Should we hitch? Mum asks.

  Do you really think we’d get picked up? Two grots with enormous packs?

  Definitely!

  I nod slowly.

  We don’t have to, Peta. I just thought it might be an idea—hitch this next, what, ten kilometres? It’d make a huge difference, not walking on the bitumen. Might open our options up for the arvo too, because we could camp at Seamans Hut, or head on further, maybe even to Thredbo.

  I nod some more, thinking about beds and hot chips and beers.

  Yeah, I say. I mean, we could try to hitch, and then if we’re not getting picked up we could just start walking with our thumbs out, right?

  Of course—easily.

  We stand on the roadside for less than three minutes before a silver Subaru swerves onto the shoulder and comes to a stop. Mum approaches first and the lean man in his fifties seems friendly enough—caked in white zinc and smiling—so we toss the packs into the boot beside a pair of touring skis. I take the back seat.

  Where you off to? I ask over the centre console.

  Just out past Blue Lake, probably. Summer skiing! There’s still enough snow kicking on the south side to be worth a day trip, he says.

  Oh, I haven’t skied in so long! Mum laments.

  They babble opinions about the feeling of free-heel skiing while I push my head against the rest. The speed of the metal box we’re in is shocking and exhilarating and makes me a little sick.

  After twenty minutes, we park on the roadside, far down from the track head because the cars are stacked along the shoulder. We thank the man, pull our packs from the boot and make our way up the bitumen. Pass vehicle after vehicle; I try not to catch my own reflection in the gloss and myriad of windows, but I do. Notice that I’m scowling and try to soften my features.

  English is not the primary language of the car park or the track intersection. Chinese and German and French morph together—tour groups and families scour the signage and clump together for photos. We squeeze through and they watch us curiously. Maybe they smell us.

  I’m starving, says Mum.

  Let’s get out of this circus and stop along the track for lunch, hey?

  We drag our feet along the neat gravel path—so flat and manicured that a stumble would be a freak accident—until we’ve woven away from the biggest swarms. Plonk down on a patch of grass with a yawning vantage towards Blue Lake. The Snowy River tumbles icily in the valley below our feet.

  So many snow patches. The mountain looks like a Dalmatian, I say as we eat.

  We’re scraping the barrel of our food. Cheese and tuna and a strip of sundried tomato each. I look down at the yellow laces of Maya’s boots and think about how I love them and hope that she never wants them back. I hear the wind in the hoops of my earrings. I close my eyes.

  A drone buzzes overhead with the same menacing irritation as an ear-bound mozzie in the dark. We both look up and around.

  You’re kidding—a drone? Don’t they need licences to do that?

  I think so. But that wouldn’t stop most people, says Mum.

  The noise ebbs and flows and we pack up our lunch as another herd of tourists waddles ahead of us.

  Accessibility is hard, isn’t it? Ethically, I say to Mum as we overtake the group. Because everyone deserves to have the opportunity to see a place, but at what cost? Does the place lose something integral when you open it up and smooth it out and pave it?

  Of course it does, but it’s about compromise.

  You mean that we don’t want to pave every wild place, but it’s a bit ableist to suggest that we shouldn’t open up any place at all if we have the capacity to?

  Exactly. And this one is particularly significant nationally. So it’s important that people have the access and that it’s managed. Imagine if we didn’t make access easy? Someone else would because they feel entitled to, and they probably wouldn’t take peatlands and pygmy possums into consideration.

  Yeah, true. Controlled access, I say. But why does it feel so revolting when something is peopled with people other than me? I’m people too! We’re part of these crowds.

  Well, we wouldn’t be if we’d gone over the Rolling Ground, she says slyly.

  My head snaps towards her and to my own surprise I say, Good call, and start laughing rather than spitting angry words, and she does too.

  There was once a public road basically to the summit of Kozi, she says. Your uropa drove us all up here in the station wagon. I remember it. He was covered in liquid copper tone—that’s what he used as sunscreen. It was smeared all over the steering wheel.

  Of course he did, the old kook, I chuckle. I’m glad things have changed at least a little.

