When Dad and Mum ask me what I’ll do I shrug.

  I’m just tired, I say.

  They are rattled by my sedation and I am aggravated by their concern. They’ve never seen me collapse under my own weight before, and they don’t know how to lift me.

  On the seventh day I hear car tyres on the gravel outside. Dad and Mum are at work. I don’t feel like interacting with anybody—not a childhood friend or the neighbour or some local codger wanting to talk to Dad about shire council issues. All the same, I wander to the door in my bra and shorts with Mordy woofing at my side.

  It’s Maya. She wears a baggy T-shirt and long boardshorts.

  Oi! I say and hug her tightly. What are you doing here?

  I heard a rumour that you took a break after the bite, which was probably wise, she says. I thought I’d stop in.

  That’s so nice of you.

  She looks at me and sees the upset and turmoil. She frowns and asks, How are you?

  Ah. I’m just exhausted.

  Let’s go for a surf. It’ll be good for you. You’re not arguing.

  I don’t argue. I tell her that the entrance in front of our house is too unsafe to surf but really it just frightens me, so we strap my board to her roof and drive the fifteen minutes of straight ocean road to the East Cape.

  The salt water is a relief and I don’t know why I’ve avoided it. The sky is clear and warm, the sun is out. The cliffs are glistening. I take the longboard out the back and immediately the sensation tugs me in again—the propulsion and hunger and dance of the waves. I walk to the nose and skitter back to the tail, pivot the plank about and grin like I haven’t for days.

  In the lulls between sets we sit and swill our legs in the water. I tell Maya everything that has happened—the track and Ben, and she listens in a way that lifts the hurt out of my chest momentarily.

  After my sixth wave, while my breath is still heaving, endorphins coursing, I say, Maya … at the hospital, I told him about this thing that happened to me in the desert—an assault. He’s the only person I’ve told.

  Oh Peta, she swings her board to face me. How did he respond?

  He said that I’d get over it.

  She shakes her head angrily, That boy doesn’t deserve to know you.

  I watch the horizon while her eyes are on the side of my face.

  You can tell me, she says. If you want to? I’d like to listen.

  I hesitate, but the ocean is safe and good to me today, so I say, Okay.

  Maya’s eyes are locked on my face and they shimmer with water when I tell her about the pub and the men and the glass. Her emotion is lit with sympathy but also with fury. When I finish she takes a deep breath with her eyes on the horizon.

  I am so sorry that this has happened to you, she says. It should never have happened and it is not something small. It is terrible and it is not something you should ‘just get over’. I love you, Peta.

  You too, Maya. Thank you.

  We drop the conversation as a set rolls in, but back behind the breakers she asks, So when will you start walking again?

  I don’t know if I will. I won’t finish it by Christmas now. Mum and Dad are off to Tassie after Boxing Day so they can’t be backup. I’m just struggling to see the point of it. All my plans are ruined. I don’t know why I’d bother.

  She looks quizzically at me, then swipes an aggressive armful of water at my face. I splutter and cough, confused.

  What was that for?

  Peta! Are you listening to yourself?

  I blink. Yes—why?

  You are one of the most stubborn people I know. Why are you giving up?

  I dunno, I mumble, picking at the wax. Because in a way I’ve already failed.

  Failed who? Ben? Some arbitrary timeframe?

  I’ve failed myself, Maya. I don’t reckon I’m the person I used to be.

  She slaps her hand onto my board, almost unseats me.

  Right—you’re not, you’re much more impressive. Prove it to yourself.

  I’m a bloody mess, I laugh bitterly. It’s all gone wrong.

  You can’t have thought that everything would go perfectly, you kook. Nothing ever does. You can’t control the chaos, only the reaction.

  I watch the horizon and think about walking. Life boiled down to mountains and to simple moments—maps, digging shit holes, breathing in time with my feet. More so, I think about the end. Standing beside that final sign in Walhalla.

  Maya says, So how will you react to this?

