelaide’s iconic mountain. While the children would be bounding up the steps and slopes like deer, Kate, his ex would be huffing, wheezing, and complaining. Inevitably, Dan would coax Kate, his wife at that time, saying, “Just five more minutes, and then five more minutes.” Then, just as inevitably, they’d reach the old ruin halfway to the summit, and there Dan and the kids inevitably leave “Mum” to rest and recover there while they completed the mission to the top.

No huffing, puffing and wheezing with this lot, though. All of them seemed to be at the peak of their fitness, even 65-year-old Renard. Renard boasted that he jogged up and down Mt. Lofty at least once or twice a month. Zoe his daughter as proof of nature over nurture, also boasted of her adventures in Tasmania: Traversing the Central Highlands from Cradle Mountain to Lake St. Clair, climbing Mt. Hartz and Frenchman’s Cap. And of course, El had kept up her fitness running, jogging and bike riding along the track from her home in Brighton to Hallett Cove.

He did think of asking Jemima, but she hadn’t been answering his calls lately. What was the current term of that? Oh, yes, he remembered, “Ghosting”. Rather fitting for today’s walk, he mused with a pang of sadness.

Dan waited and sighed. ‘What’s taking them so long?’

El strode up to Dan. ‘Sorry about that, Zoe has to stop every few minutes to take photos.’

‘What? Of this? We’ve hardly started,’ Dan said, ‘the rate we’re going we’ll be hiking back in the dark.’

El looked at her watch. ‘It’s only ten o’clock, plenty of time.’

Renard and his daughter joined them at the vantage point.

Zoe spent precious minutes framing her scenes and snapping shots using her Nikon camera with a formidable zoom lens attached to it. She kept muttering, ‘You said it’s a waterfall, but where’s the water?’

‘It’s been a bit dry over summer,’ El said, ‘it’s the driest state on the driest continent.’

‘Antarctica is actually.’

‘Spoken like a true lawyer,’ El laughed.

‘It’s important to have your facts right,’ Zoe returned while photographing the waterfall with minimal amounts of water dribbling down it.

‘That’s enough, girls,’ Renard said, ‘let’s enjoy the hike. Besides, Dan’s getting a bit toey; he wants to get to the top.’

‘And, how long does it take to get to the above-mentioned top?’ Zoe asked.

‘Erm, takes me only about an hour, on a slow day,’ Renard said, his chest puffed out in pride.

‘Well, then, what’s the rush? We’ll be up ‘n down in no time.’ Zoe looked at El. ‘Oh, unless El’s not up for it.’

‘Oh, I am,’ El snipped, ‘and if Dan is so desperate to summit, why don’t we make it a race? See who can reach the top first?’

Dan slung his backpack over his shoulder and pouted, ‘No need to rush. I was hoping we’d enjoy the hike. Maybe have lunch at the ruins.’

‘Nup, not good enough, mate,’ Renard jogged on the spot, ‘nup, I say race.’

‘We get to the top, and on the way down, we can have lunch,’ Zoe said rubbing her hands together. ‘Come on Dad, let’s do it.’

The foursome bounded up the steps to the Second Falls, but soon after, Zoe and her father disappeared into the scrub leaving Dan and his former crime-fighting partner sauntering behind.

While batting liquorice bushes just past the Second Falls, Dan glanced at El who had kept pace with him. Renard and his daughter had, in their quest to be “first”, become absorbed in the distant heights of the Mt. Lofty trail.

Dan asked, ‘Sense anything?’

El glanced around her taking in the dense grasses near the creek with just a trickle of water. ‘Actually, no. Should I? Is there something about Zoe that we should know?’

Dan shrugged. Perhaps it’s better if such things like ghosts of murder victims haunting the Mt. Lofty trail should come naturally. After all, it was El, who after talking to Fifi suspected that her father met his end here. She did say they found human remains…

‘Where did Fifi say the remains were, El?’

El sat down on the ruin wall. ‘She didn’t. Just that they found them near a drain or mine entrance.’

Dan placed his hands on hips. ‘Great! No sense of what direction the body could be?’

‘No, but, logically, since they were up here in the height of summer, on a thirty-eight-degree day…after reaching the summit, Fifi was desperate for a drink. Almost fainting. They managed to get a lime cordial from the kiosk. But let’s just say, the lime cordial didn’t stay down her for long. Anyway, after a rest, Fifi reckoned they begin the climb down. She mentioned they had a rest around here at the ruins. She was feeling better and went looking for water. That’s when she came upon the remains. Under some bridge, she reckoned.’

‘Bridge? What bridge? In all my years exploring, hiking around here, I’ve never come across a bridge.’

‘Maybe it looked like a bridge but I s’pose it could have been some sort of drain or mine entrance.’

