Day 3

As the night went on…and on, I was cursing the rain, not especially because it was making me cold and wet, I was already cold and totally saturated from walking hip-deep in the creek, but because it was not raining enough for me to get some material benefit from it. I was hoping that a decent rainfall would lessen the effects of dehydration from which I was suffering, but the light, intermittent drizzle over most of the night barely succeeded in making my lips moist.

The swirling winds of the mountains delivered me the strangest of nights on the rocky heights. Every so often my nostrils would detect the inexplicable whiff of glue (quite strong at times), and this combined with the periodical sound of loud machinery in operation, made me believe there was an industrial plant or factory of some sort not far from the rocky outcrop that I had bedded down on. At times the source of the noise seemed to be very close indeed, as did the train, the sound of which I could also clearly distinguish to the north-east of me. These ‘revelations’ did lift my spirits and the prospect of at last escaping the wilderness trap I was in seemed almost tangible. I sensed I was very close to breaking out, although in my more lucid and realistic moments I tempered this optimism with the sobering reminder that noises at high elevation have a tendency to be carried considerable distances by the wind.

As time passed my mind, deprived of sleep, seemed to lapse into a kind of hallucinatory state. I started to rehearse in my head an almost quixotic scenario by which I would make good my escape. At the first sign of a lightening sky I would struggle up the remaining distance to the peak, crossing over it into ‘civilisation’ and secure my own deliverance by finding a workplace plant of some description (it didn’t have to be precisely that, the key element was that I would find people in some sort of roofed structure!). Obsessively through the rest of the night, I would replay this same, imagined sequence of events whereby I would dramatically emerge from the bush and burst in upon the surprised workers, telling them they have no idea how glad I was to see them, the first humans I have sighted in two days, etc, etc. Startled, they would view me as some sort of wondrous spectre bringing lustre and excitement to their deadly-dull, tedious night shift existences (such was the lyrical degree to which my mind was running wildly off the rails!). I would ask my would-be saviours for water and implore them to drive me back to Ross Crescent where my car was, so I could be on my merry way back to a world of modern indoor conveniences!

In hindsight, I can see that this was merely a fanciful, desperate construct of my mind concocted to shore up my resolve to get the hell out of that accursed bush … to find a release from my unhappy predicament. Or to view my line of thought from a different angle, this was therapy that I was “self-medicating”, psyching myself up to be in, and stay in, survivor mode … at one point I reminded myself that, unhelpfully, I had never ever watched a single episode of that over-publicised Survivor TV show. Drat! All the useless, mindless television I had watched over the years, and I hadn’t included something that would have been at least a little bit practical right now!

Even though this intoxicating ‘vision’ of mine was guileless and implausible to say the very least, it affirmed the extent to which I was determined to save myself (or be saved) by whatever means it took. Constantly running through a best result scenario in my head passed the time on this impossible-to-sleep night, as well as being a device to give myself hope, to keep my spirits up in the midst of such a trying experience. Looking at both Google Maps and Gregory’s later, I could not pinpoint the slightest sign of an industrial plant in the vicinity of where I had been, but there was a large man-made structure, possibly an electricity sub-station, in that proximity which I may have mistaken for a factory of some kind … though the mystery of the strong odour of glue remained just that, a mystery!

The part of my coccyx/tailbone which had impacted so dramatically with the stony ground the previous evening had by this time cooled down and I started feeling a discernible pain which came and went. It was a dull pain centred in the lower back, interspersed over the next 24 hours by occasional sharp stabbing pains … a series of momentary spasms in the middle of the back. Fortunately the pain was not severe enough at this time to hamper my mobility. With the light of day came the bitter, demoralising reality that I was not where I had thought I was, not anywhere near it in fact! The top of the mountain peak was still a long way off and a long way up, and between me and the top was a thick ground cover of undergrowth and high trees.

