Coasts of Cape York

by Christopher Cummings

  CHAPTER 12

  JUNGLE SEARCH

  For the first few hundred metres the group walked along the bitumen ring road to the right. After passing the last house a side road went off to the right. Palm trees and brilliant clumps of Bougainvillea gave the place a very tropical appearance. The hot sun and humid air added to this, causing them all to perspire freely. As they turned right at the last house Willy looked back and saw that Graham and Stephen were at last pulling on their gear and preparing to follow.

  On the side road they had a canefield on their right and an even bigger and much busier light railway marshalling yard on their left. Several loaded cane trains stood on sidings waiting to be unloaded and another came rattling in behind a small, yellow painted, diesel locomotive. The driver gave them a cheerful wave as it passed.

  The side road curved slowly to the left, crossed two narrow gauge railways that came in at different angles from across the cane fields and then curved sharply back to the left under a line of mango trees. These grew along the bank of a large creek. Another branch of the light rail network went off under the trees and across the creek on a high timber trestle bridge.

  The creek was significantly larger than Willy had expected with quite a deep pool along the side nearest them. The water was at least 50 metres wide and was flowing. On the other bank was a series of small beaches and thick patches of guinea grass. The bridge was a dual purpose one with a timber deck for road transport and with rails laid down the middle for the cane trains.

  After checking there were no trains coming the group walked across the bridge. As they did Willy looked down and saw small fish flit through the shadows in the deeper water. “It looks like a nice place to swim,” he commented.

  Peter pointed back along the creek to the bank they had just left. Fifty metres downstream was a small beach with a muddy track leading up the bank under the trees. A rope hung from the overhanging branches. “I’d say that is the local kid’s swimming hole,” he suggested.

  “Here come Graham and Stephen,” Roger added, pointing back the way they had come.

  “They can catch up,” Peter said, obviously a bit put out by their attitude. He turned and led the way on to the far end of the bridge. Once there he consulted his map and then led the way along a dirt vehicle track between the creek and a canefield. The canefield had been harvested so Willy was given a clear view across it to the mountains.

  “They look pretty big,” Willy commented, his gaze roaming over the steep, jungle-covered slopes that now loomed high above them.

  “Only about seven hundred metres the one we are going up,” Peter answered, holding up the map as proof.

  “Is that the ridge we are going up?” Willy asked, indicating the nearest spur of the mountain.

  Peter nodded. “Yes. That should be the easiest way up. Usually the ridges have more open vegetation on them and there might even be an old timber road running up it.”

  That seemed sensible to Willy so he accepted Peter’s judgment and continued walking. As he did he kept glancing at the mountain and had to admit to himself that he was actually a bit scared. He had never been in the rainforest, other than to stroll along a National Park walking track for a few hundred metres. That was why he was glad that the army cadets were with them. He knew they had done several expeditions in really thick jungle and he was counting on their experience. In fact he doubted if he would have been allowed by his parents to come on the expedition if they had not been coming.

  At 10:30 the leaders reached the edge of the rainforest and stopped. Willy studied the green tangle in front of him with something close to dismay. ‘Bloody hell! This looks pretty thick,’ he thought. There was no obvious sign of any sort of track and a dense thicket of bushes and long grass formed a barrier on the side of the canefield.

  Peter did not hesitate. He took out a pair of garden secateurs and began to trample and cut a track through the wall of vegetation. “It’s always thickest just on the edge,” he explained. “It’s because the sunlight can get at it and all the weeds grow well.”

  Roger followed Peter into the scrub. Willy looked at the others, noting looks of positive dismay on the faces of the three navy cadets. Rather than admit he was even apprehensive he followed Roger. Marjorie and the others came along behind. Within ten paces Willy saw that what Peter had said was correct. As they moved into the shade of the uncleared rainforest it thinned out and he was able to see for fifty metres instead of five or ten.

  After another ten paces, just at the point where the slope really became steep, Willy made another painful and dismaying discovery. A vine snagged his arm with vicious little barbs. It hurt so much he stopped and cried out in pain.