  The drone flyer is a few hundred metres down the track—fifteen or sixteen years old, in boardshorts with flames up the side, throwback to 2005—plonked bored on a rock with his sunburnt face glued to a small remote. Scouring the virtual landscape rather than the actual. He won’t have a licence for that mechanical mosquito. I wonder where his keepers are. Probably walking—probably cracked it and left him behind after he gave up on the hike to the summit.

  Who am I to judge, I’ve been there.

  We pass him without acknowledgement.

  At the wide bridge across the Snowy River, the sun is sweltering despite the remaining snow drifts, and I say, It’d be rude not to, Mum. I’m going to jump in.

  Strip off to my underwear because there are too many others milling about to go naked. I wade into the water.

  The snow drifts rise up on either side at least a metre and a half above the surface, concave and overhanging. I look up to the sheer frozen bank and I pretend I’m in a glacier. Droplets peel and spatter from the peak of the wall, dribbling into the same river that at that very moment Dad is likely facing from the deck on the coast, a beer in hand.

  By the time it reaches him, this water will have churned some three hundred and fifty kilometres through the hot dry gorges, meandered exposed like a baking snake through the farms of East Gippsland, collected cow shit and pesticides and silt and logs and bits of inflatable river toy, then merged with the brackish backwash of the estuary.

  The water Dad looks over is probably warm and salty and brown until it tosses itself into the ocean and turns a richer blue than this ice-pale azure—Snowy River, top to bottom.

  While I’m pondering all this, the drone hums into view. Hovers above me then, slowly descends towards the freezing water, towards my face. I notice Mum on the bridge with her mouth curled in disapproval.

  Ugh, I snarl, imagining the glassy stare of the pasty teen on the controls. I try my best to splash the river into its electronics before I haul myself up through the snow.

  Seamans Hut, perched on the most spectacular pass, rises out of the rocks of the plateau which is steadily darkening under the clouds we’ve been waiting for. The winds are warm and northerly; the high cumulonimbus is sucking tumultuous air and tossing it about.

  We take one look around and inside the hut. Toilet paper flapping on the ground, useless metal bins overflowing with festering crap. Graffiti etched into the beautiful old stonework, the stench of piss and shit and decomposing apple emanating from the entry alcove also scattered with discarded rubbish. It isn’t hard to dig a hole to defecate into, but they haven’t done it, whoever they are—lack of education or lack of care. Both.

  Let’s just walk all the way to Thredbo tonight, I say. These storms look hectic. I know we weren’t meant to be there until tomorrow night, but do you reckon we could check in early to that inn?

  I’m sure we could, says Mum.

  We pass the turn-off to Kosciuszko. It’s late in the afternoon and nobody scurries up or down the lump of hill.

  Do you think they’ll ever give it a Ngarigo name? I ask with my eyes on the summit of Australia.

  I think Dad said there was talk about it. But there are over twenty names in contention. He said that the Ngarigo People call it Kunama Namadgi.

  Kunama Namadgi, I repeat. Do you think this particular mountain was as significant a long time ago as it is to colonial society? Ngarigo People didn’t necessarily have a way of measuring the twenty metre difference between this and the next highest.

  I don’t know, but I think it is all significant, as a whole.

  The sky groans as we clatter along the boardwalk. It looks alive. Mammatus, those bulbous smoothed breasts that form beneath the wrathful churn of a storm cloud, look close enough to touch and are purple under the grey.

  At the Eagle Chairlift an older bloke with whitening hair says that the lift is about to close, but as we turn to walk down the ski runs, he calls, Come on, then—hop on. You can pay for your ticket at the bottom.

  We thank him profusely. The rain hasn’t hit but it’s sure coming, and we sit side by side on the chairlift, packs between us, and drift down over the treeless lines of the ski resort, smiling blissfully at our luck.

  Oh my gosh, I say suddenly. I wonder what happened to Wayne? I haven’t seen his name in a single log book.

  Wayne?

  The guy I pulled out of the river, I explain and look out at the trees. Well, we didn’t see his body on the track. I guess that’s a good sign.