Disappointed, a feeling I was becoming accustomed to, I hastily revised my plans. I figured that I must have gone a long way past the old ladder and was probably on the mountainous range closer to the Warrimo side of the Florabella track. The only alternative to going up was to return to the creek in order to to retrace my steps to the ladder. Starting on my descent down I was keen to avoid those same sheer vertical cliff-faces which had been my unmaking the night before I had already decided to forgo any chance there might have been of recovering the lost hiking boot on the way down (it would have been the most remote of chances indeed). Heading east I steered a haphazard, zig-zagging course trying to skirt around the stony cliffs and gradually ease myself down a steep embankment to the bottom using the hill’s slender but resilient plant stems as hand brakes.

The dense hillside of course had no human-made path and I had to step my way through, over and past an assortment of fallen logs, bush palms, vines, briar patches and countless other native shrubs and trees. Eventually I found or fashioned a way down the steep hill half-running and half-sliding. Thus far, the blundering, accident-filled wilderness adventure I was experiencing had not sparked any inspired perspicacity on my part, let alone anything resembling an epiphany, but suddenly a fragment of bush survival wisdom flickered within me. I realised that the bush foliage everywhere was still wet from the previous night’s intermittent rain, from this I was to obtain a partial antidote to the dehydration that was overtaking me. Not an especially profound revelation but an immensely practical one in the circumstance!

From that point on, every bush or tree that I laboured past on the way down the hill, I would pause in front of it and shake it for all that it was worth. The spray from the leaves and foliage was eagerly received by my mouth. I had move quickly to get to as many trees as I could before the emerging morning sun dried their foliage. I ‘drank’ from dozens of bushes that I came to, and continued this practice when I reached the creek, supping on the wattles, musky-smelling ferns and other tree higher branches overhanging the creek as I made my way up it. In reality, the quantity of fresh water I absorbed through this method wouldn’t have come close to filling a 250ml bottle, but I think it was important (psychologically as well), maybe even vital, in securing for me some temporary respite from a state of being totally dehydrated.

Buoyed by the rainwater I kept to the creek for a good portion of the day, by now I was finding land progress very heavy going. My steps, two days since I had last eaten or drunk anything other than the small quantity of rainwater, were understandably more lethargic than when I started, plus there was the added, significant disadvantage of being reduced to 50% of my footwear! This in itself made it a very hard, laborious slog, both on land and in the creek. Whether on land or in the creek, clambering over obstacles had become a more arduous exercise with one boot only, especially as it was my left boot that was missing. I hadn’t realised prior to this situation that when climbing over boulders or rocks (or going up generally) I naturally and instinctively led or pushed off with my left leg (a habit I guess that comes from being left-handed?). With only a sock on my left leg I become instantly aware of this trait and how it was a handicap in the circumstances. Getting traction on wet or mossy rocks with a shoeless left foot was hard to do, so I had to kind of painstakingly teach myself there in the bush to lead with my (‘unnatural’) right leg … I found the discipline of this surprisingly difficult to master as instinctively I still wanted to start off each time on my left, the consequence of a lifetime habit of relying on it.

Foot slogging it in the creek brought its own extra burdens courtesy of nature. Walking in the water seemed to attract more pestering insects to myself than when on land. Mosquitos and sandflies of course were ever present but the most persistent annoyances were the large, black bush blowflies. These irritants, which reminded me in appearance of Darth Vader in arthropod form, seemed to be imbued with a large dose of schadenfreude, as they noisily delighted in repeatedly latching on to my open cuts and scratches with blood-sucking precision. Fortunately these insects were slow to react to a counterblow and I managed to squash many a one against my arm or leg whilst trudging upstream.

In my increasingly dire bush predicament, with all the time in the world and nothing or no one to disturb me, I found myself mulling over the oddest notions. Considering my potentially disastrous situation, I marvelled to think that things such as social embarrassment loomed as in any way important to me right at that moment. But extraordinarily they did! As I walked and mused randomly I conjured up images and scenarios that I found distinctly unpalatable, such as the prospect of being identified on the Channel 7 News. I visualised a news item flashing up on the screen along the lines of “Lost bushwalker still not found in Blue Mountains, cold snap predicted for day seven of search”, things like that.

