Behind Mt. Baldy

by Christopher Cummings

  “Yes. And there are none between Mareeba and Atherton either,” Graham agreed. He traced his finger over the map. “Here is the railway from Mareeba coming in through Tolga to Atherton. Then it goes south and up the mountains to Herberton.”

  “Remember our trip to Herberton on the steam train last year?” Peter asked. “We went through a tunnel then, up on the Herberton Range.”

  Graham nodded. “We were going to walk up that railway one day,” he agreed.

  “That is a private railway isn’t it?” Stephen asked.

  “Yes it is,” Roger agreed. “It belongs to a company called ‘RailCo’ and they run the steam train.”

  “That is a great trip,” Peter enthused.

  “I loved the steam engine,” Graham agreed. He bent closer to the map and traced along the railway line with his finger. “Here it is. ‘Tunnel’.”

  “It’s right near the top of the mountain,” Roger groaned.

  “Herberton Range,” Peter read.

  “How far is it?” Stephen asked.

  “Just a minute.” Graham took out his notebook, tore out a page and began measuring distances along what looked to be the shortest route. “What a spider web of roads. It’s hard to know which one is the shortest,” he grumbled.

  Roger began to get a sinking feeling as Graham marked pencil marks at each bend, going round the page more than once. He measured this against the maps kilometric grid.

  “You aren’t going to like this Roger. It’s twenty eight kilometres.”

  Roger felt suddenly depressed. “We’ve already walked over three. That will make it over thirty kilometres!” he wailed. “This is supposed to be a hundred kilometres and we’ve done about sixty already haven’t we?”

  “Yes we have. Cheer up. We don’t have to do it all today. We can camp somewhere along the way,” Graham said cheerfully.

  “Then we might not be able to finish tomorrow,” Roger said. Suddenly he felt exhausted and depressed. He was already sore and had to hold back tears.

  Graham shook his head. “No. We should only have about ten kilometres to go then. I’ll bet the last leg is from the tunnel down the main road to Atherton. That’s only about ten.”

  Roger looked at the map. “What about Mt Baldy?” he sniffed accusingly.

  “Bugger Mt Baldy! We will climb it when we come to it,” Graham snapped.

  Peter gave a wry grin. “More likely it will bugger us,” he observed.

  Graham looked irritated. “Enough! Let’s get moving. Here’s the first tourist bus arriving. Gosh. It’s half past eight.”

  They walked out against a tide of Japanese tourists who gave them curious stares. The boys shouldered their packs and set off South West, walking along the side of the road.

  Roger now felt very stiff and he began to notice his chafing and odd aches and sore feet. He was dispirited and could feel a headache developing. The day’s march loomed as another gruelling ordeal.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE ATHERTON TABLELANDS

  Five minutes walking brought the boys out of the rain forest into open farmland. Tall grass walled the road, allowing only glimpses of the fields beyond. On their left, about a kilometre away, was a large hill, its slopes covered by a tangle of lantana, weeds and patches of rain forest.

  “What’s the name of that hill Graham?” Peter called.

  Graham consulted his map. “Mt Quincan.”

  “I’ve heard that name. What is a quincan? Is it some sort of fruit?”

  Stephen called from behind. “No, that’s a quandong you are thinking of,” he said. “A Quincan is an Aboriginal bogey-man; a spirit who comes out at night to leap out and grab you. It’s one of their legends.”

  “The hill is really an old volcano,” Graham explained. “Captain Conkey showed us some pictures of it in Geography. There is a swampy crater up in the top at the other end.”

  Roger eyed the hill with little interest. He kept his mouth shut and concentrated on walking, trying to ignore the many irritations and pains which seemed to grow by the minute. The boys walked up a long, gentle rise. The road curved left so that Mt Quincan remained on their left. Out to the right were open fields dotted with cattle; and a grassy flat covered with a scattering of tall white-trunked gum trees. Beyond were several of the small volcanic hills named ‘The Seven Sisters’.

