‘This is pretty nice for Hell,’ Fi said to me as we paused in the cool stone gap.

‘Mmm. Wonder how long since anyone’s been down here.’

‘More than that,’ Robyn, who was in front of Fi, said. ‘I wonder how many human beings have ever been down here, in the history of the Universe. I mean, why would the koories have bothered? Why would the early explorers, or settlers, have bothered? And no one we know has. Maybe the Hermit and us are the only people ever to have seen it. Ever.’

By that stage it was getting obvious that we were close to the bottom. The ground was levelling out and the last of the sunlight was filtering through to warm our faces. The overgrowth and the undergrowth were both sparser, though still quite dense. The track rejoined the creek and ran alongside it for a few hundred metres. Then it opened out into our campsite for the night.

We found ourselves in a clearing about the size of a hockey field, or a bit bigger. It would have been hard to play hockey on though, because it wasn’t much of a clearing. It was studded with trees, three beautiful old eucalypts and quite a few suckers and saplings. The creek was at the western edge; you could hear it but not see it. The creek was flatter and wider here and cold, freezing cold, even on a summer day. In the early mornings it hurt and stung. But when you were hot it was a wonderful refreshing shock to splash your face into it.

That’s where I am now of course.

For any little wild things living in the clearing we must have seemed like visitors from Hell, not visitors to it. We made a lot of noise. And Kevin – you can never cure Kevin of his bad habit of breaking branches off trees instead of walking a few extra metres to pick up dead wood. That’s one reason I was never too convinced when Corrie talked about how caring and sensitive he was. But he was good with fires: he had the white smoke rising about five minutes after we arrived, and flames burning like fury about two minutes after that.

We decided not to bother with tents – we’d only brought two and a half anyway – but it was warm and no chance of rain, so we just strung up a couple of flies for protection against the dew. Then Lee and I got stuck into the cooking. Fi wandered over.

‘What are we having?’ she asked.

‘Two-minute noodles for now. We’ll cook some meat later, but I’m too hungry to wait.’

‘What are two-minute noodles?’ Fi asked.

Lee and I looked at each other and grinned.

‘It’s an awesome feeling,’ Lee said, ‘to realise you’re about to change someone’s life forever.’

‘Haven’t you ever had two-minute noodles?’ I asked Fi.

‘No. My parents are really into health foods.’

I’d never met anyone who hadn’t had two-minute noodles before. Sometimes Fi seemed like an exotic butterfly.

I can’t remember any hike or campout I’d been on where people sat around the fire telling stories or singing. It just never seemed to happen that way. But that night we did sit up late, and talk and talk. I think we were excited to be there, in that strange and beautiful place, where so few humans had ever been. There aren’t many wild places left on Earth, yet we’d fluked it into the middle of this little wild kingdom. It was good. I knew I was really tired but I was too revved up to go to bed until the others started yawning and standing up and looking towards their sleeping bags. Five minutes later we were all in bed; five minutes after that I think I was asleep.

Chapter Four

We didn’t do a lot the next day. No one got up till ten or eleven o’clock. First thing we found was a biscuit bag we’d overlooked when packing the food the night before. It was empty. Thanks to us some grateful animal was now a lot fatter.

Our breakfast merged into lunch and continued into the afternoon. Basically we just lay around and ate, in one long pigout. Kevin and Corrie got into a passionate little session on Kevin’s sleeping bag; Fi and I sat with our feet in the cold stream, planning our lives after we left school and left Wirrawee. Lee was reading a book, All Quiet on the Western Front. Robyn had her Walkman on. Homer had a go at everything: climbed a tree, had a look in the creek for gold, got a pile of firewood, tried to flush out some snakes. When I got some energy going I went with him, to see if the path went any further. But we could find no trace of it. Thick bush met us in every direction. And strangely, we could see no sign of any hut or cave or shelter which the old guy must have had if he’d really lived down here. Finally, sick of trying to tear our way through unsympathetic scrub, we gave up and went back to the clearing. And when we got there Homer did find a snake. It was six o’clock and the ground was starting to cool off. Homer went to his sleeping bag and took off his boots, then stretched out comfortably with a packet of corn chips. ‘This is a great place,’ he said. ‘This is perfect.’ At that moment the snake, which had crawled into his sleeping bag, must have stirred under him, cos Homer leapt to his feet and ran about ten metres away. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he yelled. ‘There’s something in there! There’s a snake in my sleeping bag!’

Even Kevin and Corrie stopped what they were doing and came racing over. There was a wild debate, first about whether Homer was imagining things, then, when we all saw the snake move, about how to get it out with as little loss of life as possible. Kevin wanted to weigh the sleeping bag down in the creek with rocks until the snake drowned; Homer wasn’t keen on that. He liked his sleeping bag. We weren’t too sure that the snake wouldn’t be able to bite through the bag; as a kid I was told a terrifying story by a shearer about how his son had been bitten through a blanket as he lay asleep in his bed. I don’t know if the story was true but I never forgot it.

We decided to trust all those experts who’d been telling us since we were kids that snakes are more scared of people than people are of snakes. We figured if we were at one end of the sleeping bag and the snake came out of the other end he’d probably do a big slither in the opposite direction, straight into the bush. So we got two strong sticks; Robyn held one while Kevin held the other; they pushed them under the bag and started slowly lifting. It was a captivating scene; better than watching TV even. For a minute nothing happened, though we could see the snake clearly outlined as the material was stretched. He sure was a big one. Robyn and Kevin were trying to tip the bag so that the snake would virtually be poured out of the mouth onto the ground. They were doing it well too; perfect teamwork. The bag was at shin height, then knee height, and still rising. Then somehow the sticks got too far apart. Corrie called out; they realised and started to correct, but Robyn lost her grip for a moment. And a moment was all it took. The sleeping bag slithered down to the ground as though it had come to life itself, and one very mad snake came bursting out. The only rational thought I had at that moment was curiosity, that Kevin was obviously as nervous of snakes as he was of insects. He just stood there white in the face and trembling, looking like he was going to cry. I think he was so paralysed that he would have waited and let the snake crawl up his leg and bite him. It was funny, considering how tough he’d been when he had the stick and was lifting the bag, thinking he was safe. But there wasn’t really much time or space for rational thoughts at that stage of my life; my irrational mind was running the show. It told me to panic; I panicked. It told me to run; I ran. It told me not to give a stuff about anyone else; I didn’t give a stuff. It was quite a few moments before I looked around to see if they were OK ... and to see where the snake was.

Kevin was still standing at the same spot; Robyn was a few metres in front of me and doing what I was doing, standing and looking and puffing and trembling; Fi was in the creek, I’ve got no idea why; Lee was up a tree, about six metres from the ground and rising fast; Corrie was intelligently at the fire and using it as protection; Homer was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the snake.