  Peter and Roger both turned to look and Peter said, “Wait-a-while. Sorry, we didn’t think to warn you.”

  Roger helped Willy to ease the barbs of the vine out of his shirt. “You have to back up and roll away from it,” Roger explained. Willy nodded and then studied the dots of blood that had sprung up where the barbs had hooked into his flesh. He had heard the army cadets talk about wait-a-while but he never experienced it. Peter now explained it to them. Willy saw that it grew off a palm that grew in clumps. Thick ‘lawyer’ vines coiled away from it, some of which had coverings of spines near the plant. But the real problems were the thin tendrils hanging down from the ends of the palm fronds.

  Peter held a tendril between finger and thumb and said, “See how the barbs are curved backwards? If you keep pulling they just dig in deeper. And there is no way you can break them. The tendrils are stronger than a human being.”

  Roger pointed to a nearby plant. “See those thin green tendrils? They are just as bad. And they are harder to see than the older, thicker ones.”

  Willy now saw that there were tendrils of all types near him. Some were dark green and as thin as fishing line. Most were as thick as string and had obvious yellow and brown barbs on them. A few older tendrils were at least five millimeters thick and had gone brown and dry. They all looked unpleasant and Willy now saw that there seemed to be wait-a-while plants in all directions.

  Trampling noises heralded the arrival of Graham and Stephen. “What’s up?” Graham asked as he reached the rear of the group.

  “Just explaining wait-a-while to the ‘Blue Orchids’ and ‘Matelots’,” Peter answered.

  Stephen snorted and said, “If that’s all they are worried about they will be lucky.”

  Willy looked back at him, amazed that he was hidden by the vegetation and was hard to see even ten paces back. He knew, from stories the others had told, that Stephen had once spent a day and a night alone in the jungle.

  Roger confirmed this by saying, “Steve doesn’t like the jungle, not since he got lost at Kanaka Creek a couple of years ago.”

  “I wasn’t lost!” Stephen snapped back, giving Roger a glare. “I was being chased by those crooks.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Roger answered.

  Willy noted the animosity between the two and sensed that Roger had just taken the chance to get a bit of his own back. He knew that Steve could be a bit harsh with his tongue and suspected that Roger had been the victim of it on more than a few occasions.

  Graham now said, “I suppose we should have warned them it wouldn’t be a stroll in the park.”

  “That’s right,” Roger agreed, adding, “There are lots of little nasties to watch out for.”

  “Like what?” Andrew asked.

  “Stinging tree, ticks, snakes, spiky bushes, leeches,” replied Roger with a wide grin.

  “Leeches!” Marjorie shrieked, looking around her.

  “Yes, leeches,” Roger agreed. “Big, fat ones that suck your blood. They wriggle in where the skin is softest and juciest and start sucking.”

  Marjorie went pale and glanced around again. “Do they hurt?” she asked.

  Roger chuckled but Peter cut in to say, “Not a bit. They spit some sort of anesthetic on your skin so you don’t feel them bite. It contains an anti-coagulant to
o, so the blood flows more freely.”

  “Are they poisonous?” Marjorie asked.

  Peter shook his head. “No. They just fill up with blood and drop off. In the old days doctors used to put them on patients to draw blood out of them.”

  “Yerk!” Marjorie cried in disgust.

  “The ticks and mites are the real danger,” Peter went on. “Some ticks are really poisonous and can even kill you; and there are mites that bite you and can give you scrub typhus and that can be fatal.”

  Willy felt quite uneasy on hearing this and noted his friends looking anxiously around. He said, “How do we stop getting bitten?”

  “You should have put mite/tick repellent on,” Peter answered. “My fault, I should have checked you had some. We had better do it now.”

  He swung off his webbing and dug in the back pack to extract a small grey plastic bottle. After unscrewing the lid he squirted a small amount of liquid into the palm of his hand. Rubbing both hands together he smeared the liquid on the tops of his boots and around the bottom of his trouser, which were tucked into the tops of the boots. “You only need a thin smear,” he explained. “If you can see splotches on the cloth then you have put on too much. You must not get it on the more sensitive parts of you skin. It burns if you do.”