  I don’t have a backup for after Christmas. It’s not safe to go without one. Besides, even if I make it through the Bogong High Plains without passing out, the following section is probably the toughest of the whole track. I have to climb the Viking. I just don’t know if I can do it.

  She considers this.

  Tell you what, she says. Start at Mount Hotham in a couple of days and cut off the Bogong High Plains section. You’ve walked it a million times anyway. It’ll take you, say, seven days to make it to Mount Skene, so you’ll be there before Christmas. There’s road access, so your parents can pick you up and bring you to Melbourne. I’m in the city for Christmas anyway, so I can take you back out to Skene, then pick you up from Walhalla, and be your backup in the middle. Where are you going after that?

  The Farm …

  Back down here, I say.

  Okay, hmm … she hums. So get your folks to drop your car in Tyers on the way to Christmas. Once I’ve collected you from Walhalla, I can take you to your car on my way to Melbourne, you head to the coast, and voilà! I am a logistical wizard.

  I laugh. You’d do all that for me?

  Of course! You’d do the same for me—I know it.

  Again, I look out at the horizon, towards Beware Reef where the seals play and the waves fold into white froth onto the jutted rocks, and I let a smile spread across my face. If I just grit myself against it all, maybe I can make it.

  It is as I taste the salt on my lips and feel the sear of sun on my cheeks that I realise.

  Hey! All this convincing … did Mum put you up to it? I ask.

  Before she can answer, I see the lump of water rolling towards us, shapeless but gaining body, and I know it’ll be a good ride—will probably take me all the way to the shore. I pivot and paddle ferociously and the board cuts back towards the beach and I hear her yell, Of course she bloody did!

  I rise onto my feet. My wet matted hair strings out behind me and I dance back and forth until I reach the sand.

  Of course she bloody did.

  On the water, Maya raises a fist into the air and laughs because out here the joy is always shared.

  419 km

  A big mat of cloud mottled like a bruise has settled into the valleys. The peaks protrude through as violet islands and the sky is the warm pink of dawn. It reminds me of travel—the feeling of being in a plane and passing through the grey cloud into a bulbous skyscape that is always blue and bright. That swell of excitement and anticipation.

  We left home in the dark, Mum driving. She takes me to the junction where the Dargo Road peels off from the sharp ribbon of the Great Alpine Road. I almost don’t want to leave the car because I am still weak and somehow my pack feels heavier than it used to be. I have eight days’ worth of food. I’m carrying a lot of water because this section is dry and I’m petrified of thirst.

  Are you sure that you’re okay? You still look a little unwell.

  Don’t stress, Ma.

  This is a hard section.

  I’m well aware.

  Please don’t remind me.

  She smiles and shakes her head. I know you’re tough, but I will always worry, she says. I love you. We’ll see you at Mount Skene.

  She can’t know just how brimful of fear I am. But I am dogged. I think only of walking. Everything else is locked deep in the recesses of my head.

  I make her drive away before I start walking. I don’t want her to see me pause for air or strain against the weight of the pack.

  I take the easy option—the road that contours around the side of the high peaks of the Twins. It’s still a long day, but the kilometres pass smoothly because I don’t have to think about where I’m walking. I don’t take any foot tracks, just roads through the ash and snow gum.

  In the afternoon I climb South Selwyn, which is dense with trees. There is a water tank at the summit and I fill up enough for the night and the following day. I think about camping up there on that thickly treed knoll, but I’m scared of falling branches.

  The alternative is not much better.

  I scan the tall grass and dense acacia beside the four-wheel drive track. It’s a tight and unpleasant spot, but I camp there anyway. I am only there for sleeping, and then I will wake up and walk, and that is all that matters to me anymore.

  435 km

  I pack poorly in the overcast morning. There’s soon something jutting into the centre of my back, but it will shift on its own, I tell myself. It doesn’t. I’ll get to it when I stop, I tell myself. I don’t.

