OCTOBER 13
Because it was our last day at Ned and Dee's, they decided to treat us to a day off—and we spent it well. That morning, the four of us embarked on possibly the most magical adventure that Caroline and I had experienced up to that point.
Ned drove us to the top of nearby Mount Carbine, which was littered with lumpy termite mounds and boulders and carpeted with red soil. Thousands of scraggly eucalyptus trees twisted up towards the sky, and an occasional kangaroo leapt down the mountainside (Ned and Dee even saw a roo with a joey in her pocket, but I didn’t notice the baby because I was trying too hard to get a picture of its mom. The photo, of course, didn’t even turn out. Blast! This is where the quotation, “When taking pictures, you see the world through only one eye,” comes in).
As we ascended the mountain, the car kept bouncing and jerking on the bumpy dirt road, and I commented on how painful it was. Dee scoffed. “You think this is bad? Look at how the road USED to look before the government came in here and smoothed it out a little!” She pointed to an abandoned part of the road that veered off and abruptly stopped after a few meters or so, and my mouth fell open. It looked more like a dried-up mudslide than a pathway meant for vehicular traffic.
“Yeah, we used to have to drive up and down that,” Dee continued. “One time, we were driving down the mountain in the ute with our kids and our friend—who was expecting—sitting in the back, and the ute flipped over! Luckily, everyone was OK.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her story. I felt like asking, “So, what made you think that driving down a treacherous mountain road with your children and a pregnant woman sitting unsecured in the truck bed was a good idea in the first place?!” But I kept my mouth shut.
When the road ended, we pulled up to a lookout point to gaze across the valley below, and I figured that the adventure would end there. But no—Ned put the car in four-wheel drive mode and began off-roading through the bush. As the vehicle violently made its way over rocks and shrubs, barely missing tree trunks along the way, Ned yelled out to Caroline and I that he was taking us to see a waterfall. Little did I know what they had in store for us.
A few gripping-onto-my-seat-for-dear-life minutes later, I suddenly jerked forward as Ned screeched to a halt next to what looked like a Martian colony—literally hundreds of small termite mounds pimpled the ground. Awed, Caroline and I took several pictures before we noticed that Ned and Dee were already marching off into the wilderness. We hadn’t known that we were going to be bush walking, but we scurried after them. After stumbling through patches of fallen leaves, tripping over tree roots and trying awkwardly to climb over boulders, however, Caroline and I were cursing our sandaled feet and wishing that Ned and Dee had told us that we were going to be doing some hiking. Just because THEY could run a marathon in flip-flops doesn’t mean that everyone is as talented…
Although the terrain became more dense and harder to navigate as we headed east along a river, it became increasingly more and more beautiful—the landscape changed from arid, red and rocky to lush. Beams of sunlight danced on the water, and white, twisted river gums lined the creek, their thick roots splayed out in every direction (one tree, which Neil deemed his favorite, had several boulders cradled tightly in its roots. Absolutely gorgeous). Bouquets of grass shot up in and around the river. Moss carpeted the ground. I felt like I had entered a sacred fairytale dreamland.
“Wow,” I breathed, “are we in Eden?” Ned smiled, his eyes shifting from me to Caroline. “Well, let’s hope not,” he joked, “There was a snake in Eden.” Caroline, who had been lost in thought, was suddenly smacked back into reality by the mention of her least favorite animal. She stopped dead in her tracks. “Snake? Where?!”
***
Eventually, Eden gave way to a beautiful waterfall cascading down cliffs of smooth rock. But Ned and Dee told us that we weren’t going to stop just yet. “Leave your backpacks down here at the bottom. We’re going to climb up to the top pool,” Ned said.
As we began to ascend the slippery slopes, Ned explained that he, Dee and their daughters had discovered a secluded top pool years ago when scaling the walls around the waterfall “just for fun.” Slightly alarmed by the thought of how easily someone could slip to their death while attempting the climb, I panted, “How old were your kids at that point?” Ned thought for a moment, and then hopped from one slab of rock to another. “The youngest was probably two.”
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Let me repeat that—Ned and Dee brought their TWO-YEAR-OLD rock climbing.
(Why-oh-why am I not surprised?)
As I wondered whether the children who grew up with Dee and Ned’s—er—unusual parenting had been scarred for life or if they’d actually grown up to be the most kick-ass women in the world, I hoisted myself up onto the next ridge…and my thoughts suddenly scattered. The elusive top pool, shaded by an amphitheater of rock and fed by the thundering waterfall, lay before us. It was cool and cerulean; wide and deep and round as a coin. It was magnificent.