  “That’s right,” Stephen added. “Don’t use the repellent and then go and have a pee. You don’t want it on your ‘willy’ Willy.”

  Willy was both concerned and embarrassed. Carmen was not amused. “Don’t talk like that please Stephen,” she reproved.

  “Sorry, just giving fair warning,” Stephen replied.

  “The army repellent melts plastic too, so make sure there is none left on your hands before you touch a compass, or the face of your watch,” Graham added.

  “Or the lenses of your glasses,” Stephen said.

  “Or in your mouth,” Roger said. “It burns your lips and tongue, and it tastes horrible. And keep it away from your eyes.”

  Andrew let out a short laugh and said, “Are you trying to put us off?”

  “Just making sure you know what you are letting yourself in for,” Peter replied.

  Ten minutes were spent applying mite/tick repellent before the journey was resumed. When it did Roger led the way, secateurs in hand, while Peter followed. He had secateurs as well but also held a compass. That surprised Willy who thought they just had to walk uphill but it also reassured him. ‘Pete knows what he is doing, and is careful,’ he told himself.

  The course Peter chose led them away from the creekline. As they angled slowly up the slope, dodging around clumps of wait-a-while, they got further and further from the creek until Willy could not longer hear the water gushing down over the stones.

  It was all a lot harder than he had expected. At almost every step they got caught up by something: a vine which hooked their equipment; or a tree root which tripped them, or a rock or tree they had to detour around. There was wait-a-while everywhere and it was so thick in places that Peter and Roger did not try to detour but slowly snipped a path through it, with much muttering and under-the-breath swearing as they did.

  Even when a path was cut there were always tendrils they missed and these snagged those behind, causing cries of dismay and pain. It was slow going and also very hot. Perspiration trickled and soaked clothing so that shirts clung to them. It was quickly apparent to Willy that Marjorie was not enjoying herself and was sure she wished she had not come. For himself there was no way he was going to admit it was hard, not with the army cadets there to note any weakness on the part of the air cadets and navy cadets!

  ‘I’m not going to give them any ammunition for later put-downs,’ Willy resolved.

  For the next hour they struggled up the ridge. At 11:45 they came to a panting, sweating halt on a small ledge. Marjorie wiped her face and groaned, then said, “Are we nearly there yet?”

  For an answer Peter laughed. “Not even a third of the way up I reckon,” he said.

  Hearing that dismayed Willy but he tried not to show it. In an attempt to check whether what Peter had said was correct he looked around, attempting to get a view out through the thick vegetation. But everywhere he looked was a tangle of growing things: leaves, vines, ferns and trees. There wasn’t a single gap large enough to allow him a glimpse of any of the farmland he knew was out there.

  Until then he had never really appreciated that what he had been told about the jungle being a claustrophobic environment was true. Now he knew it was. He shook his head. “The vegetation is too dense,” he commented.

  “We are the ones who are dense,” Andrew replied, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  Willy looked at Marjorie to check how she was coping. He saw that she looked tired and unhappy. Her hair was a rat’s nest and her clothes torn and dirty. She had scratches on her arms and .. and.. ‘What is that?’ Willy wondered.

  He pointed to Marjorie’s arm. “Marjorie, what’s that?”

  Marjorie looked, then used her other hand to touch the black object the size of her finger that was on her upper arm. Suddenly her eyes went wide and she began to shriek in fright and jump up and down. “Eeek! Eeek! Oh, take it off! Take it off! Get it off me!”

  Willy now saw that it was a leech. Her frantic efforts scraped the thing off but left a smear of blood and a very clear wound from which more blood trickled. Marjorie continued to cry out while Stephen sneered and said, “Bloody hell! It’s only a bloody leech, not the end of the world!”

  Willy stepped across and put his arms around her. After a minute or so she calmed down and snuggled into his embrace. “It’s alright,” he said soothingly, ignoring the looks on the faces of the army cadets.