For years I had listened censoriously to reports on the nightly news about rescue trams searching for hopelessly ill prepared and equipped hikers lost in various national parks, and thought how totally inept and irresponsible were these tossers to put themselves in that position! Now the wheel had turned full circle and I reflected that could soon be my fate, nationally outed as the careless and grossly negligent doofus expending valuable resources on an avoidable rescue! Despite the reality of the imminent peril that I was facing, I had the weird presence of mind to push the central issue of my potential non-survival to the back of my mind and concentrate on the galling prospect of being the focus of widespread, social opprobrium. For some inexplicable reason, odd as it seems to me, this was more important at that moment than the very real threat to my life.

It occurred to me that I was hearing or sighting the helicopter above the gorge less frequently than the day before. It had crossed once in the morning relatively close to me, but despite my frantic attempts to attract its attention, in an instant it disappeared from view oblivious of my existence. A new potential news banner sprang into my head: “Emergency rescue services scale back search for missing Blue Mountains solo bushwalker, authorities indicate little chance …..”. My fertile mind turned to reactions of people to the news of my non-rescue, I wondered what people from work would say or whether for instance ex-girlfriends from 20-30 years ago would find out. I thought, they’d be sitting down in front of the nightly news with their families, see the story identifying me as being presumed dead and would say things like “Yes, I remember him! Well what do you know … he always did seem a bit impetuous!” My over-activated mind was really giving it a nudge, as they say!

I don’t have a clue why this particular notion came into my head, but such were the bizarre thoughts I was entertaining after three days of exclusively sharing my own company. I can only surmise that maybe I was becoming a bit delirious. I started to speculate in a very left field fashion … rethinking the helicopter situation I reverted fleetingly to a view that they may still be looking for me. I wondered to myself: OK if they were scanning the whole Glenbrook Creek area, surely, I reasoned, they’d realise that I would come down to the creek at regular intervals? Therefore, I thought, why don’t they randomly drop 50 water bottles say all the way along the creek? They could even attach notes to the bottles saying they’re still searching for me! At least, if nothing else, that would solve the acute problem I had of no drinking water. Clearly, my mind was meandering in a wildly erratic way.

An hour or two later (I was watch-less as well so I couldn’t be sure of the time lapse) I started to recognise some of the landform features on the side of the creek (experience was to teach me that this was not a fail-safe approach as many natural features I thought distinctive, I later discovered were replicated elsewhere in the largely homogenous Glenbrook Creek bushscape). I moved closer to the line of trees on the highway side, passing a patch of massive wild, radiantly bright orange mushrooms, I noted a broad area of lanky reeds adjoining a long sandbank which reduced the stream to a trickle, this landform seemed faintly familiar.

Shortly, I spotted an opening in the bush, an area cleared of trees with an elevated mound, and I thought I could actually see the walking track on the ridge on the horizon. This seemed like the point I had gone off-track two days before, but what I couldn’t spot, which would clinch it for me, was the definitive marker, the old corroded white ladder. For this reason I decided to venture on for a bit to locate other markers which would corroborate the location. Unfortunately, the particular markers I had in mind (a log connecting the creek to the bank, a second sandbar with long, dense grasses, a darkly-discoloured rock formation), never came into view. So, I continued on, thinking that I had misjudged the distance between the various markers and the old ladder on day one.

Trudging on in silence up the creek I was reflecting on what had just transpired. Did I misread where I was, did I miss that one elusive window of opportunity for escape? The further I went in the opposite direction I became convinced that the answer was yes … or at least, probably. I was feeling extremely frustrated now. I reached another, vaguely familiar, landmark, which I couldn’t decide whether I had seen it on the first day or not turn back. Indecisive, I tossed up over what to do, concluding that I was now too far west I decided to turn around. Amazingly on the way back, despite looking intently, I couldn’t spot the clearing which I had located as being close to the old ladder. My sense of frustration heightened, a banding the ladder objective I pushed on eastwards. Yet again I resumed my quest to find those swimming holes, on which I had refocused all of my hopes for self-preservation.

