Cockatoo

by Christopher Cummings

  Stella wasn’t impressed. “Shut up Blake!” she snapped as she wiped sweat from her face.

  Andrew gave a chuckle, then said, “It is the cassowaries I am more worried about.”

  Tina, who had been casting anxious looks into the jungle on either side, now felt another stab of fear. She really wanted to see a cassowary but also knew they could be dangerous. For the next five minutes the friends discussed cassowaries and what to do if they met one. Tina commented, “I’d love to see one, but I think they are now so rare there isn’t much chance of that.”

  “Are they rare?” Stella asked.

  “Yes. They are endangered,” Tina answered. By now she was almost sobbing with the effort of keeping up. Finally she said, “Let’s have a break. I need to adjust my pack.”

  Andrew nodded and gave her a worried glance. Then he stopped and swung off his pack. “Good idea. In fact it is nearly midday. Let’s have lunch.”

  Thankfully Tina swung off her pack and undid the top. Not wishing to sit on the leafmould she took out a plastic groundsheet and spread it, then sat down. That drew a groan from her as sore and tired muscles protested. For a few minutes all she wanted to do was ease her limbs and massage them while she got her breath back. Then she realised she needed to do a pee. “I will just go back along the track a bit,” she commented.

  “Why?” asked Blake.

  Tina blushed with embarrassment. “To powder my nose,” she replied.

  “To unload a bit of extra weight,” Andrew added, making her blush again.

  She walked stiffly back along the track, flexing and stretching sore muscles as she did. Once she was around the bend out of sight she stopped to relieve herself. While she did she was struck by how quiet it all was. ‘And how isolated we are.’

  Suddenly a skittering, rustling noise behind her made her tense. Unable to get up and run she glanced anxiously around. To her great joy she saw it was a Victoria’s Riflebird. Even as she watched the bird raised both its black wings into the characteristic arch, allowing Tina to see the green feathers of its abdomen. The bird gave it loud ‘yaas!’ call and pirouetted in a dance. Suddenly it saw Tina and quickly scuttled off into the undergrowth.

  The wonder of it held Tina for several minutes and she dressed and moved quietly to look over the edge of the slope, hoping to see it again. But she didn’t. The only other bird she saw was the all too common Brush Turkey. Pleased with her sighting she walked back to tell the others. Then she moved to her pack and dug around in it for some food.

  She took out some biscuits and a tin of peaches. Then she began digging in her pack for her can opener. Seeing Andrew using one she said, “Andrew, may I use your tin opener please?”

  Andrew nodded. “Here, pass me the can,” he said. He finished opening his own can and placed it down. Tina passed him the peaches. Andrew studied the label and said, “These look nice. Hmm. Oh, here’s why your pack weighs so much Tina.”

  “What do you mean?” Tina asked.

  Andrew turned the can and pointed to the bottom of the label. “Packed in heavy syrup,” he read.

  “Oh very funny! I’m just unfit,” Tina replied. But she did laugh at the feeble joke.

  Stella added, “So am I. I don’t know if I can make it over this mountain. What’s its name again?”

  “Mt Tiptree,” Andrew replied as he opened Tina’s can. He passed it back and Tina used her spoon to start eating.

  Stella pulled out her map and looked at it. “Where do you think we are now?”

  Blake and Andrew both leaned forward to point, an action which peeved Tina. ‘They don’t both have to fall over themselves to help her!’ she thought.

  Stella nodded and said, “Is it far to the top?”

  Andrew shook his head and pointed at the map. “That is the crest. It is only about another kilometre.”

  That was good news to Tina and she resolved to keep on trying. But she already felt tired and her shoulder muscles ached. Worse still there was chafing under her armpits and on her shoulders and hips that was starting to really hurt. “We will do our next expedition by water, in a boat,” she commented.

  “From where to where?” Andrew asked.

  Blake answered, “Mulgrave River, from Goldsborough to Deeral?”

  “Bit dangerous. The lower part of the Mulgrave has some big crocodiles,” Andrew replied.

