Lee lived in town, like Fi. ‘Lee and Fi, from Wirrawee,’ we used to sing. That was all they had in common though. Lee was as dark as Fi was fair. He had a black crewcut and deep brown intelligent eyes, and a nice soft voice which clips the ends off some of his words. His father’s Thai and his mother’s Vietnamese, and they had a restaurant which served Asian food. Pretty good restaurant too; we went there a lot Lee was good at Music and Art; in fact he was good at most things, but he could be very annoying when things went against him. He’d go into long sulks and not talk to anyone for days at a time.

The last one was Homer, who lived down the road from me. Homer was wild, outrageous. He didn’t care what he did or what anyone thought. I always remember going there for lunch, when we were little kids. Mrs Yannos tried to make Homer eat Brussels sprouts; they had a massive argument which ended with Homer chucking the sprouts at his mum. One of them hit her in the forehead, pretty hard too. I watched goggle-eyed. I’d never seen anything like it. If I’d tried that at home I’d have been chained to the tractor and used as a clodbuster. When we were in Year 8 Homer organised some of his madder mates into daily games of what he called Greek Roulette. In Greek Roulette you’d go every lunchtime to a room that was away from teachers’ eyes and then you’d take it in turns to walk up to a window and head-butt it. Each person kept doing it till the bell went for afternoon classes or the window broke, whichever came first. If it was your head that broke the window then you – or your parents – had to foot the bill for a new one. They broke a lot of windows playing Greek Roulette, before the school finally woke up to what was going on.

Homer always seemed to be in trouble. Another of his favourite little amusements was to watch for workmen going on the roof at school to fix leaks or get balls or replace guttering. Homer would wait till they were safely up there, working away hard at whatever they had to do, then he’d strike. Half an hour later you’d hear yells and cries from the roof: ‘Help! Get us down from here! Some mongrel’s pinched our bloody ladder!’

Homer had been quite short as a little kid but he’d filled out and grown a lot in the last few years, until he ended up one of the biggest guys in the school They were always at him to play footy, but he hated most sports and wouldn’t join a team for anything. He liked hunting and would often ring my parents to ask if he and his brother could come on to our place to wipe out a few more rabbits. And he liked swimming. And he liked music, some of it quite weird.

Homer and I had spent all our free time together when we were little, and we were still close.

So that was the Famous Five. I guess Corrie and I made it the Secret Seven. Hah! Those books don’t have a lot of bearing on what’s happened to us. I can’t think of any books I’ve read – or films I’ve seen – that relate much to us. We’ve all had to rewrite the scripts of our lives the last few weeks. We’ve learnt a lot and we’ve had to figure out what’s important, what matters – what really matters. It’s been quite a time.

Chapter Two

The plan was to leave at eight o’clock, nice and early. By about ten o’clock we were nearly ready. By 10.30 we were about four k’s from home, starting the ascent to Tailor’s Stitch. It’s a long slow grunt up a track that’s become a real mess over the years; holes so big that I thought we’d lose the Landrover in them, mud slides, creek crossings. I don’t know how many times we stopped for fallen trees. We’d brought the chain saw and after a while Homer suggested we keep it running and he’d nurse it as we drove along, to save having to start it when we came to another log. I don’t think he was serious. I hope he wasn’t serious. It had been a long time since anyone had been up there. We always know, because they have to come through our paddocks to get to the spur. If Dad had known how bad the track was he’d never have let us take the Landrover. He trusts my driving, but not that much. Still, we bounced along, me wrestling with the wheel, doing a steady five k’s, with occasional bursts up to ten. There was another unscheduled stop about half way when Fi decided she was going to be sick. I stopped fast, she exited through the rear door looking white as a corpse, and donated a sticky mess in the bushes for the benefit of any passing feral dogs or cats.

It was not a pretty sight. Everything Fi did she did gracefully, but even Fi found it hard to be graceful while she was vomiting. After that she walked quite a while, but the rest of us continued to lurch on up the spur in the Landie. It was actually fun, in a strange sort of way. Like Lee said, it was better than the Cocktail Shaker ride at the Show, because it was longer – and it was free.

We were actually missing the Show to come on this trip. We’d left the day before Commemoration Day, when the whole country stops, but in our district people don’t just stop. They stop and then they converge on Wirrawee, because Commemoration Day is traditionally the day of the Wirrawee Show. It’s quite an occasion. Still, we didn’t mind missing it. There’s a limit to the number of balls you can roll down the clown’s throat, and there’s a limit to the number of times you can get excited over your mother winning Best Decorated Cake. A year’s break from the Show wouldn’t do us any harm.

That’s what we thought.

It was about half past two when we got to the top. Fi had ridden the last couple of k’s, but we were all relieved to get out of the Landie and stretch our bones. We came out on the south side of a knoll near Mt Martin. That was the end of the vehicle track: from then on it was shanks’s pony. But for the time being we wandered around and admired the view. On one side you could see the ocean: beautiful Cobbler’s Bay, one of my favourite places, and according to Dad one of the world’s great natural harbours, used only by the occasional fishing boat or cruising yacht. It was too far from the city for anything else. We could see a couple of ships there this time though; one looked like a large trawler maybe. The water looked as blue as royal blood; deep and dark and still. In the opposite direction Tailor’s Stitch seamed its way to the summit of Mt Martin, a sharp straight ridge, bare black rocks forming a thin line as though a surgeon had made a giant incision centuries ago. Another view faced back down the way we’d come; the track invisible under its canopy of trees and creepers. Way in the distance you got glimpses of the rich farmland of the Wirrawee district, dotted with houses and clumps of trees, the lazy Wirrawee River curving slowly through it.

And on the other side was Hell.

‘Wow,’ said Kevin, taking a long look into it. ‘We’re going to get into there?’

‘We’re going to try,’ I said, having doubts already but trying to sound strong and sure.

‘It’s impressive,’ said Lee. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘I’ve got two questions,’ said Kevin, ‘but I’ll only ask one of them. How?’

‘What’s the other one?’

‘The other one is “Why?”. But I’m not going to ask that. Just tell me how and I’ll be satisfied. I’m easily satisfied.’

‘That’s not what Corrie says,’ said Homer, beating me to it.

A few rocks were thrown; there was some wrestling; Homer nearly took the fast route into Hell. That’s two things guys are addicted to, throwing rocks and wrestling, but I’ve noticed these guys don’t seem to do either any more. I wonder why.

‘So how are we going to get in there?’ Kevin asked again, at last.

I pointed to the right. ‘There it is. That’s our route.’

‘That? That collection of cliffs?’

He was exaggerating a bit, but not much. Satan’s Steps are huge granite blocks that look like they were chucked there in random descending order by some drunken giant, back in the Stone Age. There’s no vegetation on them: they’re uncompromisingly bare. The more I looked at them the more unlikely it all seemed, but that didn’t stop me making my big motivational speech.