  They passed a road junction on their right. Roger glanced along the farm road and saw a white car parked about fifty metres along it, with a man sitting in it. Just a car, or? He wondered. And if so, was it police or KSS? The thought made him feel quite restless.

  The traffic on the road they were walking beside in single file was building up too, with a vehicle either way every couple of minutes. This forced them off each time so they had to walk on the verge which was covered in long grass.

  “Look out!” Graham cried.

  Roger looked up in fright, in time to see Graham jumping backwards into Peter.

  “Snake,” Graham added as he grabbed at Peter to stop them both falling over. After a moment Graham stopped jumping up and down and began laughing. “It’s OK. Only a ‘Yellow bellied black’. Bloody hell! He gave me a fright. I nearly stepped on him.”

  “Probably just sunning himself,” Stephen commented.

  They continued on, Roger now looking anxiously at the grass at his feet, and thankful he was last. Having to keep getting off the bitumen to walk in the grass because of cars made him even more disgruntled and resentful.

  At another road junction, this time on their left, a battered and muddy red tractor was parked. A man in greasy overalls was working on the engine. He eyed them for a moment, grunted a surly ‘G’day’ and put his head back under the engine cover.

  After another hundred metres they came to another road going off on their left. BALLS ROAD the sign said. They kept marching. The main road curved right so that Mt Quincan was now behind them. The road crossed the grassy flat which looked like a marsh. They crossed a small bridge over a sluggish creek and began a trudge along a kilometre of straight road with the open forest of tall white eucalypts on their left. The traffic flow increased to dangerous and unpleasant proportions with a car, truck or tourist bus each way every minute or so.

  At 9am they reached the junction with the main Atherton- Malanda road. It was bitumen with no shade and a busy traffic flow so they just kept on marching, turning right towards Atherton.

  “We turn off a side road in about two kilometres,” Graham explained.

  “Can’t be soon enough for me. I hate this,” Roger growled as he was buffeted by the slipstream of a huge semi-trailer. Diesel fumes filled his nostrils and he could taste it on his tongue. He felt queasy and his headache got worse.

  Twenty five sweaty minutes later they reached the turn-off of the East Barron Road. It was a bitumen road but only one lane wide. It went south up a depressingly long hill onto a wide, bare ridge. There was a row of pine trees at the junction but when Graham went to stop Roger surprised him by saying,

  “Don’t stop. Not here. Go on further and get away from the main road. I’m bloody sick of this traffic.”

  The others agreed so they tramped on up the long rise for two hundred paces before stopping. There was no shade but at least the vehicle noise was now only an annoying buzz. Roger dropped his gear and flopped down, using his pack as a pillow and putting his feet up on a fence. He was soaked in sweat.

  “Strewth it’s hot! This is supposed to be winter!” he cried.

  “I wish there was a breeze,” Stephen agreed.

  They lay or sat in relative silence for ten minutes. Roger felt quite drowsy and found the humming of bees, busy amongst the giant sunflowers along the fence, melded with the distant hum of traffic.

  Graham nudged Roger’s leg with his boot. “Don’t go to sleep Roger. Have a big drink. It is time we were moving,” he said.

  “Bugger it! How far have we come?”

  “About five ‘Ks’ from the Curtain Fig I guess.”

  “So w
e have already done eight or nine ‘Ks’ and it’s only 9:45?”

  “Yes,” Graham conceded with reluctance.

  “Then a few more minutes won’t hurt.”

  So they lay for another ten minutes before Graham’s restlessness goaded them up. Roger had a big drink and rubbed his sore muscles.

  The boys resumed walking but at a more leisurely pace. As the road climbed the spine of the ridge they began to get long views for many kilometres out to the West, North and East. Peter suddenly flung out his right arm to point. “Microwave tower!”

  They stopped walking to look. About 10km to the North West was the low dome of the extinct shield volcano which Atherton sheltered behind from cold winter winds. On top was the lattice finger of a Telstra Microwave Tower.

  “I’ll bet that’s the one. I can’t see another anywhere,” Peter said.

  “Where is this railway tunnel?” Roger asked, looking west to a wall of mountains, tinged blue by the distance.

