Here We Go!

Exploring Die Happy

These pix are from the beautiful 100 acre forest we’ve recently bought.

And we feel so extraordinarily humbled, excited and a little to have these amazing beings to protect. Ps we had no idea they were here 💚🖤

FB post 5 April 2021

April 2021 Sky Ridge

It’s morning and I’m in the tent uploading photos and feelings to Facebook. Rays of light shine in through the insect netting and I can hear Paul stomping around outside getting stuff together for breakfast and a sudden fresh burst of song from a multitude of birds.

Briefly I wonder if I should emerge and start helping, but instead I shove my phone away and snuggle deeper into my warm sleeping bag. I close my eyes, hoping I can sneak in a few extra zzzzzz’s before the day starts for real.

Last night, I had slept really badly.

I don’t know why or even what time it was, but I had woken to a profound silence. Paul was breathing softly beside me but outside not a breath of wind or scatter of branches disturbed the stillness. I lay in the dark for a long while, trying to hear something, anything...

After a while, I’d clambered over the sleeping Paul, unzipped the tent, and stood out in the cool night air.

The moon hadn’t risen, and the stars blazed ferociously bright. Shivering a little, I walked around the tent and gazed out over the valley below.

I waited, listening, breathing as quietly as I could, my ears and senses wide open. But nothing…

No grunt, crash, or call disturbed the sleeping forest.

No hint of koalas or even possums playing in the dark.

It freaked me out to be honest – standing on a ridge at night in a sea of trees, and it all felt as silent as a grave.

The abrupt slam of the car door jolts me back to the present, and shaking off my fears, I grab my adventure pants and t-shirt, and scramble out of the tent.

Today Paul and I on a mission – explore as much of Die Happy as we can – the creek, the flats and more. 100 acres is so vast, the only way to really know what is here is to get out and get into it!

The sun is warm, and the insects buzzing by the time we pack our backpacks and head down Big Tree Walk. Overhead an infernal shrieking sound splits the sky as a pair of white cockatoos come hurtling across the valley, their calls echoing with glee over the trees. 

I watch the birds careen out over the valley and disappear, while Paul check his phone. Big Tree Walk follows the main ridge line towards a neighbour’s place, and then onto the creek. We’re about halfway down and the GPS clearly details the contours of our land – it’s steep, then crazy steep, then super, super extra steep, and finally the creek.

I sigh, those ratbag birds have it so easy.

Paul.’s looking over the edge down at the wall of trees. Here, the land falls away, and we can see the spreading mass of the canopy rising up from the gully below.

Can we get to the creek that way?  I’m keen and it looks possible but also pretty scary – a bum-scooting scramble down the side into the unknown.

We will, one day…

But first we need to do some serious planning and get some markers so we don’t get lost. Plus safety ropes in case we have to drop into the gullies, and machetes to cut through the undergrowth and vines, a snake kit for you know what, extra first aid for sprained ankles, cuts etc. And of course chocolate! Plenty of 90% extra dark to keep us going.

Today all we have is chocolate. So we carry on down Big Tree Walk, passing the giants and Home Tree. She is immense and beautiful, and a distant bird up sings out from high in her branches.

Die Happy creek

We hear the creek before we see it.

Water cascades out of the forest, sweet and pure, flowing over stones of every colour – ochre yellow, iron red, slate black. The water is so clear it’s hard to judge its depth.

And as we approach, the sun hits quartz, and it’s like being dazzled by liquid rainbow.

Paul is up ahead, I am wandering slowly, trying to cram as much into my eyes as I can.

Fresh water crayfish dart beneath shelves of rock, bright orange against the dark, and tiny fish flick away in the shallows.  

Above us the edges slope steeply, the soil dark and rich, and studded with the bright green of ferns. High in the rainforest, trees stand heavy with stag horns and slung with twisted vines reaching for the ground.

We see deep burrows tunnelled above the banks of the creek. Platypus? We don’t know, and we add it to our ever-growing list of things to find out. Overhead we hear the strange call of a bird, like a strangled cat and the low booming tone of doves.

The clearing

Crossing the creek, we head up onto a flat open area and are met by a tall tree, white with grey stringy bark falling from its high branches.

We stop, just soaking everything up. A leaf falls and tiny birds hop and flit around us. One pauses, its light blue head turning, its tiny eye bright as it checks us out.

We walk on to a wider clearing. Here the ground is covered in arm-pit high grasses, mixed with a blue flowering weed and lantana. This is one plant we do know. This noxious smothering weed has spread through the understory and we have to control it. But at the moment it looks so innocent –  it’s pink and yellow flowers nodding nonchalantly in the sunshine.

The clearings are beautiful. Circles of slender white eucalypts stand high above iridescent green grasses, the sky is blue with puffy clouds, and tiny multi-coloured fairy wrens flit and squabble, twittering as they chase insects beneath the trees.

We eat our lunch sitting on a log. Here could be a lovely place to begin building some kind of shelter.

A Boulevard of Giants

The sun is lowering in the sky by the time we head back over the creek. It’s hot, we’re tired, and dreaming of a glass of wine with a view of the waterfall. We’re following a narrow track but as we start up towards Big Tree Walk we see what looks like another trail branching off on our left.

Paul and I hesitate for a moment. It won’t take too long…

I take a swig of water. Paul goes on ahead and I can see he’s stopped on the crest of a hill and is gesturing to me come and see. Hurry.

The trail has widened into what looks like an old logging road, running straight and true through the forest.

But the jaw dropping thing is on either side, it is edged by simply enormous trees.

Paul and I gaze at each other in disbelief.

They are like a community of relics, survivors, with immense trunks blackened by fire, their thick, twisting branches are raised as though in defiance and their height scrapes sky. Paul reaches out to hug one and his arms barely make it a quarter of the way round.

We walk further down the road and see another mystery, some of the them have deep irregular shapes cut across the width of their base. The trees feel otherworldly – a boulevard of ancient, scarred giants with stories gouged in their bark.

We check the GPS and just walk, tiredness forgotten. Overhead comes a rumble of thunder. It’s hot and getting increasingly humid. Around us the forest feels as though it is holding its breath.

On one side of the logging road, past the rotting remnants of a fallen tree, the forest falls away into a gully. Dark, shaded, and hidden. Paul and I squeeze ourselves in as far as we can without slipping, and beyond the dense undergrowth we see the shape of even bigger trees. Rainforest giants, with high buttress roots, sky high leaves, and the glint of what could be another creek.

My heart is thudding. I am beginning to feel overloaded with the enormity of what we’ve taken on. Our responsibility to protect. I sink to the ground. It’s just so much, so huge. What are we doing?

Who do we think we are?

My head is in my hands, and through my outstretched fingers, I see leeches coming towards me, their heads rising, their U-shaped bodies inching closer… They are gross, brown with yellow go-fast stripes down their sides. They are unstoppable.

I leap to my feet with a scream and run away.

Paul laughs, an irreverent loud chortle. And I feel immediately better.

This is a forest. We are way out of our comfort zone every day, and we are continually gobsmacked by everything.

I gaze up at the sky. The clouds have darkened and the tops of the trees are waving in the coming storm. I feel a fierce protectiveness rising in my heart and an urgency to understand, catalogue and protect everything in sight.

Paul gives me an enormous hug.

We will do all of that. But the first thing we need, he grins, is to build a shelter – to get us out of the rain, and away from the leeches.

Huzzah!!