30 Days in Sydney

by Peter Carey

  The boy who broke his wrists.

  They're good fellows, Paul and Skink, and they don't mind a little danger. You look at Skink you wouldn't think he was much, but I've climbed with him and I've fought fires with him and I'd as soon trust my life to him as any man alive. And these canyons can be dangerous, mate. You get caught down one of these holes in a storm you're in deep shit. They're so narrow it doesn't take a lot of water to make them rise. I mean, one minute you could be lying on your back on an airbed, floating down the stream in this gorgeous filtered light and these sculpted golden walls, and the next you could be in a torrent filled with logs and you could die. This is the astonishing thing about Sydney. You drive an hour or two and can go down canyons where no human being has ever been before. Now sometimes these climbs are more in the nature of a picnic, but sometimes we get very serious about it and the time I am speaking about, the day after Clara said, 'My goodwill is all burned up,' four of us had planned to abseil down this amazing waterfall. Danae is a slot down the face of a cliff and the cliff is around two thousand feet.

  Two hundred, you mean.

  I mean two thousand. I was going to cancel out, I was kind of depressed, but finally I decided that I needed something as big as Danae Canyon to take my mind off my problems. Anyway, the way you do this is go down in a series of what are called 'pitches', steps of fifty metres. You have two ropes tied together, paired. You have these belaying points. No, not bloody pins. Some cowboys will drill holes into the rock and epoxy glue bolts into the rock but I never trusted those. You belay off any solid object - a log, a rock, anything you can put a sling around. You loop your rope through the sling. The point about pairing the ropes is so that you can pull the rope after you when you're at the bottom of each pitch. The sling stays on the belay point. Having done that, however, there's no returning.

  Anyway, the first pitch is the most dangerous, because you don't know exactly what conditions you are going to face, and on this occasion I am the first one over. I am halfway down the pitch when I realise the volume of water in this fall is far greater than we had thought. I am wearing a wetsuit but the problem is not getting wet. The thing is, Pete, I cannot fucking breathe. There is a ton of water thundering over me. It is like putting your head out the window of a speeding car.

  But it is worse than that. Because there is a fallen tree wedged vertically in the waterfall and when I am halfway down I realise that the rope is caught in the top of the tree, so I am halfway down the pitch and I am out of rope.

  Now my mates are waiting on the ledge above me and they can't see me and I push myself out as far as I can and I SCREAM but they can't hear me. And I know that they're going to die on that ledge if I'm stuck, because there is only one rope and I've got it.

  So I've got two options. The first, get off the rope and drop, although God knows how far that will be, but to do this I have to disconnect and my weight is holding the release locked tight.

  So I climbed the fucking tree. I don't think you can know what it is like to climb a slippery pole against a ton of water. But I manage to do it, and I get the rope free. I am pretty tired and knocked up but I can continue down.

  But the fifty-metre rope is insufficient, and I come to the end with only air beneath me. I am really exhausted by now. I am really sorry I ever started it. No way can I climb that rope against the weight of water. It is not even an option. My only choice is to drop, and hope I don't break my neck. But the damn rope has jammed in the harness, and as long as my weight is on it I cannot release it to drop. I am so weak by now I cannot pull myself up the rope enough to take the weight off the clip in order that it will let go.

  And I hung there, and you know I really did not care if I died. In fact, to tell you the truth, death did seem like a pretty good solution, but I could not leave my mates up there. Skink had a one-year-old baby.

  So, I gave it one more go. What I had to do, in the middle of this fucking waterfall, was a one-armed chin-up and while I lifted myself in the air with my right hand I fiddled with the harness with the left.

  And finally, the sucker opened, and I did not even think: I dropped. I thought, thank Christ it's over. I fell eight feet into a pool five foot deep.

  My conversation with Sheridan was in April 2000 and it was a little over six weeks later I received this clipping from the June 15 Sydney Morning Herald. There was no accompanying letter, only a yellow Post-it reading FYI.