  The ticket office at the bottom is also closed. We shrug and walk away through the quiet, tight-packed streets of the alpine resort.

  The Snow Bear Inn is narrow, low-slung and warren-like with a dark facade, white trim and flowers spilling from window boxes—outrageously European. The square-jawed woman with silky black hair on reception admits us for the extra night. There are only three other guests. We ricochet and grimace as our bags scrape down the claustrophobic hall towards our room, which is also tight. Two single beds, a screen mounted to the wall and a small fridge. The glass door opens onto a narrow balcony with sharp metal grating to let the snow through. It looks out to the ski runs and to the sky, which still bubbles with impending doom.

  Shower then beer? The pub was open when we walked past. I grin.

  Absolutely. I’d love something fresh—a big salad, Mum says.

  Hot chippies.

  An ice-cream.

  Hell yeah. You go first. I gesture to the bathroom.

  You’ve been out for longer.

  Nah, Mum, please. I’ll make some calls, I say, settling myself onto the soft luxury of the bed and smiling my contentment.

  She relents and ducks away with soap and fresh thermals folded beneath her arm, the only cleanish clothing left, and once she’s gone I step out onto the balcony with bare feet, happy. Proud to be here—glad to have made it this far. Feel that hairdryer blast of pre-storm air and take my phone from my pocket and call him.

  It goes to voicemail, which means that he’s still on the property, so I call the landline, imagine its piercing trill in the office beside his room. Someone picks up the receiver after five rings, which means that it’s him because none of the other staff could get there that quickly from the kitchen or their own cabins or the sprawling rest of the Farm. I register all of this in the time it takes him to clear his throat.

  Hi, you’ve called the Farm—this is Ben.

  Aw, g’day g’day.

  Sorry—who am I speaking to?

  It’s Peet.

  There’s a short pause, then, Hi Peta. Where are you?

  He sounds tired and distracted and businesslike. I explain that we’re in Thredbo at the inn, that we took the Guthega option because of the weather and the snow, that Dad and Otis will meet us here tomorrow. He listens politely.

  How are things on the Farm? I ask.

  Fine.

  The way you say fine makes me think it’s not fine, I say.

  He sighs. No, it is fine. I’m just sick of Anna and Tommy being arseholes to me.

  How are they being arseholes?

  I don’t know, he says. They just act like they don’t want me here.

  That’s because they don’t want you there.

  There’s a ripple of happiness in me because Anna hating Ben is better than the alternative. But this dissipates quickly.

  I say, No good—I’m sure it’s not true.

  It is, he says sharply. But it’s fine because we have a volunteer here at the moment so I just avoid the staff and hang with her instead.

  Who is it?

  You probably don’t know her, but Nikita? She’s an ex-student, just turned eighteen, so she came here to help out once she’d finished up with Year 12 exams.

  I know her, I say.

  Nikita, I recall, had been my student. Was from Torquay, from lawyers, from money. She’d been rake thin and plain and lank-haired and socially unsure, but pretty and smart and lovely enough—passionate about the place. I remember her as that child, although she isn’t far off my age.

  She’s so great. The two of us can’t stop giggling, he laughs. It really annoys Anna how well we get along, which is kind of fun. She also invited me to stay up on the Murray because her family likes waterskiing and I haven’t done it in years. Have I ever told you that I’m really good at waterskiing?

  Don’t think so.

  Anyway, she’s fun. But she kind of follows me around a lot—I think she likes me. He laughs.

  I’m sure she does, I say with a dry mouth. Can’t believe she’s old enough to volunteer.

  There’s a short silence on the other end of the line and then he replies with a confusing sharpness.

  Well, she is.

  Oh, no! I didn’t mean …

  It’s fine, Peta. I have to go anyway. Have fun with your family and enjoy the next section when you start walking again.

  Thanks, I say into the already dead connection.

  Fat spats of water hit my arms as the metal grating of the balcony bites into the bare tender soles of my feet. I lean on the railing and watch the storm roll until Mum taps the glass, towel tight around her small body, to let me know that it’s my turn to scrub the dirt off.