Surely, if I could just locate those accursed pools, it would yield up a way out of the maze. I was annoyed with myself because I was heading east for the third occasion in three days, and for not finding the exit after all this time! I had now gone so long (and so far) without seeing any people, the valley appeared deserted and eerily quiet, bereft of all human existence. Contradicting this thought though was the plentiful evidence of human visitation, numerous bits of litter in the form of discarded soft drink bottles, ice cream and chocolate wrappers. So, the humans have been here, but not just any at the same time as me!

The slow upstream progress allowed me to muse on my mishap, my closely-run ‘escape’ of the night before. Falling from the rock-face was very scary and the outcome had been undoubtedly a very painful one but more worrying was the possibility of something being more serious amiss with me. But the unlimited amount of time I had to my disposal allowed me to mull over just how much more catastrophic the fall might have been. Out there alone in the bush without help, I could easily have pierced a lung or other organ on a rock, or fallen to my death by landing on my head, or by missing the narrow ledge and plunging to the bottom of the canyon – lots of possibilities for achieving mortality. I marvelled at my utter foolhardiness, what was I thinking!!! It was surely crazy, I thought, to have played that desperate card on the mountain, I must have been at that instant gripped by some overpowering instinctive urge to resolve my predicament right then. I guess that I had been in a sort of “crash through or crash” mindset.

The afternoon was hot, by submerging myself in the creek regularly as I travelled up it I managed to get some relief from the sun, refreshing me momentarily but sufficiently to carry on. Eventually I came to a large pool of water, not particularly clear in appearance but deep in parts. This pool was connected by a narrow isthmus of land and rocks to a second pool similar in nature to the first. I realised that this, finally, had to be the elusive, old swimming holes charted on the guidebook map. I looked around the pools and could see that there was a rough-hewn path coming down from the surrounding east-side hill, with a rotted-out old log forming an entry point into the water. This was, finally, the swimming holes, but from the state of them it was clear that they hadn’t been used for a very long time. I scouted round and discovered two potential paths leading away from the waterholes. One was quite steep, going up round a large, rocky hill, and the other followed the elevated bank on the edge of the creek. I tried tracking these routes, but it proved fruitless, as both seemed to lead nowhere, ending either with the path vanishing or coming to a halt at an insurmountable barrier of massive boulders which couldn’t be circumvented. I double-backed to the creek, concluding that if this was an access route to and from the Florabella track, it had long fallen into disuse, another black mark against the guidebook’s accuracy.

Back down in the creek, it was around 3 o’clock and very hot still. My aspirations to escape via this route had been snuffed out, what was I to do now? Going on, further up the creek, was a ‘unknowable unknown’, my map (whatever good it was given it’s dubious performance so far) did not in any case chart the area beyond the swimming holes, so I didn’t have any inkling of where Glenbrook Creek ended. I only knew what I had learned empirically over the preceding two days, that it stretched west for a long way. Backtracking (once again) seemed the only viable course. Yet once more I found myself putting all my faith in finding the old ladder. It was feeling increasingly like ‘Groundhog Day’ without Bill Murray (or any other human company for that matter!) From this point on as I cursed and struggled up the creek, I took every opportunity to metaphorically ‘kick’ myself over the lapse in judgement in not acting earlier in the afternoon when I spotted what I guessed was the trail from the creek bank.

I had by now given up on the helicopter as being my saviour, it wasn’t going to happen. That prospect had become more and more remote as the sightings become less frequent and further away each time. Dehydration was becoming a serious matter of concern for me again. My lips were parched and only cosmetically relieved for a brief time whenever I would cup the unpleasant-smelling creek water in my hands and brush it against my mouth. Even with this, I was aware that if I had to shout for help in the event of the sudden, miraculous appearance of some human sentient being, it was extremely unlikely that I would be able to muster anything more than the most inaudible squeak from my feeble voice.