  Their fatal leap from the edge of the world By John Huxley

  Late-rising kangaroos lingered along the dirt track. Honeyeaters fluttered through the trees. Bushwalkers, some carrying babies on their backs, strode off in search of local attractions such as Mount Cloudmaker, Big Misty and Dance Floor Cave.

  And, ever so slowly, the sun climbed over the ridge, burning off the mist and the morning frost.

  There is a reassuring familiarity about the Kanangra Falls car park with its discreet toilets, picnic tables and information shelter, all tidily atop Boyd Plateau, high in the Blue Mountains.

  But a short walk away - a 'leap off the edge of the world away', as one member of the police rescue squad put it - is an altogether more alien, more hostile environment.

  An untamed world. In the words of the National Park guide, 'a labyrinth of creeks, rivers, spiny ridges and deep gorges'.

  It was in one of these more remote gorges, near the 400-metre-high Corra Beanga Falls, just five kilometres north-east of the car park, that two members of the Newcastle University Mountaineering Club died last weekend after a three-day expedition went horribly wrong.

  It appears the two men were trapped after their ropes became tangled while leading a fifty-metre abseil down the eighth of the thirteen falls that comprise Corra Beanga.

  'We believe two ropes were involved,' said Mr Alan Sheehan, of Oberon SES rescue unit. 'The first man made it down and freed his rope. But the second man became tangled in his rope. When the first climbed back up to help him, he too got into trouble.

  'It's very rare for ropes to jam. Why did it happen? Maybe we'll never know. Maybe the only two people who know are dead.'

  Desperate, torch-lit attempts by their seven colleagues - looking down in horror from forty metres above - to rescue the pair had to be abandoned as night fell and the weather deteriorated.

  Forced to spend the night trapped, dangling on the exposed cliff face, lashed by rain, wind and waterfall, Mr Steve Rogers, 26, and Mr Mark Charles, 24, are thought to have died of hypothermia.

  'We just don't know, but it could have taken a matter of minutes. Or a matter of hours,' Mr Sheehan said.

  The survivors spent the night on a narrow ledge, barely half a metre wide, shivering, huddled under a flysheet, unable to respond to the cries of help from their friends below.

  A senior Chifley police officer, Inspector Peter Thurtell, said it appeared that they did not initially know of the fate of their companions.

  'As far as we're concerned, the people that remained up on the ledge above them fully expected to get up in the morning and find their friends camping on the ledge below,' he said.

  However, the next morning they realised the worst, and freed their dead friends before starting a three-day slog to safety over what one police rescue squad member described as 'the worst terrain I have ever seen or ever want to see'. They were picked up by a search party, near Kanangra Falls, on Tuesday afternoon.

  While the survivors were reunited with family and friends, the grim task of retrieving the bodies resumed in fine, clear weather yesterday.

  The two bodies were quickly located, in a pool near the foot of the eighth waterfall, and brought out in two trips by the police rescue helicopter.

  The deaths brought to four the number of people killed in Blue Mountains bushwalking accidents last weekend.

  Police and rescue services, however, declined either to criticise the adventurers or to support restrictions on the numbers and types of people using wilderness areas.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THAT
NIGHT IN SHERIDAN'S cave I tried to persuade him to tell me about his adventures in the local Volunteer Fire Brigade but no matter how many times he filled his glass he would not soften. I've talked too much already, he said. Ledoux is right, when you've gotten off the hook it's best to be very quiet.

  Well let me talk to Skink.

  Skink is not a talker, mate, but I'll tell you who is, I'll tell you who is perfect - what's his name, he is married to that gorgeous woman.

  You mean Marty Singh, don't you? He lives near here.

  How would he get a woman like that? demanded Sheridan.

  Well, he's smart. He's attractive.

  Attractive, do you really think so?

  Sure, and he's curious about everything. He's full of life.