Caroline and I simultaneously gasped with delight, and our approval left Ned and Dee beaming with satisfaction. We jumped into the frigid water, squealing on impact, and swam towards a small island of rock that jutted up from the bottom of the pool. After briefly laying on it and pretending to be sunbathing mermaids, we turned back around to see Dee and Ned sitting on the rock ledge. “Don’t you want to come in?” I called out happily. “It feels great!” “Naw, we’ll just sit here, thanks,” Ned answered. He then leaned over to Dee and said something quietly in her ear, and both of them looked at us with grins on their faces. At that moment, I sensed a certain fondness in their body language, almost as if they were two proud parents enjoying their kids’ enjoyment. I smiled. I felt fondness for them right back.
Later, back at the house, the four of us ate our last supper together. Caroline and I would have normally headed into the caravan afterwards to read or write, but we wanted to sit and hang out with Ned and Dee as much as possible on our final night as their WWOOFers. Ned seemed to sense this, as he ceremoniously whipped out the dusty banjo he hadn’t played in two years (ever since he had casually mentioned to me that he used to dabble in banjo, I’d been harassing him for days to play us a tune or two). He clumsily strummed his way through a few songs, and I tried to sing along to what was supposedly CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising.”
It started to feel like a real party when Dee produced a bottle of apple liqueur, kept for special occasions, and poured us all shots. As I politely sipped the saccharine stuff—which looked alarmingly toxic—I asked Ned how he learned to play the banjo in the first place. “Um…well, I taught me’self,” he distractedly mumbled while picking at a couple of strings, “years ago.” Go figure. Seeing as self-sufficiency is Dee and Ned's absolute strongest suit, this tidbit of information didn’t shock me in the least.
When Ned had depleted his diminutive song database and there was no more music to hold the four of us together at the table, Dee came to the rescue: she placed a dusty old photo album in front of Caroline and me and invited us to take a look. Her and Ned stood peering over our shoulders while we ooh’ed and ah’ed our way through their decades together.
I was amazed by the album’s breadth but lack of depth—it seemed to contain only a picture or two from every stage of NedandDee. There was a photograph depicting them as a young couple, just starting to date, with their arms around each other; one showing their three girls as toddlers sitting by a river; one picture of the whole family picking papayas (which used to be their main crop before they switched to mangoes) when the kids were teens; a couple photos from their daughters’ weddings; etc.
Flipping through a lifetime in a matter of minutes felt strange, and I studied our hosts’ faces to see if the viewing session had made them nostalgic. (Judging by their glazed-over expressions, I’d say it had.) I couldn’t help feeling that the album had cheated Ned and Dee of their time on earth by compacting the years into one quick montage of scenes.
At the time, I’d felt saddened by how few pictures our hosts owned that documented their lives. Now that I no longer have photos to my name due to my computer situation, however, I am absurdly jealous. Like most people of my generation, I create thousands of images every year—yet I never print them out. I store them away on electronic devices that crash or (sigh) get stolen. Then again, hard copies fade and eventually disappear, too. And what are pictures but snippets of memories from a fleeting life that will most likely be forgotten in three or four generations’ time?
But I don’t really think that way. I’ve gotta start printing out my pictures.
After we’d closed the photo album and Ned and Dee had returned to their seats, there was a momentary lull in conversation. We all stared absently at the spotty tablecloth. No one wanted to move, but there didn’t seem to be anything left to share.
Dee sighed. “Well, we aren’t going to have any WWOOFers for a while now, eh? It’s just going to be you and me around here again,” she said to Ned, playfully patting his arm. “Oh—you aren’t planning on taking any more WWOOFers in the next couple of months?” I asked. “Well, summer’s almost here, so it’s gonna be too hot for ‘em,” Dee replied, rolling those beady eyes of hers. “We usually have to hire seasonal workers to help us harvest the mangos.” She paused, and her weathered face suddenly drooped. “You know, the dogs are going to be depressed when you girls leave. They love having other people around…”
Right then, a warm realization dawned on me: it wasn't just the dogs who were going to be sad to see us go. Ned and Dee were going to miss our presence. They were going to miss us. And I was going to miss them. I thought about how much the whole situation had evolved from Day One to Day Eight; the fact that we’d all learned to get along—and, what’s more, genuinely like and appreciate each other—in just over a week felt like an incredible achievement.
Looking back, I don’t need pictures to remember Ned and Dee or how they influenced me. Maybe the details will become fuzzy with time, but the powerful self-reliance, adventurousness, and eye rolls will stay with me for the rest of my life.
