PLATYPUS!

This was the morning – I was going kayaking, finally, at last, a boat I understood!

Dan, my property manager, has two kayaks, and had promised to take me to explore one of the rivers in the hinterland of Byron Bay. So at six thirty am I was up, breakfasted, and making crepes to pack with chocolate and apple for dessert. (I’d gotten a text last night saying he had lunch covered, promisingly asking about beef, eggs, or prawns.) We were soon on our way. Cresting a rise, the view swept away over the side of the hills to reveal the sea in all its glory. The road went on through “the bush,” lush vegetation overgrowing the narrow strip of black(ish) road that curved and wound and meandered through the hinterland, turning off to driveways and lanes here and there. At last, we arrived at paradise: a cabin in the hills run on rainwater and nearly off-grid, with an amazing garden encroaching everywhere, and two yellow kayaks promisingly in the yard. 

I was introduced me to Vietnamese basil, a remarkable herb that suddenly revealed to me why Asian restaurants can produce curries that I’ve been totally unable to replicate at home, lemon myrtle, a plant whose dried leaves can (and did, that morning) be boiled into a delicious tea, society garlic, my new favorite plant, a flowering herb with a pretty purple aspect and the raw pungent flavor of strong garlic, and pineapple sage, a broad leafed herb with a distinctive flavor of pineapple. There were many varieties of tomatoes climbing from the soil, including a tiger stripe that later graced my lunch, a black pepper plant whose buds go stark red overnight when ripe, a rare Italian bean plant whose long pods house white and purple striped beans with a crunchy nuttiness, several papaya trees, a male and a female bearing green fruit, and a greenhouse shed full of sprouts, as well as pumpkins, chocolate mint, and wild flowers blossoming all around like weeds, including a healthy patch of birds of paradise, a blossom ubiquitous in this country and still remarkable and beautiful to me on every encounter. Rolling in the hills down the fields, cows grazed here and there, rows of macadamia trees climbed the next rill, and lush bush flora and fauna flourished.

Dan had prepared a tropical cake made with banana, pineapple, and passionfruit cream icing the night before, and I happily accepted a pre-trip slice. Tying the two yellow kayaks to the roof of the car and strapping them with Thule-style winches, we drove to the river. Stopping just after a bridge, we ditched the kayaks in the grass on the side of the road and Dan drove to meet a taxi and leave his car twelve klicks downstream while I dragged the boats through the tall grasses and down the muddy slope to the river’s edge, stowing the bucket with our lunch inside. I still didn’t know what my bushland host had cooked, but after the cake, I was confident in his culinary skills. I walked carefully, mindful of the many varieties of deadly snakes whose habitat I was treading, but without much fear. Snakes don’t love to bite people, and I was announcing my approach very clearly as the grasses rustled around my legs, not to mention the large yellow kayaks I was towing.

Standing in the tall grasses by the river’s edge, listening to the rushing of the water through the reeds and the birds in the trees, my mind was calm. The river here was shallow and a bit muddy, moving quickly after the recent rains. There was a light wind, and the sun passed behind and slipped forth again from clouds wandering overhead.

Dan returned, and we launched into the river. The kayak was light and highly responsive, and, thank god, a boat I could easily pilot. We began downstream, flowing with the river. I felt so balanced I wanted to dig in and race, but it soon became clear this was a wandering river trip. Splashes along the riverbanks told me why. Turtles and lizards dove from their perches in low hanging tree branches and roots every few feet. At first I was hearing the splashes and seeing ripples of water more than the animals making the sounds, learning where to look and what to look for. Soon enough, the noisy riverbanks resolved into eastern water dragons everywhere. A ripple and a splash in the water had me blink twice, and Dan asked if I’d seen the platypus.

PLATYPUS?!?

Yes indeed, the platypus frequented this river as it ran from the mountains to the sea. I kept a sharp eye peeled for the small, brown, furry, and surprisingly adorable creatures. Several more splashes resolved into eastern water dragons, one a massive size, his clawed back feet vanishing as he swam against the current below my boat. The river went through shallow, rapid areas, steep bends around the riverbanks of changing heights, and broad, deep pools. A pair of ducks took off flying downriver, brilliant teal triangles on their wings taking me by surprise. Several cows grazing on low, grassy hills in between the trees observed our progress downriver, and rounding a bend a sheer earth face rose several meters high of red topsoil. Dan said the areas of Byron Bay with this red topsoil covering were the areas shaped by the eruption of Mount Warning, our local formative volcano, the areas of brown sandy soil being the remains of more ancient land, shaped by the sea.

The water continued flowing downriver, and I was becoming much savvier at knowing where to look for local fauna. Soon enough, in the water beside my kayak in a deep, still pool, a brown animal surfaced. Paddling as silently as possible with all possible haste, I slipped through the water to its side.

A PLATYPUS!

I’d spotted a wild platypus, its body perhaps a foot long. Small, beady black eyes, surprisingly cute rounded duck's bills, and fat little tails, platypi are way cuter than I'd been giving them credit for. It glanced up at the enormous yellow duck-like kayak that had just arrived and flipped below the water, turbid enough to provide complete camouflage. I was beside myself with happiness.

We paddled on downriver, sometimes sun and sometimes clouds overhead. Some of the clouds carried rain, but it was easy enough to paddle close to the sides of the river below the natural umbrella of the trees. Soon enough Dan got hungry for lunch, and we pulled off on an appealingly graded embankment. Sticking my paddle in at the water’s edge, I realized it was quite deep all the way up to the edge. No worries, we’d just step out carefully.

