Cockatoo

by Christopher Cummings

  So her dress progressed but not her relationship. Andrew had not even suggested another date and she did not know what he now thought of her. ‘Does he regret taking me out? Was I so horrible to kiss that he did not get any pleasure from it? Have I scared him off?’ she worried.

  Thursday and Friday crawled by with no advancement of her cause. She could only hope that he might say something during cadets or on the hike. Friday evening arrived at last and with it a good deal of excitement. On Thursday evening she had gone shopping with her mother to buy the recommended foods and other small items such as torches and batteries and so on that the ‘What to Take’ list suggested. The plan was for them all to bring their gear to cadets for an inspection.

  When Tina tried to cram it all into the pack and the few pouches on her belt she was dismayed. It just would not fit. Her mother did not help by suggesting that she take all sorts of things that were not on the list like pyjamas and an umbrella and a pillow.

  “But what will you sleep in?” her mother asked.

  Tina knew that much and thought her mother was being a real fusspot. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘In the nude’ but instead she said, “In our clothes.”

  “But you can’t sleep in dirty clothes!” her mother cried.

  “The army cadets do it all the time. They go for three or four days without a bath and they wear the same clothes all the time,” Tina replied.

  “Urghh!” her mother visibly shuddered. “Oh well. Keep packing dear.”

  When it was all crammed in Tina got another shock. She stood up and tried to swing the pack on. It was so heavy she almost lost her balance and fell over. ‘Hmm. This might be more of a challenge than I thought,’ she decided.

  Her mother drove her to cadets and she lugged the pack and belt in- and got another surprise. Standing talking to the officers were two army cadet officers in uniform: Capt Conkey and Miss McEwen. Miss McEwen was a pretty young lady teacher in her mid twenties and Tina now saw she was wearing lieutenant’s ‘pips’.

  Tina saluted and said, to Capt Conkey, “Hello Sir. What are you doing here?”

  “We are here to help get you people ready for your weekend hike,” Capt Conkey answered.

  “I thought the army cadets had a weekend..,. biv.. er camp this weekend,” Tina replied.

  “A bivouac- a camp without tents. Yes we have. The company has already gone. Lt MacLaren is looking after them with the other officers. We will join them after we finish here,” Capt Conkey explained.

  Tina rather enjoyed having different instructors in different uniforms. It added both novelty and expertise. After the first parade the D-of-E teams were grouped and their gear all unpacked and inspected. This turned out to be both embarrassing and hilarious. Dimity Bates had packed a pair of pink fluffy slippers (“For wearing in the tent”) and Davidson had a rolled up stretcher that looked to Tina to be quite heavy. Most had extra food and some had frying pans and gas cookers. Hayley Peters had a raincoat and a rain hat and Clinton Evans had three changes of underwear and a set of pyjamas. Anthony Simmonds was found to have a large box of mosquito coils.

  “My mother made me!” was his plea.

  Tina’s moment of embarrassment came when Lt McEwen found a can of hairspray, and a jacket as well as a pullover. “Choose one, but don’t take both,” Lt McEwen said.

  Once the gear had been culled of unnecessary items everything remaining was packed. Then they were instructed to put the packs and belts on. Once again Tina found this a difficult thing to do and she knew she was going to hurt. ‘I should have followed advice and done some training for this,’ she thought. For a moment she contemplated pulling out but then shook her head. ‘That would mean my group couldn’t go. Andrew will not be impressed,’ she considered. So she said nothing.

  Next they walked around the hall and the yard for twenty minutes. This drew some humorous or sarcastic jibes from those cadets not going and who were doing normal training but Tina just shrugged and put up with it. But she was very worried by how quickly her shoulder muscles tired. She found it a relief to swing the pack off.

  The straps and stow were then adjusted as seemed necessary after the short walk. Tina made only fractional changes. ‘My problem is weak muscles, not the way it is packed,’ she told herself. The balance had felt alright to her. They then pulled the packs on again and walked for another fifteen minutes.

