Wednesdays were my day off. I would lock up the Octagon bookshop, and go out in the car. Sometimes I explored the rolling hills and fast flowing rivers round Omeo; visited the Blue Duck at Anglers’ Rest or the little settlements of Benambra and Swift’s Creek, lunched at Ensay’s Little River Inn. Sometimes, snow permitting, I drove up to Dinner Plain village – an all timber architectural ‘folly’ – and continued through the straggling ski resort on Hotham, before crossing the mountain range and descending cautiously to the quaint gold mining towns of Bright or Beechworth.
Mostly however, I settled for a drive down to Bairnsdale, the nearest large town on the coast. It boasted a number of services relevant to my business, and I could pick up maps, posters, or books required urgently, or just stationery. I rewarded myself for this work on my day off, by having a leisurely lunch at the up-market Riversleigh, or a pub in Bairnsdale or Wy Yung – which both had an outdoor area.
I left in the morning, and returned at night. When I was getting to know my future partner Win – who lived at Wy Yung, on the outskirts of Bairnsdale – the trip would begin straight after work on the Tuesday evening, and would end late on Wednesday, or early Thursday just in time to open the shop. At first I drove a Mazda van, which I had had since Foster, but eventually Win persuaded me to trade it in for something more reliable and, indeed, smarter. So it was replaced by a low slung, 4 wheel drive Toyota Corolla station wagon – looking very like a normal car, but with style, and a fine silver-grey finish. It was now a year or two old, but performed as new. It had air conditioning and heating, was both fast and stable, and had a potentially valuable extra in the 4 wheel option – which most people used in sand or mud, but I used mainly for snow and ice.
Bairnsdale lay a hundred and twenty kilometres to the south, and took an hour and a half to reach – maybe less in the Toyota. Slow? The drive meant a drop of a thousand metres, from an area near the snow line, to sea level. It involved following a road with stretches straight as a die and others which snaked and corkscrewed, passing through grazing lands and forests, crossing creek and river bridges some of which took only single lane traffic, daring narrow culverts, and
keeping your nerve as you tried to slip unnoticed between precipices which crumbled on to you from above and broke away from you at your feet. Such was the drop, that the temperature within that hour could range from cold to warm, or from warm to hot. On the return journey, you had to remember that the safe looking road surface might be no longer what it seemed, for sheets of invisible ‘black’ ice could cover it, especially at the sun starved hairpin bends. And, as you climbed, you could run into a cloud bank, grey and cold, which cut visibility. On other occasions, snow would be falling by the time you reached the home run.
The land which had been opened up, was grazed by sheep or cattle, but the combination of leached soil and irregular rain meant flocks and herds were thinly spread. The journey began and ended in grazing country, though by the time you reached Bairnsdale there were signs of cultivation. The rest of the land still carried its ancient mantle of eucalyptus forest, with a whole spectrum of tree sizes and conditions, from dwarf to towering, from lean to lush, from green to brown and black. Here, earth and water formed half the equation, bushfires formed the other. They occurred almost every year in some area or other, and could burn savagely for hours and then smoulder systematically for days, or just pass by in a flash, leaping and roaring. So you saw everything from scenes of absolute destruction, to scenes of more or less successful regeneration, to scenes where damage was limited to the tree tops, the side of a tree, some bark, some leaves.
By day, with few exceptions, it was a picture postcard drive, with sections so beautiful you had to stop. At night, over the grazing land, you could admire a sky, vast and uninterrupted, all in motion with sharp and glittering stars. And, also at night, the black claustrophobic tunnel of the enveloping forest through which you drove, could tighten your chest and stop you breathing. It was eery.