  I'm fucking curious, said Sheridan belligerently. Anyway, call the bugger. You need some prize-winning celebrities to liven up this thing. Or ex-celebrities. Either way, he'll talk your leg off. Here, use my mobile phone.

  I did ring Marty, and as it turned out he would be happy to tell me about his firefighting adventures but he was leaving the next morning for Broome.

  Tape him, hissed Sheridan fiercely. Tape the bastard.

  Finally Marty was obliging enough to tape himself and I had nothing to attend to but Sheridan who insisted on pushing his big untidy head against the phone so he could hear the other side of the conversation.

  I was, said Marty, down on the coast with Astrid at Bateman's Bay.

  That's her, hissed Sheridan, she's fucking gorgeous.

  Shut up, Sheridan, said Marty. I was there with Astrid and her mother. Fires were springing up all over Sydney at that time. I don't know what caused them all - lightning, dropped cigarettes.

  There was a fucking pyromaniac about, said Sheridan. I don't see how he can say he doesn't know.

  Perhaps he's right, sighed Marty. I know one fire was deliberately lit at Mount Wilson. Then, in the town of Colo, a woman had jumped into a swimming pool with her children to escape a fire but they were all killed.

  The Mount Wilson fire was not the only one in the Blue Mountains so I telephoned our place just to see what the danger was. We had a couple of friends house-sitting, and I noticed there was a strange tone in their voices. I know they don't scare easily. I mean, these are Tibetan activists who demonstrate in China. But now it seemed they had to rush to Canberra.

  Willem, Astrid's brother, was also in the mountains.

  Good bloke, said Sheridan.

  Willem is an amazing guy, agreed Marty. He'll never panic about anything, he's always so serene and unruffled, but when I asked him about the fires I could hear he was concerned.

  That's when I knew it was time for me to go. For the first time in our marriage, Astrid packed me a cut lunch! And I set off towards the mountains at 140 kilometres an hour. As I drove I listened to the radio, commercial radio, and I remember hearing the fires on Pittwater were burning right down to the jetty and I knew that meant your old place must have gone. Also that fellow who designed the Aussie dollar notes. His house went. And Dorothy MacKellar's house is right near there, isn't it? You know who I mean, that famous hymn to El Niiio! I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains? We were very sunburnt that day, believe me.

  There was a police roadblock on the M4. You were only allowed west if you had a mountain address on your driver's licence.

  Fuck this, said Sheridan, finally abandoning the tiny phone. I heard a cork pop and then the door slammed shut as he lurched out into the night.

  From the plains, Marty continued, all you could see was smoke in the sky and it seemed I was the only car heading west. As I came into the foothills of the mountains I noticed the cars coming towards me had household goods tied on top, towed behind, like refugees. There was absolutely no information on the ABC. There were fires all over Sydney but they had scheduled a broadcast of Arab lesbian quatrains and nothing was going to change their minds.

  Meanwhile as I came into the mountains I found ash was falling from the sky. The cars coming round the bends had their headlights on.

  An hour later I was at our house, and there was good old Willem. He had already taken down the curtains and was clearing the vegetation back from around the house.

  But he had his own place to look out for. So I took over and he went home. It was very, very hot and smoky. Darkness was falling and of course it did not get much cooler. When there was no longer sufficient light to work outside I went up to our tower. There was a ring of fire, burning on the ridges all around. It was really beautiful. Can you just imagine - you're up in a tower and through every window, in every direction - fire. At that stage there was no wind and there was no clear indication that it would come up the Grosse Valley, which is our Grand Canyon if you like. So I was not, at that stage, terrified. In fact I had a really good night's sleep.

  Next morning it was very hot, hazy with smoke. I dressed in overalls, boots, garden gloves. First I nailed corrugated iron over the skylights. Then I had to make a water dam in the roof gutters. Our house has wide box guttering, and I couldn't block the downpipes with tennis balls like everybody else was doing all over Sydney. I had to be innovative. I found some old dresses of Astrid's - well I thought they were old dresses although it turned out later they were Kenzo - and I wrapped them in plastic and shoved them into the downpipes. Then I flooded the gutters with water. And that's how the day went on, all these fortifications, defences against the fire. I was insanely busy, but not at all unhappy.