  After a ten minute rest break the groups assembled for a safety briefing and to check their navigation. As the four groups were all going by different routes that sometimes crossed each other the officers wanted to co-ordinate for the positioning of safety vehicles and radio relay stations. Mobile phone numbers were checked and each group was issued with a small hand-held CB radio. These were on loan from the army cadets and they were cautioned to take spare batteries as well. Each group was issued with a small First Aid Kit and to Tina’s relief Blake opted to carry this.

  Following a final check that all was prepared they joined the remainder of the unit on the parade ground for dismissal parade. Then Tina lugged her gear out to her mother’s car. It was only as she called goodnight to Andrew that she remembered that she had not hinted at the dance. ‘I must do it during the weekend,’ she told herself.

  By the time she got home Tina felt tired and some of her shoulder muscles ached. That filled her with a sense of foreboding. ‘Oh dear! I hope I’m not going to break down so that we don’t get over the mountains,’ she thought. She knew that part of the trip- about 3km -was on a compass course through the jungle and they had been cautioned that if they had an accident or injury during that leg that a vehicle could not drive in to help them. The worry that she might not be able to carry her pack on that part of the hike began to nag at her.

  As a result she slept poorly and woke feeling tired. But she had to be out of bed by 0600 as they were due to meet at 0730. There was so much to do that Tina could only push her anxieties aside and hurry to get ready. As she did she began to feel sick in the stomach. She was so upset she could hardly eat the breakfast her mother insisted she have. She was also conscious of a few small aches and twinges in her shoulders.

  But she was ready and in the vehicle by the appointed time and all she could do then was hope she was up to it. Her mother drove and they went around picking up the others: Andrew, then Blake, then a very nervous and drawn looking Stella. Seeing Stella made Tina feel slightly better. ‘She looks more of a wreck than I do,’ she thought. ‘So maybe it will be her that breaks down.’

  Even so that was small comfort as Tina really wanted the expedition to be a success. So she pretended she was well and happy and chattered cheerfully away as they were driven out to Smithfield and then up the Kuranda Range. From there they went south west along the Kennedy Highway for about 20km to the Davies Creek Road. Turning left there they drove south along a bumpy gravel road for 3km. As they passed a turn-off on the left Andrew said, “That is where the army cadets are having their bivouac.”

  Tina glanced and saw a gate and a road leading down through the bush and a State Forest sign. Her mother kept driving and another 5km on they came to the Davies Creek National Park. After a brief stop to allow them to go to the toilet they climbed in the vehicle and drove on up over a mountain.

  Tina had never been to this area before and she saw that some quite huge mountains towered up ahead and on both sides. As the vehicle rounded a bend and a particularly rugged outcrop appeared through a gap in the trees she heard Andrew say to Blake, “That is Kahlpahlim Rock and the rocky knob next to it is Lambs Head. That is the mountain Graham and Peter are trying to climb.”

  “What, this weekend?” Blake queried.

  “No. They are at their army cadet bivouac this weekend. I think it is the weekend after the fete,” Andrew answered.

  ‘The fete!’ Tina thought. It was only a week away! ‘Oh, how can I arrange things?’ she wondered. It was beginning to look increasingly like she would have to be direct and ask.

  The gravel road
levelled out and ran through a forest of tall she-oaks and then entered dense tropical rainforest. Tina had known this was where they were going but once they entered the gloomy shadows in under the trees she seemed to feel oppressed and a gnawing sense of anxiety began to chew at her insides.

  All too soon the vehicle stopped at a small concrete bridge. Andrew had been doing the map reading and now he said, “Well, this is our start point. Everyone out!”

  Tina climbed out and looked at the dense jungle on all sides and felt her heart sink. She bit her lip and thought, ‘Oh, I hope I can do this!’

  CHAPTER 20

  IN THE JUNGLE

  Tina had never really been in the jungle in her life. The closest she had ever come was to stroll along a nice walkway to a tourist sight like the Curtain Fig Tree near Yungaburra, or a short nature ramble along a path when she was in primary school. Now she knew she was a long way from the nearest civilization and that once her mother had gone home they would be very much on their own. Her mother was staying there for the next three hours but after that the nearest help would be Lt Ryan and Sub Lt Mullion waiting on the other side of the mountain.

