A dusty day on the tablelands.
STAY or go back to Walcha? There is a camp kitchen in the van park there and it keeps out the weather. Here at Aspley Gorge there is nothing like it to shelter us from the wind and the cold. Mainly the wind, and it is picking up. We’ve set a 2pm deadline to make the decision.
It is late morning now. We set off down the track. Some distance along I lose Fiona. She goes to read an interpretive noticeboard. I don’t hear her say she is going to do that. I assume she has continued on down the track while I stop to take photos. I walk on. Reaching the minivan I realise she is missing.
I recall from my days in a mountain search and rescue unit that a reconnaissance search of the most likely places they could be is the first thing to do when someone is missing So, I backtrack all the way to the camping area. No sign of her.
I know she is too sensible and cautious to climb over the fence to the edge of the deep gorge. Where is she? We usually stay in visual range of each other in the bush because in some places it is all-too-easy to mistakenly take one of the trails branching off the main track and become what bushwalkers call ‘geographically disoriented’. I’ve done this as have many others.
What was that? Was it someone calling my name? If so, they must be some distance away. I guess it could have been a bird squarking. There it is again. I hurry along the track towards the vehicle and there she is coming in the opposite direction. I was her I heard calling. She had been looking for me as far as the suspension bridge. We were glad to see each other.
Watched by a macropod
Fiona is making something for lunch now that the wind has dropped a little and the rain splatters haven’t amounted to anything. Rain — they could do with a lot of that up here on the tablelands. The bush, the fields, they are all dry, their grasses yellowed, the towns on level-one or level-two water restrictions.
She chases away a bold magpie looking for its cut of our food. Mugs of tea sit on the dashboard as the clatter of food preparation comes from the rear of the minivan. Fiona is making the most of the break in the weather.
Suddenly, sunlight bursts through. “There’s a kangaroo wathcing us”, Fiona calls. Yes, there is. There are two. They check us out from a distance then go back to their grazing.
Wind and dust
The afternoon is getting on, getting closer to our decision time. Stay or go? I look up and notice that a mist has suddenly come in. I go to take photos of it in the trees by the campsite.
“Look at the mist in the gorge,” Fiona says when I return.
“Fantastic. It’s like one of those old Chinese or Japanese paintings,” I reply, looking out to see the vertical slate cliffs half- hidden, half-revealed by the mist. I get busy with my camera.
The wind picks up. We wander to the pedestrian suspension bridge. I cross, and on the way back a gust so strong that it moves the bridge and forces me to crouch pushes me towards the railing. Below, a kangaroo nonchalantly munches grass.
Back at the car. We sit there. Four. It’s two hours after we set the decision deadline. We delayed it to see what the wind would do. It got stronger. Decision time. Stay or go?
We go. I was torn in making the decision. Despite the strong wind it’s force was blunted in the forest where the campsite is. I was more concerned about falling branches, even falling trees. With this wind there was little by way of campsites out of range of falling eucalyptus limbs. We chose the best site in that regard, however it was far from secure.
We drive out to the Oxley Highway and turn towards Walcha, some 35 kilometres distant. Then we realise something. The mist that made the Aspley gorge so reminiscent of old oriental paintings is not mist. It is topsoil bring whipped up by the wind and blowing away in a turbulent dust storm. With the dust tinging the sky a sepia colour like some old photograph and silhouetting the trees, the landscape has turned a monochrome of brown shades and tones. Stopping and getting out of the van, I open the wind speed app on my phone and measure the wind gusting around 60kph with some gusts perhaps stronger.
The wind, the dust, the monochromal landscape… the feeling is almost apocalyptic. Not enough to stop me shooting a few minutes of video while the wind tries to push me away, however. I didn’t bother to attach my microphone, figuring I would turn off the wind noise in editing and replace it, maybe, with some appropriate music. I don’t. The video I hurriedly assemble seems better withour music and with the crunch of wind noise in the mic.
We’re back at Walcha van park now, same place we spent last night. Outside the camp kitchen the wind howls. Fiona says it is good we returned, Aspley Falls campsite would be an unpleasant place now. The forecast is for strong winds and low temperatures made lower by windchill, and possibly snow. People are being advised to avoid travel to the tablelands.
It is dark now. Fiona is frying eggs and veges for dinner. The last of the merlot will go down well with it. We will probably light the wood heater in the camp kitchen tonight.
Tomorrow? If the weather is better we will return to Aspley Falls and do the rim walk we haven’t done yet. It was too windy for it today. I am wary of wind in the bush, recalling how one night a high wind broke a branch from a eucalypt which landed on a friend in his tent, severely injuring him. Most who venture into the Australian bush sooner or lated become aware of the risk of falling branches.
It the weather is like it is now we will head down to the free camp at Ellenborough Reserve. If it is hostile there, there is always Wauchope.
Outside, the wind howls.
WATCH: One minute six seconds of wind:
https://youtu.be/9w-8O7aTlCg