I found myself adopting a curious stratagem to try to counter the reality of having nothing to drink and its testing physiological (and psychological) effect on me. I kind of psyched myself into this obsessive craving for either Pepsi or Coca-Cola, the inexplicable thing about this is that Coke is a beverage that I’d hardly ever drink or like much (ginger beer is my non-alcoholic drink of choice!)

Nonetheless the idea of it acted as a spur to drive me forwards when fatigue was having a debilitating and demoralising effect on my mind. Revisiting my musings on the mountain of the previous night I visualised a “walk to freedom” (to put it somewhat over-grandly), a sequential process, one step at a time. First, I envisaged myself finally making it to the old ladder, I didn’t ever contemplate the mechanics of how I would get myself, weary and worn, from the ground to the ridge above and then up a straight vertical incline of soft unstable mud and loose dirt to the ladder with nothing much to grab on to. I just knew that once I got there, I would do it – somehow!

I imagined myself on the Florabella track, ragged, filthy, exhausted and half-shoeless. I would somehow hobble my way back to Ross Crescent Blaxland and my car. The last step to liberty would take me to the nearest servo. Then, the act of raising the glass of Pepsi or Coca-Cola to my lips heralded that I had returned to civilisation and all its creature comforts! I would indulge myself with the thought of the unbridled pleasure of the coke as it silkily went down my throat. I still can’t fathom why I chose coke of all beverages, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, as the symbol of my resolve to make it out of the bush.

My feet were starting to ache, my left foot in particular was feeling the effects of wear and tear sans footwear, and the nail on my big right toe had turned black and had commenced the process of separating itself from the toe. I don’t know exactly when or how this additional injury happened, perhaps when I stubbed it one too many of the countless rocks in the creek, either that or very possibly, it was damaged in the cliff fall when I clipped one or the two ridges on my rapid, spiral descent. After the disappointments of the day, I rallied my spirits and refocusing on the “magical elixir” of Pepsi Cola, I set myself the objective of reaching the old ladder by nightfall. But I didn’t properly reckon on the toll three days of lumbering and stumbling through fierce bush without food or water would take.

By around 5pm, wet and bone-weary, I again switched from the creek bed to the rugged terrain of the bank. I struggled on manfully for as long as I could, going forward where I could, sideways more often than not, around, under, over, through, all the while collecting new abrasions and incisions on my unprotected legs. Later on I paused long enough to do a count of the cuts on my hands (not even bothering to start on my legs!), I stopped when I got to 68 on the top and palm of my left hand and 51 on my right hand. My arms and legs bore witness to the fact that I had come a distant second in taking on a hostile physical environment. And it was not getting any easier after three days, ominously quite to the contrary.

By about quarter past six I was fed up with walking on such a difficult course, and easily succumbed to the fatigue of my tribulations. I simply couldn’t go after further … I stopped and searched out a favourable strip of sand to recover my energies during the night. I flopped down and lay on the cool evening sand, drenched and listless, in need of urgent sleep but unable to sleep in these harsh al fresco surrounds. Exposed like this on the ground, my position felt vulnerable and helpless against any unknown and unseeable threats that may be out there, but I was too drained to do anything about it. I submissively curled up in the cold in an essentially futile attempt to keep warm, all the time listening intently for sounds that may signal some new menace, this hadn’t concerned me before but now, exposed in the open, it had come into my head.

Reflecting on the events of the day, I was all too cognisant of an emerging pattern after three days: on each of the three evenings, after a hard, all-day slog in the bush, I was forced to call a halt to my trek earlier than on the one preceding it! It was becoming clear that understandably the cumulative effects of total exhaustion and lack of nourishment were starting to catch up with me.

As I lay on the cold sand, capable of no more than simulating sleep for the duration of another agonisingly long night in the open, many thoughts rushed through my head. Disparate as some of these were, they all came back to a common theme, I was exhorting myself to stay resolved. Whatever I did the next day, which way I went, which choices I made, this time I had to make them count, I knew that my chances of saving myself or being saved as each day passed, were diminishing rapidly.