| The Trip Into A Dream | ||||
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The Inadvertent Traveller I had been working for some time in the early sixties and decided that my annual leave would be an adventure to explore Northern New South Wales. Therefore, my best friend and I set out on what passed for train travel and after 24 hours we finally reached Cessnock where the adventure really started. However, to digress and explain why this story was so inexplicable – At an early age – I had not reached double figures- my Mother and Father parted company. Mum had a hard time getting work and looking after me so I went to my Grandparents. My Grandfather became a figure of awe, as he seemed to know just about everything. He educated me on varying topics to such an extent, that curiosity, for me, became my guiding light. He would stand just in the doorway of the lounge room with his head bent just slightly and watch as I played with my stick figures reaching the mouth of the Nile. The stories of explorers in Africa, he would read to me, took my imagination into the jungles of the Dark Continent, where snakes slithered, unknown growls and pounding drums lifted the hairs on your arm; where the heat choked and thirst made a person go insane. I lost something very valuable, to me, when he passed on. It was only several months before my trip and I missed him. Therefore, the journey took me to places I had never been – much the same as our intrepid trips into the Dark Continent. I had never told my mate that about this time, I started to have dreams where somebody talked to me and I was on a road, which ran into a mammoth sheet of water stretching into the horizon. The road was a normal road, two lanes, but a bit battered or neglected. Fields of grass or wheat surrounded this expanse of water and every time I stopped the voice would say ‘it’s safe, go on’. I would shake my head as I stared into the distance and watched waves of water consume what dry land remained. As I shook my head, I would awake and the dream became vaporous as the memory blew away. I could never understand as I thought nightmares came from eating something that disagreed with your stomach. That is another strange thing, I could never classify this as a nightmare, and I couldn’t classify it as anything. It wasn’t unpleasant, just baffling. We spent several weeks exploring and ventured into Queensland by thumb. We explored the coast and Surfers Paradise, which was a wilderness and decided to make our way back, slowly, again by thumb. The Inspector at the tick gate told us to wait and he would make sure that the driver he chose was somebody we could trust. I have never forgotten that fellow. The Inspector knew this particular driver and he needed help with his very old 4wheel drive; it drank more oil than petrol. At this stage, reports of torrential flooding on the coast and washouts filled the airwaves so we headed inland on the New England Highway. The journey became a trial – a real life adventure. We stopped at several old cafes for sandwiches and coffee, with ham so thick it would choke a horse. The rain had spread inland and the highway became perilous. Bitumen spray with a few rocks does not make a good road surface. We had to drive around Lismore and therefore detour through Frederickville as Lismore’s valleys became lakes. Major bridges were under threat and roads were cut, virtually everywhere. The 4wheel drive developed an insatiable appetite and service stations became rare to extinct. This trip into the unknown was no adventure as our very safety was under threat. We drove down an old dirt road as directed and as we rounded one corner, a very fast and badly driven car screamed around the corner beside us with police cars in pursuit. Two kilometres on the car had come to a stop, forcefully against a very old thick ghost gum. The driver was dragged from the car as we stopped to offer assistance. The police officer told us to get out while we could as more roads and bridges in the area were under threat. By this time, the rain almost obliterated the windscreen and the wipers became useless. The headlights were on to illuminate the sides of the road, which now disappeared regularly. The next few kilometres took a long time but finally we got to the last bridge in this area. On the other side was bitumen and then back onto the main highway, but first this bridge. We all trooped up to examine it and discovered that the middle plank had gone, either fallen and rotted, or taken. We were crestfallen. The driver said to leave him and walk out, and that was not going to happen. He had an idea and went down to the creek bed or gully and saw that the locals used it regularly, and maybe the plank had been missing for years and the locals simply used the creek. It was a gamble. We stayed out and directed him down to the wheel ruts impressed in the dirt and then disaster struck. The oil pan jammed against an outcropping and one wheel buried itself in the loose scree. We had to dig him out by hand, as waves of cold water washed over us, so thick is was hard to see. The scree turned to mud and the 4wheel drive slipped deeper. I could hear a noise like a tiger with boulders in its mouth and our blood turned to icicles. We tore whole boulders from the ground throwing them at the front wheels as the driver gunned the engine. Some slight noise and I looked across the gully and a figure stood against a tree, with that same bent head and knowing look. That was it; we pulled the logs into the gully. The 4wheel drive took off like a dingo at dinnertime with us running after it. We made it to the other side onto higher ground as the water from the burst dirt dam further up roared into the gully where we had been only minutes before. From our vantage point, the roaring torrent consumed the area with waves of water covering the ground and our tyre tracks the only evidence of our passing. Suddenly the scene in front and my dream came together and my aberrant sighting of someone leaning against a tree washed over me, I had been warned, just as he had always stood in the doorway and watched me reach the source of the Nile. . |