  Suddenly Marjorie jerked back and began to shriek again, her eyes wide with alarm. “Oh! Oooh, lookout! Oh, there’s one on you too!”

  She pointed to Willy’s neck, her face a mask of horror. Willy put his hand up and felt a slimy thing. Amid a mild attack of panic he scraped at it, ignoring Peter and Graham who cried not to pull it off. The leech came loose and he flicked it away, shuddering with disgust at the feel of it. Then he saw the blood all over his fingers and was amazed.

  Worse was to come. Marjorie pulled out her handkerchief and pressed it to the bite and then wiped at it. Willy was astonished at how much blood there seemed to be, although none of the army cadets seemed to be impressed.

  “It’s only a little bite,” Graham said. “You won’t die.”

  They all now checked themselves for leeches, and all found at least one or two. Most were thin and small, only a millimeter or two in thickness and a centimetre or so long but a couple had gorged themselves and were slick, fat slugs which Willy found repulsive. There were more shrieks and cries of horror and disgust. Trouser legs were pulled up and a dozen at least were plucked from around the tops of socks and one even from the inside of Andrew’s thigh.

  Stephen laughed. “You don’t want them any higher up,” he joked.

  Carmen wasn’t amused. “Don’t be disgusting Stephen!” she snapped.

  “Just trying to warn you,” Stephen replied.

  To Willy’s annoyance the army cadets seemed to have hardly any on them and only one or two in the top of their boots. He began to really appreciate why they always tucked the legs of their trousers into the tops of their boots, or secured the bottoms of the trousers to the boots by elastic ties. They all took the opportunity to apply more repellent and Willy noted that Graham even smeared it around his collar and seams and around the brim of his hat.

  That done they found rocks or tree roots to sit on and settled to eat their lunch. While they did Willy kept glancing down to try to spot more leeches before they could get on him. He spotted one moving with its head-tail-head-tail movement onto Marjorie’s shoe. “Look out!” he said, pointing.

  Marjorie again almost had hysterics. She hit at it and tried to flick it off. Laughing, Graham reached down and plucked it off with his fingers, then rolled it in a ball and flicked it away. “You can’t squash the
m,” he explained. “You can try to mash them but only repellent, fire or salt kills them.”

  “And that is supposed to be an agonizing death for the poor little things,” Peter added.

  “Poor little things! What about poor little me,” Carmen retorted.

  That caused a burst of laughter and morale began to pick up. That pleased Willy because he had been starting to wonder if any aircraft wreck was worth this much effort. Still wondering if they would find anything he munched away at the sandwiches his mother had provided him with.

  Then it began to rain.

  As the heavy drops dripped from the leaves Willy was amazed at how cold they felt. He took out his raincoat and pulled it on, as did Marjorie, Stick and the three navy cadets. Not so the four army cadets. They laughed the idea to scorn. “It’s summer, in the tropics,” Peter said.

  Roger nodded. “In the steaming tropical jungle,” he added with a grin.

  Graham laughed. “The raincoat will make you twice as wet. You will sweat like pigs in it. Better to just let the rain cool you.”

  Willy wasn’t amused and did his raincoat up. “I don’t think I am enjoying my day in the rainforest,’ he thought. He even began to wonder if they shouldn’t turn back. Then he got all stubborn. ‘I’m not going to give the army cadets the satisfaction of seeing me give up,’ he vowed. So he was the first to stand up and say, “Well, come on. Let’s go and find this plane wreck.”

  As before Roger led, followed by Peter. The route was still up the ridge and as they struggled slowly up this became an ever narrower spur with steep slopes on either side. There were stretches with no wait-a-while but they were few and the narrowness of the spur meant they had to cut a path.

  After ten minutes of sweating and panting as he hauled himself up from tree to tree Willy had to admit that wearing the raincoat was like being in a sauna but not for anything would he take it off until the rain stopped. Then he casually unbuttoned it and at a convenient stop peeled it off and stuffed it back in his pack. The others did likewise and Willy was sure they felt just as relieved as he did.