Here, so close I can touch it, is a wattle, less than a metre tall, with perhaps one hundred leaves. Several leaves are old and yellow, about to fall off. Several leaves are new: small, unblemished, a more vibrant green. Some leaves have been significantly eaten by insects. I look at one particular leaf: its backbone and its fine veins, and about twenty little light-coloured circular blemishes and several other dark squiggly blemishes, caused – I think – by organisms. And there, a beetle. I look at it closely: tiny eyes, tiny legs. I look at its wings. Each wing is composed of twenty or so segments. I look closely at one segment, then another, then another, and in each segment I can see a rainbow.
I nod to Michael. There is nothing he can do but read the paper.
I follow Gully downstream – north – for a while. I’ve not done this before, but it’s easy walking and I want to meet Halfway further downstream from where I normally meet her. I recognise a big bluff ahead. The Spot – a place on Halfway – is to the right of this bluff and Gully continues past it to the left, I’m sure. The recognition makes me feel good: I’m getting to know this country. When I get closer, I leave the creek and go east through stone, then make a steep but straightforward descent to the bottom of Halfway’s gorge. I hop a few hundred metres downstream and I’m at The Spot.
There is a particular feel here that I recognised the first time I came through. I didn’t stop that time – I had camped half an hour upstream and was on the move – but I’ve slept here several nights over the years, and I’ll sleep here again tonight. I shed my pack and hat and sodden shirt, and the pool takes me in like I have never been gone.
Hours and hours later, the pendulum that throws me into the water to cool, then drags me out to warm, is losing momentum. I’ve been into every nook and cranny of this pool, and the crusty surfaces of beaches – until today disturbed only by lizards and birds – are now trampled with my footprints. I went upstream for a while, and swam up the long narrow gorge to the bottom of Halfway Falls. The walls of the gorge are so close together I’m careful not to kick my feet against them as I breaststroke, and so high and narrow that in the half-dark I cannot see the bottom. Eventually they open, and I tread water beneath the fifty metre falls. I can’t climb up anywhere – I’ve tried, but there are no handholds – so I slowly glide back to The Spot.
It is an hour before sunset – I don’t have a clock so I’m always guessing – and the shade from the western ridge has crossed the pool and crossed the beach I’m on, and is spreading away from me like a slow-burning fire.
Overlooking me are huge bluffs, cliffs and hillsides, their grey-orange-brown becoming brilliant orange-red in the late light, or darkening in shadow. My map tells me they are about one hundred and fifty metres higher than me, and they sprawl magnificently and chaotically around me. Above them, overlooking them and much more, high in the bold blue sky – if you look long enough you will see them – are the specks of soaring eagles.
I am alive, a speck of creation, a fluttering feather, a gathering storm, a clenching and unclenching fist, a receding tide that gradually reveals, that gives air.
I’m taking my time with this car thing, aren’t I? I’m getting there, my friend. It is a big thing I’m giving you, and I want to make sure you can take it in. I feel you’re waiting at the crossroads, revving your engine, ready to run me over.
Jude always lets me know that she and her husband use their car sparingly. She often points out they have only the one car between them. I feel uncomfortable when she does this. I’ve never talked to her about cars. What has she been told about me? A few weeks ago she said to me, ‘You don’t have a car for environmental reasons. Is that right?’
‘Oh, for many reasons. I might write a book about it one day.’
‘But you get lifts in cars, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there is a flaw in your argument.’
‘Hey?’
‘If you get lifts in cars there is obviously a flaw in your argument.’
My dear friends. My dear car-driving friends. I don’t want to hurt you. Ease up. I’ll be gentle with you. I’m preparing the way for you.
I’m easing up here, and easing down, easing into this sandbank. I can feel my heart and mind slowly unwinding. If I stay still, the cloudy water inside me settles and clears. Over the days, my consciousness gains a focus on things I didn’t know existed.
I live near the tidal estuary of Rapid Creek in Darwin. At low tide there is a vast expanse of exposed wet sand, and I like to walk out to the water’s edge and watch the sea retreat or advance. There is a rock island, bigger than a football oval and about three kilometres from the foreshore, that people call Old Man Rock. At high tide it is submerged, and boats can run aground on it, but Darwin’s big tides – often six or seven metres – reveal it for half the day. On the lowest tides of the year, if you have a spare two hours at the right time, you can walk out to it and back without getting your knees wet. Whenever I’m at the beach I look to it. If I’m travelling down Chapman Road through the suburb of Rapid Creek, heading to the beach, I look at the ocean, and if it isn’t high tide I see Old Man Rock. Above the black road is green sea, brown island, green sea, blue sky. If the tide is right out, yellow sand goes between the road and water.
Beth and her family have lived on Chapman Road for fifteen years. I was in her house and I mentioned Old Man Rock in passing.
‘What’s that? Old Man Rock?’
‘The island out there,’ I said, pointing in the right direction through the living room wall.
‘What island?’
‘You know, the island out there. The rock island. It’s about three kilometres out to sea. Submerged at high tide.’
But neither Beth nor her daughter knew what I was talking about. They frowned and shook their heads. Eventually I led them out the front door and out the gate and onto the road and I pointed again.
‘Oh!’ said Beth. ‘I suppose I’ve seen it …’
Of course she’s seen it. She has seen it ten times a week for fifteen years.
‘… but I’ve never really noticed it.’
What does she notice? She is a lawyer, and notices details at work. She notices the mess her daughter left in the kitchen, and what her friend was wearing last night, and what happened in the TV show. She would notice if someone in the office had odd socks or mismatched earrings. She can’t notice everything. Now Old Man Rock has been pointed out to her she will start noticing it.
You can’t notice everything and sometimes you don’t see something until it is pointed out to you. It might be too big and too close and you can’t get perspective. You might look past it, distracted, preoccupied. You might be blinded, or fooled, or somewhere else, but you know you don’t know everything, and that you could be surprised.
There might be a favourite drawing you see every day on your waIl, a drawing of a staircase. You’ve always seen the staircase going up. One day someone says it is going down.
‘No, it is going up!’ you say, but he points out why he sees it going down and suddenly you are seeing it going down, and you never see it going up again.
I