  The fact that they had no mobile phone service and that the radios got no answer made her even more anxious. She had known this would be so even before they had started but the reality of it was quite different. Andrew just shrugged and said, “We should get coms once we are higher up the mountain. OK, packs on. Let’s go.”

  Reluctantly Tina heaved her pack on. It was so heavy that she staggered under the weight and her mother helped steady her, then gave her a peck on the cheek. “Have a good time dear,” she said.

  Tina felt like bursting into tears and was so anxious she was nauseous. But she lacked the courage to say so and just gave a smile and a nod and set off after the others.

  Within a hundred paces Tina’s fears had intensified. The road was muddy and went up a steep slope and she was gasping for breath and falling behind even before they had reached the first bend. A last glimpse of her mother wrung her emotions another notch. ‘I am a fool,’ Tina told herself.

  But she kept walking, gripping the pack straps with both hands to help ease the weight. After a few more minutes she was breathing so hard she was hyperventilating and felt giddy. “S..s….s… slow (puff) d…d…d (gasp) down!” she cried.

  Andrew and Blake looked back with puzzled expressions on their faces. “What’s the matter?” Andrew asked.

  “I… I‘m.. not (puff) very (puff) fit a.. and… m. my (puff) p. pack is very heavy,” Tina gasped.

  Blake gave her a look of disbelief and said, “We’ve only just started.”

  His tone of voice annoyed Tina. She stood panting for a few seconds then snapped, “And if you want to get over the mountains take it slow so I can keep up.”

  Andrew looked thoughtful and nodded. “OK, we will,” he agreed.

  They resumed their walk at a slow plod. But Tina noted an exchange of looks between Blake and Stella that she interpreted to mean they did not think much of her. That hurt but it also fired her determination. ‘I’ll show them,’ she told herself.

  The road quickly deteriorated and became rutted and muddy and partly overgrown. Tina knew it had once been a ‘timber’ road, used to haul logs out of the forest in the days before the whole area became part of the World Heritage Wet Tropics and the logging was stopped. Now it was disused by vehicles. Around the next bend was one of the reasons why- a large tree had fallen across the road and blocked it. This had obviously been many years before as the log was rotten and covered with moss and lichen. But it was still an obstacle.

  To get around it the group had to snip a path through the weeds and the edge of the jungle. To do this Andrew had a pair of garden secateurs. Graham had advised them to carry these and Tina now saw the wisdom of it. She also met what one of the things she had been warned to avoid- ‘wait-a-while’. A tendril of the vine snagged her forearm and sleeve, bringing her to a sudden, painful stop.

  “Ouch!” she cried, amazed and annoyed. Then she saw that the tendril was only a thin green thing with tiny barbed hooks on it. She pulled to try to break it off. But it did not break. Instead it dug in deeper, dragging another cry of pain from her.

  Andrew came back and said, “Don’t pull at it. Graham said the tendrils are stronger than you are. Either back up and ease it off or let me cut it.”

  Tina tried to back up but another tendril caught her hat from behind and she cried out again. For a minute or so she was snagged and anxious and by the end of it she knew that Graham had been right. The ‘wait-a-while’ was stronger than a person.

  They all got snagged by more wait-a-while over the next hour or so and soon started to fear it. They began keeping a watchful eye out for it. Tina learned that the tendrils grew off the lawyer vine which grew out of a stand of spiky palm fronds. The tendrils varied from old dead ones nearly 5mm thick to large green ones 3mm thick with yellow barbs to really thin green ones less than half a millimetre thick. They were all bad news. The easiest way was for Andrew to snip the tendrils off with his secateurs.

  “Graham said the machete or jungle knife is useless as it doesn’t cut the tendrils and just makes the whole bush jump around so that more of them snag you,” Andrew explained.