  March 2016

  By mid-March the university had chewed up my soul and my sense of self and had spat it back down my throat.

  Each day I rode the roaring highway on a poorly geared bicycle. In the second week, the occy strap finally gave up, the entire pack rack rattled loose and the trumpet crashed at speed onto a service road. The shitty brown case that I’d never bothered to replace cracked wide and the trumpet crunched and skidded over the bitumen.

  Though I collected the pieces I was late to my first solo lesson with the new teacher. Ran across campus and arrived at Rehearsal Room 11 out of breath and dripping sweat. He watched me fly in from where he sat, a young, handsome, shaggy-haired fellow with a wide gap-toothed smile. He took it in—the dinged case and the ripped shorts.

  G’day, I gasped.

  He laughed warmly. Hi! I take it you’re Peta. I’m Scott.

  Hi Scott. I am so sorry.

  He waved me away. No need to be sorry, mate. What happened?

  Well. I opened my case on the table and drew out my rose gold Giardinelli. The bell was warped and the finish grazed. The highway happened, I explained. Tried to hop a kerb and the pack rack couldn’t hack it.

  We both grimaced at the trumpet, then locked eyes and laughed.

  Can you still get a note out of it?

  Nervously, I flew through an F major scale, the easiest fingering of any. It wasn’t impressive, but I knew I could make it sound beautiful. He watched from the table with his trumpet across his lap.

  You still get a lovely tone from it, Peta. I think it could be fixed easily by the brass repairer in the city, so I’ll give you their number and for now we’ll just make do. Is that okay?

  Sounds like a plan, I said. Thanks, Scott.

  I never called the repair shop. The bell stayed twisted and misshapen.

  But Scott kept me afloat a little longer than I’d have floated without him. He’d been a rock climber so understood this new obsession. He said he’d started training to become a priest before realising that God was an idiot and he didn’t want to follow such an inconsistent scumbag. He was loose and funny. He made me laugh.

  But even he couldn’t entirely stop me from drowning.

  The ensemble lessons were a new breed of hell.

  They were pasty and civilised and utterly not my people, the other trumpeters. They bickered over leads in the group concertos, were hideously eager to show off their double and triple tonguing and their arrow-straight postures. They lived and breathed the classical trumpet. They were talented and hardworking and passionate and devoid of fun.

  I was talented. It wasn’t enough.

  The trumpet had always been more about community and people than sound. It landed me in bands and ensembles whose focus was entertainment and fun; however, at the university, the joy was gone. The focus was solely on the instrument, and it became sickeningly clear that I could barely tolerate the sound of a trumpet. There was no reason for me to tolerate it.

  I slipped through the ranks with my slow fingering and grot until I was at the dank bottom of the fourteen, and then all I had to grasp for social status was my anarchic indifference, my exclusive quips with Scott, my whacky twisted bell, the attitude that I wasn’t meant to be there.

  Drowning. Choking.

  I diligently attended each lecture for both music and literature subjects for most of the first month. Every budding young academic does—like purchasing fresh notebooks before school goes back after summer, keeping the handwriting neat for two weeks. But I didn’t care about the things we were studying. They didn’t seem to matter in the broader world, so the pointlessness and capacity to live-stream inevitably shucked any determination.

  Why bother?

  Once I began to attend classes online it became just as easy to not attend classes at all.

  I’d been studious and hardworking and self-motived at school. Had barely needed teaching let alone prompting, yet here a prod with a hot poker couldn’t have ignited a passion or sparked any effort.

  Learning had once been something invigorating and addictive.

  But learning had once been something shared—classmates, colleagues, family, friends.

  In my immediate vicinity, I had nobody.

  No—I had Ben.

  At the end of a day of classes, I rode the bike back down the highway, through the blank suburban streets and up Banksia Court to the garage. I heaved open the roller door and wheeled the bike inside, then I staggered to the bungalow and collapsed onto the bed, letting the purposelessness settle onto me like dust.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31