  “Koombooloomba then?” Blake suggested.

  Hearing that gave Tina searing flashbacks: the ranger being shot, the chase, Danny shooting at her and his angry expression. This was followed by the image of Danny’s face at Croydon as he swore to get her. “Oh no! Not there!” she cried. A wave of fear so intense that it made her feel faint swept through her.

  Blake did not appear to notice her reaction but Andrew did. “You OK Tina?” he asked.

  “Just having some bad memories,” she answered. She trembled and found she was perspiring and breathing fast. ‘This is silly,’ she told herself. ‘It was months ago.’

  Blake said, “What about Tinaroo then?”

  As the question seemed to be directed to her Tina nodded. “That will do,” she replied.

  Blake fell to studying Lake Tinaroo, which was on the 1:100 000 scale topographic map he was holding. The discussion of when to do the ‘test’ expedition and of where to go kept them occupied for the next ten minutes. Tina ate her peaches and then nibbled a couple of biscuits. She also drank deeply, emptying a plastic bottle of cordial. ‘That should make my pack lighter,’ she thought hopefully.

  But when she hoisted it on ten minutes later she was dismayed to find that it actually felt heavier. Clenching her teeth she pulled the pack into position then bent her head to hide the hurt and tears which prickled in her eyes.

  Then it was on up the overgrown track. This section she found to be not too bad. The old road was in under the overhanging trees and because of the lack of sunlight very little undergrowth had grown up. ‘Amazing, even after all these years!’ she thought when it was commented on by Blake. The gradient was reasonably gentle and the road went around a slope on a bench cut with a very steep drop down into a jungle choked creek line on the right.

  After fifteen minutes of sweaty plodding they came to another log across the road. Andrew ordered another halt while they checked their navigation. He used the GPS and then said, “Someone else check my readings please.”

  The GPS was passed around and Tina had a go with it, then marked the grid reference on her map. Andrew then compared his with hers and nodded. “That’s what I get. So we are only a few hundred metres from the crest of Mt Tiptree. This is where Graham said we had to be very careful or we will end up going off along the wrong track.”

  After a ten minute break packs were hoisted on again and the march resumed. After climbing over several more logs they reached an area where the ground was definitely levelling out. The slope on their left became nothing more than a gentle rise with sunlight showing through it. “This looks like the top of the mountain,” Tina said.

  But it was hard to tell because their visibility was only about 50 metres. At no time had they got more than a tiny glimpse out through the tree canopies and that was starting to induce a claustrophobic feeling in Tina. The group continued on and came to an obvious fork. The better track went left so they took it and that put the low rise on their right and the downhill slope on their left.

  After another ten minutes Stella called on them to stop. Tina saw she was holding her compass in her hand. “This road is going nearly east. Shouldn’t we be going south?” she queried.

  Andrew also had his compass out and he nodded. “Yes. What does the GPS say Blake?”

  Blake checked the GPS and marked the location on his map. Tina leaned over and saw that it was clearly to the east of the track they were supposed to be on. Andrew nodded and pointed back the way they had come. “I was getting worried. Thanks Stella. We need to go back to that last junction.”

  Tina badly wanted a rest and was also peeved that Andrew was
paying attention to Stella. Then she became angry at herself. ‘You need to push yourself forward and not just be a wagon on the train,’ she told herself. So she bit her lip and trudged back without complaint.

  Her reward came ten minutes later when they returned to the track junction and Stella said, “Oh, let’s rest. I’ve had it.”

  That gave Tina a tiny spurt of malicious pleasure, which then made her feel guilty. With relief she shrugged off her pack and sat on it, then had a big drink. To her surprise she found she had almost emptied her second water bottle. “We will need to find water soon. I am nearly out,” she commented.

  “So am I,” agreed Blake.

  Andrew checked one of his bottles, swilling the remaining contents around. “None on top of the mountain. We should find a creek when we go down.”