  I never stop because I have mastered the walking one-armed drink bottle grab and the pack-on, rain-jacket change, and there is a sack of sultanas in my pocket and that’s all I need. Stopping isn’t required. Plus I don’t want to stop because these days momentum is everything.

  The Barry Mountains are exactly as described by my parents, the guidebook, those updated track notes that Faye gave me, which I have now lost—they are long and dense and hard and dry. They are not pretty. They are laced with unrelenting four-wheel drive tracks and thick vegetation that snatches my shirt and scrapes red lines into my skin. But I am here to walk, so I do.

  The air is muggy and the sky is clogged with cloud, and all day that thing presses into my back. It rubs until it is hot then numb. With all of the additional aches and throbs in my body, I somewhat forget about the thing until the afternoon when I drop down into the depths of Barry Saddle, which is a low, slanted clearing surrounded by swaying alpine ash. Hemmed in—no views, no reception.

  I pull my sticky shirt over my head and with it I pull a patch of skin from my back. It is agony. The skin has glued itself to the fabric with blood. I feel around behind me, hook my arm on an unnatural angle to touch the raw site that is wet beneath my fingers. I laugh because it’s ridiculous—I’ve rubbed an actual hole in my back. When I rifle through my pack, I see that the fuel bottle has been the cause of my problem.

  Dumb idiot, I say.

  The sky starts spitting in the afternoon as I’m looking over my maps.

  I scurry into the tent and wish that it would stop. I am already terrified of what is coming because what is coming is the Viking, and everybody—Maya, my parents, Faye, camo pants and blondie—has always said that it is the hardest walking of this track. Realistically, though I’m only halfway through, my walk has been building to this moment. And once I’ve left Barry Saddle there will be no reliable water source until Mount Speculation.

  I look at the maps and eleven kilometres doesn’t seem that far, but I remember what they’ve said about the track—how steep it is, the cliffs to be climbed up and down, the remoteness of it all—and I wonder what I’ll do if I don’t make it to Spec. To water.

  The rain is more of a mist and I grind my jaw in the orange tent and make a decision—I’ll carry enough water for a failure. I have to. No one is going to bail me out if I screw it up.

  451 km

  Though the sky is threatening rain it is dry at five o’clock the next morning when I leave with an enormous swaying pack full of extra drinking water.

  It’s not dark enough for a torch, but it’s dull. I walk slowly uphill with bloated eyes and an uncomfortable terror in my chest, and before I drop down into the saddle, before the big climb, I stop to make a satellite call. The ash forests bend and moan.

  Supergirl, yawns Dad. You’re on loudspeaker. What’s happening?

  Thought I’d check in, I say. I’m going over the Viking today.

  The Viking! Now, that’s an incredible mountain. I remember walking it with my mate Robbie in my twenties. God, we were fit back then.

  Oh, shh, says Mum. How’s the weather?

  I laugh in a constricted way. Not bad. A bit cold and drizzly and windy. I’ll try and make it to Mount Speculation tonight.

  Mum says, Are you feeling okay?

  Um, I say, and my voice cracks.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  Yes, I’m fine, just nervous. My pack is really heavy and it looks steep.

  You’ll kill it, says Dad.

  Just take it easy, says Mum.

  They both sound preoccupied, tired, like they have things to get on with. I can feel myself stalling. Seeking something to make me trust in myself.

  I want to tell them that I am terrified and unsure, that I have no idea whether I can do this, that I am completely overwhelmed and that this place will continue to get the better of me.

  I take a breath and tilt my head up to the dark sky.

  Well, I’d better get to it, I say tightly.

  You’re amazing, they tell me. We love you.

  Back to the eerie groaning of timber and wind. I force my legs to move and start the descent.

  The track is muddy and bark-strewn. Halfway down to the saddle, I take my first fall. The right foot shoots out on the slick earth and I land heavily on my arse, and keep sliding for another few metres until I come to a stop on a tree root. There are tears in my eyes, though mostly from the shock.

  You’re alright, mate, I say.

