Being Human
I parked the car and locked it. It wouldn’t go anywhere. At least I hoped so. We’d find out eventually. I got on my bike, barefoot, no helmet, and rode back down the road I had just come. The three kms that I thought it was going to be turned into four and a half, down the black top winding through the quiet bush of the national park. Back to the river, where I had left my daughter, with our kayak and all our gear, ready to set out on a mission we had concocted. I chained the bike to a tree by the river, half-hidden behind some bushes, we put on our life jackets, and pushed our boat out onto the mighty Esk River, pearl in the crown of Bundjalung National Park. It’s the only coastal river in the whole of New South Wales that lies entirely inside a national park, and it’s a protected wilderness area. No access other than by your own efforts: on foot, by mountainbike, or by boat. We were going to be using a bit of all of that. I looked down at our kayak as we paddled ...