  At that moment a movement caught Tina’s eye and she looked up in time to see two reddish coloured parrots flit past along the clearing and off into the trees. “Oooh! Crimson rosellas!” she cried with delight. She looked hopefully but saw no more. The only other birds she noted were some tiny finches that she could not identify.

  After the break they pulled on their packs and moved to the right hand track. It was badly overgrown by a thicket of thin trees and was hard to push along. But the track ended after about fifty metres at the lip of a very steep slope.

  Tina stood beside the others looking down through the thick jungle. ‘I don’t see any sign of a road here,’ she thought.

  Blake thought the same and said, “The road is marked on the map as being the same as what we have been walking along. Where did it go?”

  Andrew answered. “Graham said it doesn’t exist and probably never has. The map is wrong. This is the way he went, down here. Look, see these small trees that have been slashed or blazed?”

  He pointed to a small dead tree which had obviously been cut off by a cutting tool. Tina then spotted several more further down the slope. “There’s some more,” she said.

  “This is where we go down and at the bottom we should find old overgrown clearings and more timber roads,” Andrew explained.

  Stella looked apprehensive. “Do we just walk through the jungle?”

  “Yes, on a compass bearing if we lose these cut off saplings,” Andrew answered.

  “How far is it?” Stella asked.

  “About two kilometres before we come to a road,” Andrew answered.

  They had all known that from the planning session so Tina was surprised by the questions. She now saw that Stella was looking distinctly uneasy.

  Stella looked anxiously at the jungle. “What if we get lost?” she asked.

  Andrew shook his head. “We won’t. We’ve got compasses and a GPS and if they all fail we will just walk downhill and we will come to Emerald Creek. If need be we could follow it down to the Emerald Creek Falls Picnic Area.”

  Stella still looked anxious. “What if someone has an accident?”

  “Then we do First Aid and call the rescue chopper if we can. If not, we carry them,” Andrew answered.

  That gave Tina a cue. “Test the radio and the mobile phone,” she said.

  Andrew unclipped his hand-held radio and called Lt Ryan. There was no answer so he tried twice more. There was still no response so he hooked his radio back to his shirt and took out the mobile phone. “We have service, but not very strong,” he said.

  But he was unable to call Lt Ryan. The system answered saying that the other phone was switched off or in an area where it did not have service. “Oh well, standing here isn’t solving the problem,” Andrew said. “It’s after 2 o’clock and this could take an hour or two. Let’s go.”

  He led the way down the slope. Feeling more anxious than she cared to admit Tina followed.

  CHAPTER 21

  EMERALD CREEK

  The slope was so steep they had to lower themselves from tree to tree. Tina found her boots continually slipping on the thick carpet of dead leaves and twigs. Despite the coolness of the air at that altitude she started to really sweat. Slippery hands then made it hard to grip the tree trunks, some of which were too thick to hold.

  They went down quickly as there was very little undergrowth. “No wait-a-while here,” Andrew commented.

  Tina looked around and saw that the rainforest on the slope was mostly just tall trees with very straight trunks. She noted that there were very few vines and almost no small bushes. But she still found it dark and gloomy. Through tiny gaps in the canopy she got glimpses of another jungle-covered mountain ahead of them. ‘Mt Haig,’ she told herself.

  And she was becoming very thirsty. When they halted to allow Stella to regain her feet after slipping and falling Tina had a drink and drained the last of her water. That got her really worried as she knew heat exhaustion was a real danger. ‘Even in winter,’ she thought. That caused her a wry smile as winter in North Queensland could sometimes be quite cool, even below zero up in the mountains, but at that moment it was sunny and hot.

  After a short rest they continued on down. As they moved Tina felt more and more apprehensive. She knew that if they had an accident that every step down meant they must carry the casualty forward. ‘It would be a nightmare trying to carry a stretcher back up this slope,’ she thought.

  Half an hour of careful but steady descent (and much slipping) brought them into deep shadow with Mt Haig looming above them, its presence felt more than seen. Tina became anxiously aware of her thirst and she hoped they would find water soon.

