“Mate, you sure this is the way?”
I stop, chest heaving, blinded by the sweat and sunscreen that’s coalesced at my eyebrows and channelled into my eyes.
I wipe my face and look down, my legs are covered in blood after over an hour of bashing our way through a labyrinth of acacias and blackberries.
“Parks mustn’t have been out here to do trackwork since Lockdown – I don’t remember it being this thick!”
I look up and see the fingers of a cloud start to reach across the sun: please don’t rain I think to myself.
“Mate, look at your legs! You should’ve accepted those gators from that old bloke at the carpark!”
The other voice comes from Jake, a friend from university who had recently moved to the area and whose stoic attitude and ability to state the obvious was both his best and worst traits.
“She’ll be right, just a few scratches. Alright let’s backtrack” I concede as I bend down to inspect my legs; I really should’ve accepted those gators.
We push our way back through the scrubby undergrowth like we’re trying to reach the front row of a sold out music festival but instead of a throng of inebriated teenagers it’s a tangle of blackberry thorns.
“Are these things native?” asks Jake as he whacks one of the tendril-like vines out of the way.
“Absolutely not. A bloke by the name of Ferdinand von Mueller brought them here in the 1850s and started throwing seeds about – this was the first place he did it.” I reply through gritted teeth.
“How do you even know that?” Jake asks.
“Because every kid who grew up here knows that – we’re raised to hate the prick.”
I feel a raindrop and see that the cloud’s fingers have rapidly become fists trying to knockout the sunlight.
“We should be close to the flaming camp as soon as we find the track.” I yellout.
“I reckon this might be it!” exclaims Jake from the path ahead.
I emerge from the thicket to find him grinning like a shot fox, arm outstretched pointing at the blue reflective wayfinding marker.
“How did we miss that?” I say.
“Probably because you were in the middle of telling me that story about the time you were in a hostel in Paris and a girl wet the bed in the bunk above you and you had to cop the torrent of piss whilst munging into a baguette – topnotch yarn.”
I smile as the vivid memories of that night swirl through my head again.
“Looks like these clouds are getting darker!”
“I’m positive the campsite is just down that ridge” I say, tracing the path down into the Snow Gums.
The sky opens up and rain gushes from above.
“How about we go here?” Jake shouts, his face buried inside a hood of Gortex.
“We’re close!” I yell back.
“You’ve been saying that since breakfast! Let’s just pitch here, this rain is getting heavier!”
“Righto, stuff it, we can check out the hut in the morning.”
We dump our packs and start pulling out a technicolour of hiking equipment. The frenzied dance is done in silence as we fumble with pegs and poles, until finally we’re sitting in our tents, dejected, only metres apart but as isolated as the Button Man on Christmas.
“Come to my tent Jake, I’ve got a bottle of red!”
The zip darts down and Jake falls into the vestibule, drenched but still grinning.
“If only we had some water, we could cook in here and it’d be alright.” I say.
“Let’s manifest a break in the rain, just 5 minutes or so” Jake says.
“I’m not doing that woo-woo shit mate”
“Nah come on, trust me” he says as he takes my hands. “Alright, close your eyes, and imagine the rain stopping.”
I can barely hear him over the rain drumming on the tent like a performer in the opening ceremony of the Beijing olympics.
We close our eyes, hands clasped together, and he starts chanting “Sunshine, sunshine, manifest” over and over.
Slowly the drumming becomes a patter. We continue chanting.
Then as suddenly as it appeared, the rain stops.
We sit in silence and open our eyes.
Jake unzips the tent and as we emerge he turns around and points. I follow his finger and see across the valley a rainbow is forming out of the mountain. We stand at the edge of the ridge as two Yellow-Tailed Black Cockatoos wheel down behind us and glide away, their exuberant squealing reverberating off the rocks in a syncopated chorus.
I look at Jake, he’s still grinning. I start to smile.
“There’s just things we’ll never understand, hey?” I whisper.
“The mystery is the beauty mate; it’s everywhere, you’ve just got to experience it.”
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