Day 43 - Goorrandalng Campground, Day 8

Sunday, 11 July 2021

Keep River is a keepsake. It has kept us hostage for 8 days, captives of a border closure, but captivated by its beauty. When it’s time to pack up, we feel sad.

We start our final day with a bushwalk through two-metre high sorghum grass, crunching under our feet, cracking as we push the dry stalks aside. We find a stream not far from the campsite that feeds into the Keep River, a wide, rock and sand dry riverbed that reaches high up its banks during the wet season. A crusty old rock ledge creates a bend in the river and as we round it, several birds flush into the air, a raptor (perhaps a falcon) and two white-faced herons, long legs streaming behind them. There’s a pool in the crevasse, an obvious meeting place for wildlife. It has a sense of privacy, as though we’ve entered a sparse domain that only the birds know, virgin land kept safe and secret from the campers a hundred metres away. We rest there, watch the birds, take in the warming day and its soft light.

Towards mid-afternoon we bring our end-of-day activities forward, a beer in hand, dinner, clean-up. Then we pack up, everything ready to go for an early morning rise. Rumours abound that waits at the border crossing could be up to four to six hours. We plan to rise at 2am, get to the border at 3am. There can’t be that many campers mad enough to be up and about that time of day.

Before we end our sojourn at the Goonndalng camp, we take a last loop around the trail, the sunset route that takes you straight into the towering rock faces absorbing the last terracotta hues of the sun. We sit on rocks overlooking the valley, when four red-tailed black cockatoos alight on a fragile young tree only a few metres away. The tree dips and sags and two of the great birds fly off, realising it’s a cramped insecure meet-up place for an end-of-the-day yarn. The two remaining enjoy a few clucks, their crests bouncing up and down, before they too fly off. Brilliant Venus and faint Mars are nearly at their conjunction, the only two lights in a cobalt western sky.

I will remember this part of our trip as our Keep River Retreat. Like a meditation retreat, usually held at some beautiful natural setting, you’re both happy and anxious about being there, enjoying the thought of a whole week of silence and simplicity ahead, while another harried part of the mind continually monitors the clock waiting for it to end. Like a retreat, there are people and things that annoy the heck out of you, amplified because of your quiet mind. And there are moments of deep rich ease and contentment. When it’s over, there’s the uprising of craving: wanting to go home, back to “normal” life, while also clinging to the rare and special experience you’ve just had, not wanting it to end.

Johan sets the alarm for 2am. We put aside our books and switch off the lights at 6:30pm W.A. time. We lie awake for hours, not used to sleeping this time of the evening, but also anxious about what tomorrow brings.