  By then Tina was hot, panting and irritated. “Well he should be here to cut a track for us,” she grumbled.

  The reason they met more wait-a-while was that it overhung the track and in places fallen trees had dragged whole clumps of it down to form an almost impenetrable barrier. In those cases they had to detour through the edge of the rainforest- where there was usually more of the stuff.

  Then they encountered another, equally painful pest- wild raspberries. Along stretches of the old road where the sunlight had good access it grew in dense thickets. The plants were head high and had vicious thorns which were even worse than the wait-a-while. The easiest way to progress was often to detour into the jungle. Unfortunately this was not always possible, usually because the bank on both sides was too steep.

  Andrew swore and sweated as he led the group. As he pushed through some vines he called back, “Watch out for stinging trees.”

  “Is there one there?” Stella asked.

  “No, but we don’t need anyone really hurt,” Andrew replied.

  Tina knew what he meant. They had been warned that the stinging tree could cause an allergic reaction in some people that was potentially fatal. She had seen a photo of a stinging tree but there were so many leaves of different shapes in the jungle around her that she doubted if she would spot one in time. She began to have serious doubts about the wisdom of the whole expedition. ‘We should have done a canoe trip,’ she thought.

  After battling past another clump of wild raspberry they came to what looked like a road junction. By then Tina was gasping and her shoulders ached so badly she just wanted to flop down and go back. To her relief Andrew said, “Packs off while we study the GPS and the map.”

  It was such a relief to drop the pack that Tina almost cried. As she stood rubbing her shoulders she noted Stella doing the same and decided that she didn’t look very happy either. ‘Maybe we are all suffering?’ Tina thought.

  After studying the GPS and working out the grid reference it gave Andrew pointed at the map. “I reckon we are here, at this is track junction at the top of Varch Creek.”

  Tina looked and then made a pencil note on her map photocopy. To her dismay she saw that they had walked only about 2km. ‘And that took an hour!’ she noted unhappily as she glanced at her watch. It was almost 1100. She estimated that they had another 5km to go before they met up with the officers and a vehicle. ‘Can I do it?’ she wondered.

  All too soon Andrew ordered packs on and set off again. Tina heaved on her pack and then made another painful discovery as she started walking. She found that during the ten minute halt her muscles had stiffened up and that all of the chafing that was beginning to hurt was now twice as painful. Then she noted that the others
were groaning and complaining as well, even Andrew.

  “Bloody hell!” he moaned.

  “Keep walking,” Stella said. “It won’t hurt as much when you warm up again.”

  Easier said than done! Tina just wanted to flop down and she noted with dismay a sort of leaden throbbing in her left shoulder. Using her left hand she gripped the pack strap and tried to hold it in a better position. Then she gritted her teeth and kept on plodding.

  The beauties of the rain forest were mostly lost on her. She later had vague recollections of big blue butterflies and of various brightly coloured fungi but apart from the birds she noted very little. There were birds, mostly white cockatoos that set up a hideous cacophony in warning to others of the human intruders. Tina also saw a topknot pigeon and heard a whip bird calling down in one of the ferny gullies. ‘I’d like to see one of them, or a rifle bird,’ she thought.

  The road improved a bit, being mostly clear with only a few logs across it and occasional patches of undergrowth. The road was matted with a thick carpet of dead leaves and sticks and this made walking fairly easy and silent. Apart from the weight of her pack Tina realized it wasn’t that bad, mostly being just one long, uphill slog.

  There was a section of road where red clay showed through and Andrew commented that it would be no fun walking on it if it was wet. That made them all glance at the sky and Tina noted that it was a clear blue. The jungle was so dry that twigs crackle underfoot and dust rose as they walked.

  There were patches of dug up soil which Blake said were pig rootings. That got Tina all anxious again. She had heard stories about wild pigs and knew that if they met one and it attacked she would be too terrified to even run away.

  Blake did not help by describing a wild boar he had once seen. “It was as black and hairy and had huge curved tusks and it was as big as me, must have weighed a hundred kilograms; and it could really run! You should have seen it go!”