Corang River

Australia may be easily divided into two parts: the city and the bush.  Almost all of us live in what is loosely called ‘the city’ — while a smaller number live in ‘the bush’.  Any rural area, any wild or wilderness area, any quiet patch, even in the middle of the city, is ‘bush’.  There are patches of bush, just a kilometre from the Opera House in Sydney, and many larger patches dotted around the landscape.

We have a bush mythology, all about how Australians relate to it, but most of us are wholly city-bred and raised.  Even so, many Australians gain a great benefit from the bush and from bushwalking.  Each weekend, urban Australian may be seen wandering along well-worn tracks through urban bush, while others, rather better equipped, can be found far out in the wilderness of the Watagan ranges, the Blue Mountains, the Budawang Ranges, or some other favoured lonely place.  For my family, the preferred solution is to drive for four hours in the dawn to get to the Budawangs.

The Budawang basement rock was laid down in Devonian times, back 350 million years ago, when fishes ruled the earth, along with their cousins the early amphibians.  We can only guess at the rocks' history after that, but they must have been deeply buried and heated, for they are all now low-grade metamorphics, and that only happens with deep burial and light baking in the depths of the earth.

After baking and squeezing, the rocks were twisted and folded, then slowly revealed again.  The tops of the folds were carved off, leaving a series of tilted quartzite slabs.  These tough ribs of stone were shaped in the days of the early dinosaurs, which must have wandered over their surface, leaving not a trace.  By now, the rocks were 150 million years old, and due for burial once more.

They were covered over in a huge flood of mud and boulders that created massive conglomerates.  Some of the pebbles in this conglomerate are more than a metre across, and the beds stretch for kilometres.  But after the conglomerate had filled in around the old hills of Devonian rock, gentler conditions prevailed.  Sand was laid down over the top, through the Permian, then more Triassic sediments came on top of that.  Finally, the process reversed itself, and the Devonian rocks were brought back to the surface as the covering slowly weathered and eroded away.

The Devonian rocks are survivors.  They took all the world could throw at them before, and now they do so again.  When a river comes up against the uptilted ribs of tough metamorphic rock, the water is forced to fight to find a way through.  Where they can, the rocks dam up the water, creating swamps where the usual harsh dry conditions are replaced by harsh soggy conditions.  Where the river is strong enough, it carves down until it meets the truly immovable rocks: then it backs up to form a lagoon.

A little up the hill from such a place, we find the Permian conglomerate sitting uneasily on the tough Devonian ribs, making what the geologists call an unconformity, where one hand, spread on the cliff face, can span more than a hundred million years of history.  The base of the conglomerate falls apart easily, creating caves and rock shelters where campers can shelter when it rains.

The Budawang Ranges are full of places like this, but for my money, the best place to go in the whole area is the Corang River, at a place where the river backs up against tough tilted Devonian rocks, delayed for a couple of hundred metres.  This makes a pool which is refreshingly chill, even on the hottest day, where mists will rise off the river in the early morning, as the first small birds skim across, looking for insects to eat.

Around the edges of the lagoon, kangaroos thump around, looking for food at night.  It is not a place for those with a heightened imagination.  Wombats charge along their favourite tracks like small tanks, mopokes make dismal sounds in the dark, and possums scream at each other.  This is a good place to bring new chums, people who are marvellous victims when it comes to tall tales.  Here you can regale them with drop-bears, hoop snakes, fanged frogs, bush alligators, wombahs and more.

Out in the wilderness, such tales are believable.  Getting there means a drive of four hours, then a walk for three hours, so we usually camp overnight at the trail head, or drive down in the pre-dawn darkness on deserted roads.  Then we hike in, set up our tents, grab some firewood, and prepare for a couple of days of relaxing, reading and swimming.

Except, that is, when my adult son decides we should go exploring.  This is wild country, but we have been coming here for many years, and we know the land marks, so we elect to do a slightly risky thing, and wander off as a pair.  Strictly, we should take three people, one to stay by any injured person, and one to get help, but this is to be little more than a gentle stroll.

Famous last words!  It has been raining in the last few months, and all the swamps are topped up, trapped behind the quartzite dam walls.  When we decide to plunge into low-lying area for a short-cut, we become well and truly bogged down.  My son, I forgot to mention, is very stubborn: he must have inherited this from his mother, for I am never anything more than unswervingly determined.

Whatever the cause, we decide to push on, rather than going back and around the swamp.  Perhaps it is the range of unusual spiders you can find deep in a swamp: perhaps it is the hope of seeing some of the rarer sundews, small insectivorous plants that live in swamps like these, but we force our way, deeper and deeper, following the trails made by the wombats.  There is no plant alive that can withstand a wombat, which is good when we want a clear track, but wombats are very agile about jumping from tussock to tussock, which is not so good.

Cursing and grunting, we leap, slip and slide our way along.  We have done this sort of thing before, so we are still comparatively dry, but it is all very tiring.  We look around for somewhere to sit, but there is no dry dry place big enough or flat enough to sit on.

I recount the old paradoxical definition of an infinite regress, where a band of soldiers get tired in a swamp.  They form a circle, and each sits on the knees of the one behind, until they are rested.  Arguing the logic of this blunts our discomfort for a while as we slog along.  That and a complex disagreement about the differences between marshes, bogs, fens, swamps, swards and water meadows, which helps to keep our minds active as we go.

All good things come to an end, but so do bad things.  Suddenly, what I still insist is swamp, rises above the water table.  We stop, just at the edge of the mud, looking at the beautiful dry land in front of us.  ‘I've definitely learned one thing,’ he tells me.  Foolishly, I ask him what it was.

‘The fen is muddier than the sward’, he tells me.  Something inside me snaps.  One swift push and he learns the Zen lesson that one person cannot make an infinite regress.  Not in a swamp, anyhow.