The river has been waiting for us. Deep, cold, fast.
Walking for days across the high plains, we know it is there,
waiting.
On Day 6, we will cross. It’s become ‘the river’.
Name forgotten. An imagined place, a trepidatious crossing,
a moment planned for and worried at.
The night before, the conversation is all river.
‘Thongs? Will I be able to cross in thongs?’ Or
‘Will the rocks be slippery?’ Our guide shrugs a grin.
‘How high will the water be?’ We all wonder the same.
—-
I was born south of another river, the Yarra Yarra, ever running,
water over the falls, beautiful but the wrong name.
Birrarung.
My creek, my play place, was named for John Gardiner,
nicknamed ‘overlander’ for bringing the cattle over to eat out
someone else’s Country.
I live in dry, gold-bearing ancient country.
My river now is the Loddon; she shrinks every summer
to a chain of disconnected pools. This Big River is wide and deep.
A real river. Dangerous.
—–
All day we’ve walked down Track 107, cut by Angus McMillan, once
called ‘Discoverer of Gippsland’, but no longer. Murderer, thief, false claimant.
Follower, never discoverer.
Jaitamatang guides led McMillan through their mountains, along their
pathways, filling his belly with their water, all the while he named and claimed
their land as a Scottish domain.
We walk the murderer’s path, cut from the bush
by McMillan facing poverty, condemned to labour, a path
from Big River to high country gold.
—-
There is a Big River. There at the end of our days. They
say to cross it is to be judged. To cross is to go from living to dead.
Styx is that river.
Oceanus, serpent-like god of the river that encircles
the world connecting earth and heaven, married his sister Tethys,
goddess of fresh water.
Together they birthed 3000 children, creating gods and goddesses
for all rivers, seas and oceans, so fertile that their lust
threatened to flood the world.
Styx, their oldest daughter, incarnate of hatred
her river is deep and treacherous. A coin on my tongue will
secure that crossing.
—-
The Big River. It does have a kind of name, an almost name. Big.
It wriggles down Spion Kopje, circles east, then south, trying to find a way
through its brother mountains.
This is Jaitmathang country, these high plains and plunging slopes.
Did no one listen to this river’s name? Lost now, forever.
Now just ‘big’, named on a day short of names?
Downstream it’s the Mitta Mitta River, the mida-modoenga,
river of reeds, in Dhudhuroa country. A true name revealed and
retained.
Big River I name you garrgatba, for your coldness, or perhaps
wanbayinagadha, Jaitmathang whisper, we are travelling,
going up the river to feast and dance.
—-
The river arrives in front of us, appearing out of the scrub.
We are here, it is here.
Our ford is where Dead Horse Creek merges into the river.
Our pack horses have already crossed safely.
Not a warning after all.
Pant are unzipped into shorts, or stripped off, revealing an
array of coloured undies above shivery white flesh. Boots off and laced to packs.
No thongs.
I’m in my trusty walking sandals: they’ve walked me for days in the desert
A steadying stick, a branch from one of the many fire-killed snow gums
from the landscape of destruction higher up the mountains.
I step into the coldness, the wetness of it. Rocks shift underfoot, the water
deepens towards the middle, the bottom disappears below turbulent riffles:
Holding my breath.
—-
Here where the waters convergence.
There is a tug, a deep call
Jaitmathang, am I arriving or leaving? Big River hold me close.
grounded practice 