The embankment turned out to be muddy and slippery in the extreme. Handling the lunch pail, a large white fisherman’s bucket, and the boats and paddles with care while choosing out footsteps and grabbing on to roots, Dan still slipped in once, sinking immediately waist-deep. He climbed back out and lifted my kayak up onto the ledge, shoulder-height overhead. I pointed out we could just tie the boats to the heavy, sturdy roots projecting from the embankment, which he conceded was an easier and drier plan, and secured his to a root.

We lunched like kings. Dan had made a salad out of his garden, chock full of edible flowers and fresh, brightly flavored herbs gracing the presence of Australian beef, good, tender stuff cooked with a peach, mint and lime glaze. As we lunched, the rain came down harder, and we waited it out leisurely on the muddy riverbank, watching the water flow by. I unfolded my drybag to make a dry spot to sit, and the trees kept the rain from our heads.

Eventually, the rain slackened and, having feasted and beginning to get chilly, it was time to get moving again. Dan climbed down and untied his boat, stowing the lunch pail and offering me a hand down.

I looked at the river. I looked at the upturned yellow kayak. I looked at the steep, muddy, slippery embankment. There was a slim chance of me climbing down without sliding off the edge and soaking myself. There was no chance at all of staying dry while trying to arrest the momentum of the kayak toward the water as soon as I tipped it the slightest bit in gravity’s favor. I waved Dan off the lower strip of mud onto the water, thinking I could slide the boat down the ledge to that skinny, muddy landing and somehow step down the five foot ledge behind it without going straight down off the edge.

Fat chance.

Standing on the bank, one hand on the kayak, looking down the slope at the immediate entry into the water, it occurred to me it looked awfully inviting as a waterslide.

“What do you figure the odds are of me being able to slide straight into the water from up here?” I called out.

Dan laughed, shaking his head. “No way! That looks like it would hurt!”

“Do you reckon?” I asked inquiringly, eyeing the entry. It looked simple enough. Simpler than the time I decided learning to cartwheel on stairs was a good idea, anyway. 

“Well the highway’s just there, it’s not too far to the hospital,” he said jokingly, sure I wasn’t going to try it. “If you did, you’d be a legend!"

I looked at the entry a moment longer, picking my spot and lining up the kayak. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to break my nose trying, and while I might get very wet doing it, I was definitely going to get wet and muddy climbing down the slow, hard way. Besides, the slow, hard way would be, you know, slow and hard.

I swung my leg over the kayak, dropped gingerly into the seat, braced my feet on the forward lip of the boat for balance and for the purposes of not breaking my nose, and inched forward. One scoot was all it took for gravity to take over, and my kayak and I sailed over the ledge.

For a moment I was at an alarmingly steep angle of entry to the water, the nose sinking and water rising toward the lip of the cockpit. I threw my weight straight back, horizontal to the boat and perpendicular to the water. The nose bobbed up and the kayak moved forward, and we were afloat! Dry as a bone, not a bit of mud, and delighted with myself, I crowed my victory as Dan cheered.

After that, it was easy paddling downstream, with pockets of rain and more ducks and water dragons.

Eventually, we turned left and paddled a while upstream to meet the bridge where Dan had parked the car.

“Here we are,” he said after a while, indicating a patch of riverbank that looked to me exactly like all the other patches, with no road or car in sight. Wondering where exactly the car was, I paddled up around the next bend, spotted the bridge, and came back with a shrug, pulling the boat out of the water. We carried the boats up a muddy grassy hill and through a field liberally spattered with cow patties. The road came into view, with the car parked on the side. Between us and it was a barbed wire fence.

“What’s the plan here?” I asked, realizing what it was as soon as I asked. The boats were easy enough to slip under the bottom rung of the barbed wire, and Dan showed me how to climb through, chatting about a local girl who sings a song about growing up climbing through barbed wire and drinking on the courthouse stairs.

“I suppose I’ll have to be vague in my blog about the location,” I said, asking him to take a photo for evidence.

“Oh, it’s no worries,” he replied, assuring me that the local farmers were happy to let people use their fields and streams, as long as the livestock were kept in. It’s an ethic he claims is borrowed from the local Aboriginals, who are the legal owners of the land.

We drove back to his place, dropped the boats, and had a celebratory round of cake, with chai hot chocolate to warm up our insides, duly chilled by the passing rainstorms. We chatted a while, and eventually set off back toward Byron.

Halfway back to town, we stopped at an overlook with a vista clear out to sea. From that height and distance, it was easy to see how small the town proper of Byron Bay really is, just one street really, with a puddle of lights around it. Dotting the shoreline were three pockets of lights, one Byron, one the Arts and Industry Estate, and further up the misty, far off lights of South Tweed. In the hills of the hinterland, there were scattered homes, people living quiet, peaceful lives.

Dan asked if I wanted to see a rainforest.

We drove to Nightcap National Park, where a narrow waterfall cascades hundreds of feet down a straight rock face of grays and oranges and browns. The sun was setting and casting an amazing array of colors over the clouds under the fulling moon. This is supposed to be the closest the moon’s been to Earth in eighteen years, and they’re predicting huge tides for the weekend. The rainforest canopy stretching from the base of the falls hundreds of feet below the overlook was a lush, tropical green, liberally mixed with palms. A flock of birds took off in the distance.

“Loads of leeches down there,” Dan said. “You come out covered in them, and just when you think you’ve gotten them all off, one climbs up your shoes while you’re driving home.” Salt’s the thing, apparently. Happily, I remained leech-free.

By the time I was de-muddified and had eaten dinner back home, the moon had fully risen, shining so brightly over my backyard it eclipsed the steady beams of the lighthouse that I know are still sweeping out to sea. With any luck, the nights will stay clear and dry and I can hike out to watch the full moon over the sea one last time before my trip back home.