  And the great thing was, people kept coming in to help. There was an old fellow, Sandy Blake, who was living alone down the road. He came up to help. Then someone brought a chainsaw and dropped a few trees that were hanging too close to the buildings.

  Then Willem came back. By this time I'd given up on the radio. There was dense smoke and haze all around us. I didn't need a radio to know I was in the middle of a fire.

  The phone lines were all still working and Astrid kept phoning up.

  Photo albums!

  So I found the fucking photos, which were all of Astrid and her old boyfriends, and I stored them in the laundry which has a double ceiling. Then the phone was ringing again. My Chinese porcelain!

  So I stored her Chinese porcelain.

  Then: the wardrobe!

  Fuck the wardrobe.

  I put some stuff in the laundry and some stuff in the boot of the car but I had no idea what was safe. By the end of the day, all the things Astrid cared about were in the laundry covered with wool blankets. The gutters were brimful of water. There were also buckets of water everywhere. But what do you do with videotapes? I had tapes of all my animation, every foot of film I had ever produced, and videotapes are like little barrels of oil, the most explosive things of all.

  Early evening on this second day, I got a call from a niece who works in National Parks. She was phoning from a helicopter: Marty, I'm over your way now. The fire's coming up on Governor's. That was close, only a few miles down the end of our road.

  Then I got a call from a neighbour who said he'd seen fire trucks going up towards my place.

  I'd just hung up when all these volunteer firefighters came bursting into my house. There were a couple of guys I recognised, including the guy from the local garage. Marty, he said, we need tea towels.

  So I gave them my tea towels.

  We've got to get you out of here, Marty.

  They wet the towels and tore them up and wrapped them round their faces but they could not hide their panicked eyes. I don't want to demean these volunteers. They were very brave and they were very helpful to me. But those eyes were scary to behold.

  We've got orders. You've got to be evacuated.

  I don't need to be evacuated.

  No, no, don't give us any trouble, Marty.

  So where's the captain?

  But they had already escorted old Sandy Blake out to the car. And I was next. I didn't want to be an arsehole but I was absolutely livid. I was thinking, they can't do this to me. We were escorted i
n a convoy, and as we were driving down the road there were more fire trucks coming towards my house.

  The convoy drove for about ten minutes to the point where the dirt road meets the asphalt road which the locals call 'The Rink'. This was now basecamp for the firefighting units - fire trucks, cop cars, my neighbours. You couldn't see a hundred yards. There was a feeling of panic.

  Then I discovered I didn't have my wallet.

  I've left my wallet behind, I said to the cop.

  Any guy understands this. A man must have his wallet.

  I've got to go back and get it.

  All right, Marty, he said, I'll see if I can get permission.

  Come on, I said, we don't need permission.

  All right, get in the bloody car.

  As I was getting into the car, who did I see, talking his way through the roadblock? It was Willem. So this young cop drives us both through the smoke and ash back to my house.

  By now the place is swarming with firefighters, but they didn't have the outside lights on and they couldn't find my water tanks.

  I've got to stay. These fellows don't know where anything is.

  Finally this young cop gives in.

  The firefighters had a map which showed the contours of the land between our house and Governor's Rest, but they were having trouble reading it.

  They were asking how many valleys there were between my place and Governor's.

  Well, said Willem, the first one's here.

  And straight away there was order. As Willem briefed them on the land my living room became like a war room.

  By this time poor old Sandy Blake had been taken off and spent a hideous night in a boarding house. But I was in my home with my brother-in-law, who helped build the house and was very confident about its ability to withstand the fire. Mind you, I also had these guys with my tea towels wrapped around their faces. What was that about? I asked them. Why were you evacuating me?