  They came into a different type of vegetation. The undergrowth thickened up but it was all ferns and cycads and was still easy to move through. Tina also found it reassuring to see old cuts or blazes on tree trunks from time to time. ‘At least we aren’t lost,’ she thought.

  It was damper here, the dead logs and tree trunks covered with soggy moss and lichens. While climbing over a large log (and trying to keep her clothes clean and dry) Tina heard the distinctive sound of a whip bird. She also heard a bird call that she knew she should recognize. It niggled at her that she could not remember what it was. ‘Whoo-crk, whoo-crk, whooo-crk,’ it went.

  But the only birds she saw were some scrub turkeys and they did not particularly interest her. Three of them scurried about, scratching among the leaf litter for grubs and then hurrying away as the group got closer.

  The going was slower but the slope began to level off. In the cycad forest Tina thought it was quite spooky it was so gloomy. ‘We are in the shadow of the mountain as well,’ she thought, noting that it was now 3 O’clock. The day seemed to be slipping away very quickly, adding another worry to her already anxious mind. ‘We don’t want to be in the jungle when it gets dark,’ she thought.

  Andrew led the way onto a flat area that was mostly clear of trees. The ground was deep in dead leaves but it was at least more open, about 25 metres across. “I reckon this is an old timber cutter’s camp,” he said.

  Tina looked around and noted a rusty old 44 gallon drum in the undergrowth. She pointed this out. Blake then pointed to the right and said, “That looks like a bench cut.”

  By common consent they dropped their packs and walked over to look. And there was no doubt. An old, overgrown road went off around the side of the ridge they had been coming down. They followed it for a short distance. “We should follow it,” Stella suggested.

  They returned the hundred paces to their packs and hauled them on and set off to follow the old road. Tina found it a real effort to get her pack on and knew she was exhausted and weakening. Andrew checked their position using the GPS. A study of her map told Tina that they were now close to the bottom of the slope and to Emerald Creek. ‘Only about a kilometre to the road where the officers are,’ she told herself.

  The old road quickly became a disappointment. Not only was it blocked in many places by fallen logs but there were a lot of thin trees growing up. Then it went upwards around the slope. Andrew stopped after a hundred metres of this and studied the map. “This is no good. It is going back up the mo
untain.”

  Blake nodded and said, “I think it is only an old snig track.”

  “What’s that?” Stella asked.

  “The timber cutters used to cut a narrow road in to the big tree they wanted and then they would cut it down and trim it, then they would haul it out to the clearing where they could load it on a truck,” Blake explained.

  “How would they drag it out?” Stella queried.

  “With a steel wire rope and winch or with a bulldozer,” Blake answered.

  Tina tried to imagine that and decided it would have been very hard and dangerous work. She said, “So what do we do now?”

  Andrew pointed back and said, “I think the road we want will lead out of that camp clearing. The one we want goes down to cross the creek and then along the other bank.”

  Tina liked that idea. “We need to go to the creek. I am out of water and getting very dry,” she said.

  Andrew nodded. “We will do that,” he said. He led the way back to the clearing and they scouted around for a few minutes. They now found several old roads led away from the clearing but the best went fairly steeply down in the same direction they had been going earlier. They took this and within a minute Tina heard the murmur of flowing water. The sound cheered her up enormously.

  The old road was quite straight for about fifty metres and it was mostly clear of smaller trees so that it ran in a sort of tunnel through the jungle. A dense growth of ferns grew on either side and there were more vines and undergrowth. Tina climbed carefully around a washout, noting that the soil was a sort of damp, slippery clay. Then she helped Stella down before turning to follow the boys.

  As she did a movement caught her eye and she glanced up to see a bird flit across the clear lane. ‘What bird was that?’ she wondered. It had been black but she and only caught an impression of yellow. ‘But was that the beak or on the feathers?’ she wondered.

  Ten metres on she glanced up again, hoping to see another of the birds. She suspected they might be the ones making the Dook! Dook! Dook! noises she could hear. More movement caught her eye and she looked up. For a few seconds she could not work out what she was looking at. Then she saw it was a big bird twitching and struggling.