‘Could be. Perhaps what would be called a culvert. So, on that premise, she’d be looking in a gully where a tributary might be.’ Dan pointed at a nearby dip in the hillside. ‘I reckon if we follow that little gully there, we might find something. Or at least you may sense something.’

‘Worth a try,’ El chuckled, ‘I can imagine Renard and Zoe patting themselves on the back and treating themselves to cappuccinos at the top now.’

‘I wonder when they’ll be looking around and saying, “Where’s Dan and El?”’

‘Renard will probably say that I “piked out” and am out of form since I’m on holidays.’

As they began stepping down into the gully, Dan sighed, ‘Oh, I wish you’d come back, El, I really don’t get on with Dee.’

‘What’s wrong with Dee?’ El laughed.

‘She’s so…so…’

‘Paranoid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has to do everything by the book?’

‘Yes.’

Boots thumping on the ground made Dan and El stop.

El gasped, ‘I sensed that!’

‘So did I.’

Zoe burst through the wattle bushes. With eyes wide like a cat in fright she exclaimed, ‘You’ll never guess what we found.’

‘What?’ Dan asked.

‘A koala?’ El said with a nervous laugh.

‘No! Come!’ Zoe gestured. ‘Dad’s keeping guard. Says you’ll know exactly…’

‘Who?’

They tramped over the slimy creek bed and slippery rocks. Reeds and acacia bushes whipped their bodies as they thrashed their way through the scrub.

‘What possessed you to go down here?’ Dan asked.

‘I had to pee,’ Zoe said. ‘Then I sort of got lost. Lucky, I had a signal on my phone. Didn’t fancy…But I was wandering down this creek and I got curious…it looked so…familiar.’

‘What?’

‘Who would’ve thought I’d be on a hike with Detective Dan and just like those murder mystery shows, I’d come across…how strange!’

Renard met them as they approached a wattle bush. ‘It’s this way,’ he said pointing to a clump of blackberry bushes.

After navigating the prickles of those particularly thorny scourges that had invaded the native bushland, the group stood around a slimy puddle. What appeared to be a leathery cowhide draped the entrance to a drain as if it were a welcome mat. In the mouth of the cave, an upturned skull sprouted a sprig of native lilies.

Dan squatted by the leather. ‘It’s a ribcage,’ he said.

El hunched over and stepped into the cave.

‘Don’t go too far, love,’ Renard said, ‘it could be a disused mine.’

‘It’s not,’ El sang in return, ‘it’s a drain. See all the water trickling out of it?’

Zoe looked on and with arms folded, said, ‘This place is giving me the creeps.’

‘Now, that’s the sort of thing that El would normally say,’ Dan said, then poked his head into the drain. ‘Sense anything El?’

‘Like what?’ El snorted. ‘A ghost?’

Something shiny caught Dan’s attention. He reached over to a tuft of grass by the drain’s edge and parted the leaves to reveal a silver chain. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of gloves, then a plastic bag.

El looked around at Dan. ‘You came prepared?’

‘You never know,’ Dan replied and bagged the chain with a cross pendant. He then smiled at Zoe. ‘Now, I was going to use my phone, but as you have such a quality camera, Zoe, would you mind taking some photos for me?’

Zoe stared at the “evidence”. She turned pale. Then she patted her camera bag and shook her head. ‘Sorry, I-I can’t…this is creeping me out.’

She backed away from the remains, then turned and ran, disappearing through the bushes.

‘Wait…Zoe…don’t…’ Renard called as he chased her.

Dan sighed, ‘Too much for the aspiring lawyer, I guess.’

‘And we are too used to scenes such as this,’ El said.

Dan lifted the phone to his ear and called in the forensic team, then the coroner. He hoped that there was enough DNA on the remains to identify the victim.

*[Photo 6: Boat on Macquarie Harbour, Strahan, Tasmania © L.M. Kling 2016

Zoe

As the lawyer scrambled down the slope, her mind raced to a disturbing conversation she’d had at the hotel in Strahan four months ago. The week before Christmas, and one of the old locals had approached her. A fisherman who owned a fancy yacht and by her estimation had imbibed way too much.
He sidled up to her at the bar and talked to her as if he knew her. Kept calling her Lillie.

“I dare you!” he repeated in his drunken drawl. “I dare you to hike up Mt. Lofty and find that geezer. He’s up there under the bridge, ya know. I dare you to find ‘im, Lilly.”

“It’s his fault, ya know. Ya ol’ man. He made me do it.” The fisherman then patted Zoe’s arm. “Nah, you’re a good girl, Lilly. You’d never rat on ya ol’ man.”

Zoe massaged the mud-encrusted watch in her pocket. Up until that moment, she had thought the fisherman’s words were the ravings of a drunk man.

© Tessa Trudinger 2024
Feature Photo: Kangaroo Carcass Brachina Gorge ©L.M. Kling 1999

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