  Graham took a compass bearing. “You see how there is a long range running from behind Atherton southwards to a gap? The tunnel is at that gap.”

  To Roger it looked a discouragingly long way off. He nodded, had another drink, slipped a jelly bean into his mouth and followed the others as the march was resumed.

  After about a kilometre the ridge levelled out. The area was all open farmland and they could see a surprising distance. It all looked very rural and quite pretty. The farms and fields and little patches of woodland made Roger think of pictures he had seen of England. It certainly wasn’t the usual dry Australian bush.

  The road went on southwards with long straights which Roger found very disheartening. It continued to climb slowly on a long, wide spur which Graham said was an old lava flow from Mt Weerimba, a prominent hill about five kilometres away; another extinct volcano.

  They halted again at 10:15 for another fifteen minute rest. Graham wanted to keep it to the army standard of ten minutes but Roger refused. “No. By your calculations we have come eleven kilometres and it is only morning tea time. We only need to do another one and a half by lunch time to be on schedule.” He then popped another jelly bean in his mouth and turned to look out towards Atherton and that tantalizing microwave tower.

  To the west Roger saw that there was another chain of conical hills marking more old volcanoes. They looked to be only about three or four kilometres away. He pulled out his own map to check. WONGABEL the map read. In the distance two outliers of the Herberton Range just near Atherton caught his eye. Both were cloaked in open timber instead of the rain forest which covered the main range. Roger searched the map, then cursed and pulled out the other map. Why did they always have to be near the edge of two maps?

  Sure he was right he pointed. “You see the two mountains with grassy tops?” he said. “The one closest to Atherton is Mt Baldy.”

  Peter looked and laughed. “That is a pleasure to look forward to tomorrow,” he replied.

  Roger eyed the line of distant mountains with distaste. The rain forest gave them a dark blue appearance. ‘Almost black,’ he mused. Tiny wisps of cloud hung over the higher peaks, the only cloud in 180 degrees of sky. He checked the map and saw that they could follow the main Herberton- Atherton road from the railway tunnel to the base of Mt Baldy. ‘Thank God for that!’ He didn’t feel like any more jungle and certainly didn’t want to drag himself over too many mountains.

  Roger looked around to check if he could see where they had been. “It is a pretty view,” he commented. “We can see half the Tablelands from here. Look, there is Lake Tinaroo.” He pointed to where sun glinted on distant water, about twenty kilometres to the North. He suddenly felt quite proud of himself. ‘I have walked all that way!’ He took out another jelly bean and stood up.

  “OK. Let’s go,” he said.

  The others stared at him in surprise.

  Graham grinned. “Have another jelly bean Roger!”

  They marched on for another two kilometres. Only one vehicle passed them, an old truck driven by a farmer. They came to a road junction and halted. Maps were consulted and Graham took a compass bearing to check.

  “This way.” He pointed west.

  They had to step off the road as a large truck rattled past and headed in the same direction. The road went downhill for half a kilometre and crossed a small creek before going up a steeper hill for the same distance. It then wound between two collections of farm buildings and across another creek. A large area of jungle closed in on their right.

  Graham pointed down the slope. “The Barron River is just there in those trees,” he said.

  They went up a short hill and came to another road junction. Their speed was a good ‘Quick March’ pace and Roger became aware that he was managing to keep up, and, that while his legs, feet, hips and shoulders were hurting, they weren’t as sore as before. The boys turned right and went down slope to cross another small bridge, then up another kilometre long hill between newly ploughed paddocks.

  At ten past eleven they reached the Kennedy Highway and dropped their packs.

  “Fifteen kilometres. We are going well,” Graham said.

  Roger had a big drink and looked around. The mountains were much closer. The section of the range on their side of the tunnel was now only three or four kilometres away. Individual trees could now be distinguished and the general bluish colour had taken on a brown- green tinge.

  Graham pointed up the slope. “Your airship drifted right across her last year Roger.”

  Roger looked around with interest. “Did it? I had no idea where I was. It was all fog.”

  Peter sat up and looked. “You did. We went to that farmhouse with the police at about midnight.”

