4WD Touring Australia – June 2018

024 | 4WDTouringAustralia

F

or most people walking is a way to get

from one place to another place. But out

here, under the dense canopy of pines and

oaks, walking becomes something else altogeth-

er. You find in movement an end unto itself.

I cried going up one hill, and dad carried my

pack for me, against everything I imagine he’d

told himself about this inevitable moment.

We saw wild deer and chipmunks, watched

hawks land silently in the trees. We slept out in

the open air and awoke to skunks foraging around

our camp.

On some days I can still almost grasp the smell

of those woods, the scent of a waterfall running

through rotting brown leaves over mossy stones.

I went on many more hikes. We would spend

weeks in the woods, barely meeting another hu-

man, chasing dirt roads and trails wherever they led.

On a different continent, in a new land-

scape, my love for the mountains hasn’t

faded. There’s something about alpine air:

maybe you can see further in the thinner

air, maybe the lack of oxygen triggers some

kind of last moments religious zeal. I don’t

know...but up here in the blue beyond,

where the sky touches the earth, some-

thing touches us, or we touch something,

and nothing is ever the same after.

Australia’s Great Dividing Range stretches

from the tropical tip of Cape York all the

way down the eastern flank of the conti-

nent into Victoria’s west. Formed when

Australia bumped into New Zealand and

South America, the range has been wear-

ing itself away for over 300 million years.

Gone are the razorback heights of the

younger, taller ranges of the world. The

mountains here are like the slopes of pony

shoulders, eating in a green pasture.

My favourite part of the high country, at

least down south, is the Alpine Nation-

al Park. Here, rivers and creeks cut long

winding paths through the hills, running

cool and clear in the summer, when it’s hot

enough to want to swim in them, when

the bugs and the birds are humming so

loud it rings in your ears.

I love the bald peaks like Feathertop

and Blue Rag...the long dead fingers of

snow gums decimated by fires, the bun-

dles of spitfire caterpillars huddled and

flexing against the cold in the shade of

the young gums coming up to replace

their skeletal fathers.

And the driving. Automobiles have been

my freedom since I was sixteen years old.

Taking long road trips out to nowhere.

They are music and wind and anything

can happen. Strange souls on the road-

side. Weirdos on the road are somehow

temporal friends, multiple lives in a week.

You’re running through tall mountain ash,

bark hanging like dilapidated prayer flags

in the dim brown shade under the cano-

py, and then the snow gums appear, wan,

flagging, stunted against the elements

but pushing up nonetheless. Then a break

in the trees and you’re up high, in the blue

air, everything is washed out and yet clear.

TRAVEL