Destroying Avalon by McCaffrey Kate

Author:McCaffrey, Kate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2015-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

61 Metres High and Climbing

I was lying on my bed listening to Missy Higgins’ Scar and for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about this place not far from Grace Point called Pemberton. It’s probably one of the most beautiful places in Australia, with acres and acres of untouched karri forests. The karris stretch upwards, up and up forever. City people come on long weekends and school holidays, station wagons loaded high with camping gear.

It’s a different kind of holiday from staying on the beaches or at the vineyard strip; this is more like getting back to nature. Even though we lived only forty kilometres away, my Dad would rather spend time in Pemberton, in the old Rajneeshee camp, than anywhere else in the world.

Back in the 1980s there was this cult of Orange People who followed an Indian guru, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. And coincidentally enough they all wore orange clothes. The Bhagwan promoted free living and a natural lifestyle. His followers gave him all their money and lived poor but apparently satisfying lives, while his garages were full of Rolls Royces.

Anyway, as part of their natural lifestyle they built an eco-environment which still exists today. Scattered through the forest are these chalets on stilts, overlooking an amazing lake. And in the middle of the karri forest, not far from the Orange People camp, is one really mighty tree. It’s an old, majestic karri, rising out of the ground and touching the clouds. The type of tree you’d read about in fairytales, with a giant living at the top. It’s called the Gloucester Tree.

The Gloucester Tree is not for the weak hearted. You can climb it, all 61 metres of it — more than a million people have, apparently. Not like you’d normally climb a tree, shimmying up through the branches, but by means of pegs that have been nailed in, which spiral all the way up the trunk.

Since I was five I’d tried to climb the tree every holiday we spent down there. But I’d only get so far before my nerve would give way. The year I turned twelve I promised myself, no matter what, that this year I’d make it to the top.

Mum led the way, she’s done it hundreds of times, and Dad was a couple of handholds behind me. Hand up, foot up, and up we went. We passed my previous best efforts, the last being when I was nine and thought I’d gone half way, though it was more like ten metres.

Some brilliant green twenty-eights flew so close to me I felt the wind off their wings. They unnerved me and I hesitated, gripping the metal rail tightly. Dad was at my feet.

‘Go on Avalon, you can do it,’ he said. I was squeezing the rail so tightly its patterned surface bit deeply into my palms. I wanted to go back down. I couldn’t do this. I was frozen on the edge of the tree. The wind blew my hair into my face and I couldn’t release my grip to brush it out of my eyes.

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