There were not many man made hazards. Traffic bankups for example, were few. Some were so predictable that they could be timetabled, such as those caused by the coincidence of narrow winding road and Trevor’s Omeo bus or Rod Grinter’s truck; others less so, caused once in a while by a long and anonymous logging leviathan, or by a heavyweight dump truck shrouded in tarpaulins, shifting finely crushed copper. But, basically, there was little traffic, so accidents – though terrible when they occurred – were mercifully infrequent. A straggling pedestrian, a wobbly cyclist, an unruly horseman were rare – for there was hardly a single exposed soul out there, on the loose. But there were plenty of natural hazards. There were wild wallabies, kangaroos, and occasionally deer on the drive to Bairnsdale, and there must have been stray sheep or cattle. And, of course, there were often fallen branches, though whole trees would be exceptional. And there were unnatural hazards. In the year before meeting Win, I had had a passing and unfortunate relationship with a bright, apparently sparkling slip of a woman, who had been badly handicapped as the result of a car accident. She had been unusually quick to catch my attention, and active in the follow up. As I came to know her, I realised I could not cope with her manic depression and obsessive traits, brought on in part by the plethora of medicines she needed. Then, there was her fixation with bats – and witches – which was funny, at first. It was slow and difficult forcing a break, which she resisted tenaciously. I feared the worst. And, gradually, I felt jinxed.
Somewhere in the vicinity of Piano Bridge or Battle Point, the road straightens briefly. It is overhung by cliffs on the right, and falls away sheer on the left, to a river. The Tambo, sunken and boulder-strewn, can be little more than a string of calm or slowly turning pools, or a raging monster scattering scum and mud and debris . It never misses a mood. Once, driving along this stretch in the twilight, I caught up unexpectedly with a wallaby hopping in front of the car. I was doing about eighty k.p.h. There was nowhere to turn. Though I slowed frantically – I would not risk skidding into cliff-face or river – inevitably I ran into it, mounted it, and rolled over it, the car heaving and lurching. It was gruesome. The car, after a tyre change and with its radiator leaking, managed to get me to my destination where it had to be left for a week or two. I was shocked, and disturbed at a subconscious level by the realization I would have crashed into the cliff or plunged to the river below had I tried harder to avoid an impact. It was a nasty incident.
Just short of Swift’s Creek, before the road straighten out near the horse racing track, there are a few gently teasing turns and twists. Once, also sitting on about eighty k.p.h. prior to opening up on the straight, with the light excellent, my whole world was shattered in an instant by the massive weight of a big grey – kangaroo – as it leapt across the road from right to left and smashed into the front of the car. The enormous animal disappeared into the bush below the road, presumably to die from shock, if not from cuts and bruising. After removing broken glass from the dashboard and seats, I was able to start the car and reach my destination, though once again the car had to stay there for further repairs. I was stunned, but unhurt. And I was perplexed by the way the kangaroo had crossed my path from right to left, catching the car on the left, where it wrecked the headlight and buckled that side of the bonnet. Shouldn’t it have struck the driver’s side, and me? This incident seemed … a little strange.
It was in the depths of the forest that the incident occurred. It was winter, and all
was black. The headlights opened a narrow, shifting, fragile path of light, enough to mark the trees by the roadside and the bitumen immediately in front. The road had straightened, at last, and there remained just one slight curve ahead, on a gentle rise. There had been no traffic to worry about, and I trusted that the contrast between the blackness and my shaft of light would warn off any unwelcome creature. I moved gradually up from seventy-five to ninety k.p.h. I reached and swung through the gently rising curve, and there in front, less than a hundred yards away, I saw this fallen eucalyptus completely blocking the road. I couldn’t pass it on either side, without sliding into a shallow ditch and then coming up hard against a wall of trees. And I couldn’t stop in the time. All I could see now was the brightly lit mass of leaves and branches as they rushed towards me, and in places, a foot or two above the ground, the bulk of the tree trunk which formed the impassable barrier across the road. It was my last moment. The impact took place at about fifty k.p.h. At least, I imagined it was about that speed. And I imagined the impact, for a moment later I was on the far side of the tree, facing the correct way, bringing the car quietly to a halt, unscathed. It appeared I had been lifted across, I had flown. Obvious damage was limited to a tyre, which a following driver helped change, after he had used his chainsaw to cut through the narrower end of the tree. And there were some twigs stuck under the car, which I pulled away later.
I am sure I did not have the time nor the presence of mind to pray on seeing my predicament. I know, however, that I managed always to entrust myself to Sai Baba to whom Win had introduced me, on starting these journeys.
You can imagine my state on arrival at Win’s. These three occasions, within
months of each other, helped convince Win to move up to Omeo and join me. Had I been jinxed? God alone knows. But if I was jinxed it backfired, for it had brought Win and me closer. On this occasion, without a doubt, I had been protected … supernaturally.
From ‘Notes for an autobiography’, set in Australia in the late 1980s.