  Before long, I have started the steep climb. I calculate as I walk that my pack weighed twenty-three kilograms when I left, therefore right now, on this heinous climb, it weighs around thirty-five with all that extra water, which is around half of my body weight. The safe ratio of pack-to-body is a one-to-two.

  If I drink the water, it will become lighter, but then my supplies will be gone. What if it takes me three days to reach Mount Speculation? Four days?

  I sip sparingly and cop the weight.

  Eventually it grows steep enough to force me onto my knees. I press my fingertips into rocks and grip tree roots. Scramble slowly—a rickety creature shifting at a crawl. The trees become snow gums; I know that I am getting there and this feels miraculous.

  The top is deceptive: it isn’t the top. I hit the long spine of the Viking and dip along an overgrown track on the southern side of the ridge. Just when I think it’ll never end, it does. I emerge from the enormous mossy gullies and lichen-painted trees onto what appears to be the summit, but I can’t tell for all the white—the cloud sticks to the mountain and I can’t see more than five metres in front of me.

  The most spectacular peak in Victoria and I can’t see any of it. There are cliffs somewhere—off to the west, maybe. The air is damp and the wind is gusty. I hunker down behind a rock and bite into an apple, but feel nauseous. I put it back inside my pack.

  I check my mobile and there is reception. My fingertips are white with the cold and I find it hard to type. There are messages from many people and they appear intermittently as my phone connects. There is one from Maya.

  Hey mate! I hope you’re finding the time to look around and absorb the most of your track experience. Let me know if you ever need anything.

  I send a photo of myself to her, to Mum and Dad, and Otis—water running down my grinning face.

  Texts come through from Ben.

  Have I done something to upset you?

  why are you ignoring me? I know I’m just a cunt but I don’t understand.

  This is really fucked peta. why are you doing this

  are you ok

  I ignore them. Turn my phone off. There is too much to think about without him in my skull.

  I can’t find the track for a long time—I scramble around the edge of the cliffs, trying not to step into the clouded abyss. Finally I take a bearing like Mum showed me and discover the track markers that wind me down through the sheer faces and spit me back out on a ledge.

  It’s high. I take off my pack and rest it on the precipice in order to figure out a way down. To fall would be to die, or to be maimed irreparably, but a dead tree tipped against the cliff edge gives me an idea. Its arse is on a reasonably stable-looking slope. I kick the top and it doesn’t shift. I shake it and it is strong. I scout about for another option, but this seems to be the only way down.

  I know, however, that I can’t do it with thirty-five kilograms on my back so I open the pack lid and remove the ten-litre water bladder because I don’t want it to explode.

  Don’t fuck this up, I say.

  I peer into the wet fog below, rest my foot on the spine of the bag, then kick it. It free-falls for a moment before hitting the deck and catapulting onwards. I see my water bottles launch from their holders and my Crocs fly into the shrubs. The pack tumbles over and over until it has travelled into the cloud and out of sight.

  Great success, I say.

  I thread my arms through the loops of my bladder and wear it as a backpack, then I straddle the log and face back towards the cliffs and begin wriggling my way down it. Shards of wood splinter into my thighs and I mutter to myself. Come on, come on, come on.

  Scoot and shimmy—carefully, slowly. I reach the ground with a grin and a whoop.

  Only when I touch the ground do I notice the gap in the cliff, the rope dangling through it, the worn hand and footholds. I realise that I have just passed the Keyhole, which is exactly as described in the guidebook.

  Good one, dickhead, I chuckle.

  I go to retrieve my trail of possessions and my battered pack, triumphant.

  The sun comes out in Viking Saddle without warning—a blinding furnace blast. I’m sitting on a log at the fire circle eating the rest of the apple. I rear back and almost fall. I shield my eyes. It feels momentous—some reward for my pain, the sky telling me that the hardest part is over because I’ve just gritted myself against it.

  Good as, I say.

  It is a couple of kilometres to the Razor and I think that it won’t take me long. But soon I realise my mistake.

 

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