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Good Reading : August 2012
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good reading august 2012 29 behind the book to once again join me on Henry’s track about 18 months later. I enlisted my brother, Baz, to join us. ‘Nothing can prepare you for this trek,’ I warned Baz. ‘Imagine the worst it could possibly be, and then multiply that by 10!’ Moz’s partner, Jane Crowle, generously agreed to provide support along the way, checking on us and ensuring we had the things we needed. In addition to my regular jogging routine, my preparations for the second adventure included a lot of reading. I read all of the books Henry published during his lifetime and, after leaving Canada, I arrived in Sydney on 29 December 2010. On the 30th we drove to Bourke and on the 31st we buried water every 10–15 kilometres along much of the route. Then, on 1 January 2011, having only days earlier left temperatures of minus 20 degrees, I set out from Bourke in temperatures in the high 40s. After sweltering in the heat, Moz withdrew from the walk on the third morning; he was suffering chest pains and was unable to cool down. Baz and I pushed on as best as we could. ‘And, oh! It’s a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back,’ Henry had written. The words seemed inadequate as my addled mind thought only of my overheated body. As rivers of sweat ran down my back, for the first time in my life I felt a preference for the cold of a Canadian winter over the heat of an Australian summer. I recalled the snow-filled backyard of my house in Manitoba. Before I left, I dug out a snow cave in which my children could play. I imagined crawling into the cave to die. ‘Don’t let me fail,’ I had written in one of my last emails to my brother, ‘because I will be a long time failed.’ I did not want to live the rest of my life as a failure. Baz responded to my email with: ‘Come hell or high water, there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD that any of us will be failing.’ And high water there was too – as if the hell of barren Whim Plain was not enough. Henry described the state of the rivers and creeks outback as being ‘vaguely but generally understood to depend on some distant and foreign phenomena to which bushmen refer in an off-hand tone of voice as “the Queenslan’ rains”.’ Because of the Queenslan’ rains, we were wading downriver through swollen creeks that covered the track, in some places for almost a kilometre at a time. We eventually made it to the Queensland border and, peering through the wire of the dingo fence, Baz captured his first glimpse of Hungerford. I expect he could not help but think it had been a hell of a long journey to get to a place that looks like that. Nonetheless, as we hobbled through the gate of the dingo fence there was an incredible sense of accomplishment. Henry’s words from ‘The Paroo’ seemed appropriate: ‘With blighted eyes and blistered feet, With stomachs out of order, Half-mad with flies and dust and heat We’d crossed the Queensland border.’ It was a time of celebration and congratulation and Baz and I shook hands heartily. But I realised that we were only halfway. We still had to trudge all the way from Hungerford back to Bourke. As we stepped inside Hungerford’s Royal Mail Hotel, a high-pitched voice came from the darkness behind the bar. ‘You made it. Congratulations, boys.’ ‘Thank you,’ Baz and I said together. We had little time to say anything else before the woman turned to Jane, who had followed us inside, and said, ‘Oh, you are right. They do stink!’ The lady got no argument from me. She introduced herself as Sheree Parker. Together with her husband, she ran the Royal Mail Hotel. Alarmed by the bloated and angry state of my feet, one of the hotel patrons contacted the local policeman, Dean Hutchinson. ‘I used to be a paramedic in a former life,’ he told me when he came to see me, as I steeled myself for the return journey. He was concerned about the risks posed to my safety and he talked to me about what was happening with the swelling and the infection in my feet. He explained the way in which veins work and talked of things like venous sinuses and valves and refluxes. He was worried about the valves collapsing and expressed concern about things such as thrombosis, which can lead to a stroke. The things he said were sobering and disconcerting, but I remained committed to my task. Maybe that commitment was evidence enough that I am insane. Maybe, like Henry, I should have been hoping for the policeman to take me off the track and ‘to lock [me] up, for [my] own protection, as a person unfit to be at large.’ Nevertheless, after a day of rest I turned my head towards Bourke and resumed shuffling forward. ‘It’s not glorious and grand and free to be on the track,’ Henry wrote but, despite the hardships, eventually my brother and I made it back to Bourke. It is staggering to think that less than 10 years after completing his August 2012 main Henry Lawson in the year that he completed his Hungerford tramp. pHotograpHofHenryLawsonbyJoHnbaiLLieinnewzeaLand.imageusedwitHpermissionoftHeaLexanderturnbuLLLibrary,weLLington,newzeaLand.referencenumber:pacoLL-8674. although his feet were battered from the 2009, one-way walk, gregory was determined to walk from bourke to Hungerford and back. although his feet were battered from the 2009, one-way walk, gregory was determined to walk from bourke to Hungerford and back. 28_30_behind_book_d.indd 29 5/7/12 3:32:11 PM
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