  Roger experienced a wave of memories and shivered. “It was horrible,” he said. That unplanned ride on Willy Williams’ home-made airship had been a terrifying experience. He carefully dabbed his eyes with water on his fingertips. It made them sting as the dried salt he had perspired was moistened but he felt fresher. It was very hot and there was no breeze. He looked up. ‘Not a cloud in the sky, not one!’ he thought. To check this he looked around . ‘No, there are a few wisps of cloud over the mountain tops,’ he noted. The largest one, a mere ball of white fluff in the distance, clung to the mountain beyond the pass where the tunnel was.

  Traffic was racing past at high speed and with irritating frequency.

  Roger didn’t like that. He wrinkled his nose at the engine fumes and said, “Let’s keep going and find somewhere nicer for lunch.”

  The others agreed and stood up. As they adjusted their gear Peter asked, “Which way?”

  Graham pointed. “Down to that bridge to the right. That is the Barron River. Just across that is a road going off on the left. We take that,” he replied.

  It was 500 metres to the bridge but in the five minutes it took them to walk the distance at least ten vehicles roared past, buffeting them with wind, fumes and dust. The Barron River at this point was barely ten paces wide and the banks were all choked with bushes, lantana and weeds.

  The boys had to wait for a truck to pass before crossing the short bridge, then again for two cars before crossing the highway and starting along the bitumen road heading west.

  “Thank God for that! It’s a relief to get away from all that traffic,” Roger said. The side road curved left, then right. To their left was open pasture, on the right open timber, the trees all magnificent white gums with wonderfully straight trunks. The road also became straight. The bitumen gave way to gravel. Roger eyed it with disfavour and lowered his head to look at his feet as he plodded along. A truck rattled past from the other direction, grey dust billowing in its wake. This set the boys sneezing and cursing.

  “Ah yuk!” Stephen snorted. “Are we going to stop soon?” He took off his glasses and wiped off a film of dust.

  Graham looked at his watch. “Quarter to twelve. OK. We stop at the first shady spot we come to.”

  Roger had a drink to wash grit off his teeth. “
I need to refill my water bottles soon,” he said. He started to feel very thirsty and was aware his headache was coming back. It became an effort to keep going now that the idea of stopping was fixed in his mind. He drained the water bottle. Sweat stung his eyes. His boots felt heavier, his feet very sore.

  They boys passed another stand of white gums. There were a few houses scattered in the open bush, just visible over the high blady grass lining the verge. With each step they got closer to the mountains until, at a bend with a road junction they reached the gentle change of slope at their base. Here the road swung to North West and skirted through open bush along the base of the mountain, the ugly scar of a gravel pit on their left.

  Just after they had rounded the bend a car came racing up behind them. It took the corner at high speed. Roger heard it and glanced back, yelled a warning to the others; and stood transfixed. The car raced past, its tyres thrumming on the corrugations.

  It was a grey Mercedes!

  With four men in it!

  They wore white shirts and ties. ‘The driver was- don’t waste time looking at the driver! Look in the back. Too late! A thin man with grey hair and a moustache?’

  “A grey Mercedes!” he cried, watching it vanish around the bend ahead of them. “The White Falcon! We must tell Inspector Sharpe!”

  “Did you get the number of the car?” Stephen cried.

  Roger felt a flush of shame. “No. I didn’t think of it. I was too surprised,” he replied in a crestfallen voice.

  “It is heading towards Atherton,” Graham added.

  Roger began to walk as fast as he could. “Quick! Let’s find a house with a telephone,” he said. He was so keen to do this that he was oblivious to his aches and panting breath.

  “Slow down Roger. You’ll keel over from the heat. You’re all red in the face,” Graham said as he strode up beside him.

  Roger realized his heart was beating very fast and that black dots were dancing before his eyes. He slowed his pace and suddenly felt dizzy. He felt Graham grab his arm to steady him.

  “Stop Roger! Stop!” Graham ordered.

  Roger did as he was told, weakly protesting. “But the White Falcon will get away!”