The recent spate of extreme hot weather put me in mind of my second experience of spending an extended period of time away from home and away from my parents. It was the end of form 1, I was 12 years old, and Weary and I found ourselves at a church camp in the wilds of East Gippsland, a sparsely populated, isolated part of Victoria that gets very hot in summer, which it then was, and which carries, in the popular imagination, intimations of hillbillies and in-breeding.
The camp was run by two people who, unlikely as this may sound, were both called Robert Luff (leading to much humorous banter along the lines of "which one?" and "will the real Robert Luff please stand up?"). For the first few days we stayed at a shearing shed somewhere outside an off-the-map town called Ensay. The shearing shed sat on the side of a bare hill, with no other sign of humanity visible in any direction. It was infested with huntsman spiders, and rumours quickly took hold as to how, in previous years, girls had run screaming (although I knew, but kept to myself, that it wouldn't just be the girls if it happened to me) from the shed on the discovery of a huntsman in a sleeping bag. Fortunately this didn't happen on our camp, but their lurking presence created a Hitchcockian sense of tension nevertheless.
The toilet, not itself devoid of spiders, was a wooden shed a hundred yards downhill (and, mercifully, downwind) containing a box with a hole in it, resting atop a pit containing about 20 million blowflies. I can only remember making one trip to that toilet in all the time I was there. Is there such a thing as fear-induced constipation?
And have I mentioned the snakes?
It's funny the things you don't remember. I have no idea how we got all the way from Fish Creek to Ensay, even though it is a trip that would have taken a few hours. In fact, I have very little recollection of anything that we did while at the shearing shed, or what we ate. I do remember the heat.
One day we drove to Swift's Creek, where I was able to briefly nurture my addiction to newsagencies, and where there was a much-needed swimming pool. One evening we took a long walk down the hill and along a heavily shaded gravel road beside a creek. It was a lovely spot. I imagine we had a picnic there, but I can't be sure. We did have a swim in the creek, its stony bottom perfectly visible, a bridge just upstream for running along, and jumping off. It would have been close to perfect, except for the fact that at some point along that walk something unpleasant happened.
I suppose I was at an age where hormones start to kick in, and bodies and temperaments do mysterious and inexplicable things. Weary and I had been best buddies since, well, since kindergarten really, and we were practically inseparable. For the second half of primary school Weary was one of a number of kids to be transferred by their parents to Foster Consolidated, on account of the experimental nature of teaching at Fish Creek under a principal and his cohort of teachers who had taken over our school in Grade 3 (a story that remains to be told). So his reappearance in my life when we both found ourselves at Foster High was like a dream come true. Thus, what happened while we were out on this walk was somewhat unexpected. I do know that it happened only inside my own head. Weary may not have even noticed anything amiss, and even if he did, he would probably have taken no notice of it.
I have, and this was only remarkable for being the first time it happened, this thing where something will trigger a sudden withdrawal from whatever is going on around me, and I fall into a dark place of frustration, confusion, anger: if you called it Extreme Sulking you might not be far off. It can happen at any time, and be caused by anyone or anything (or maybe even nothing), and there is nothing to do but wait it out and try not to burn any bridges in the process.
So, there we all were, walking along in this beautiful landscape. Weary was mixing and having fun with the others, in a way that I couldn't. Before long it seemed to me that I was alone in the world. I knew that I didn't need to be, that I was among friends, but I felt trapped, and helpless to do anything about it. I got really, really angry, muttered terrible things to myself in response to what the others, particularly Weary, were saying, and physically withdrew from the group. Swimming in the river shook me out of it, but the feeling resonated, and confused me, for some time. I had discovered something about myself that I hadn't known before, and that I would rather not have found out. And I knew, too, that this longstanding friendship had suffered a unilateral, debilitating blow from which it would stagger along for some time but never really recover.
The camp went on. The last couple of nights we stayed at a church hall in Omeo. There was a swimming hole at a bend in the creek in the centre of town, where we spent a long afternoon and where I managed to lose my glasses. I had gotten used to swimming around without them on, and I simply failed to realise that I wasn't wearing them. They fell out of the towel and onto the ground. The next morning, we went exploring a warren of caves on the side of a hill. I could barely see a thing without my glasses, which made scaling the hill difficult, and it didn't really help with my fear of heights, as I had no real idea of where I was in relation to the ground except for the fact that it was some indeterminate distance below where I was. Later on that day, we went back to the swimming hole, where my glasses were waiting for me, intact but in bad need of a clean.
We went for a midnight walk to the local cemetery, where we scared the bejesus out of ourselves, mucking about with torches, making scary noises, and telling ghost stories and other tales of mystery (such as the one where the girl is sitting in the car on a deserted road while the fellow goes out to investigate some movement over in the trees at the side of the road, and then, hearing a banging noise on the roof of the car, she gets out to investigate, only to discover that the banging is, well, I don't think I should go any further actually, there may be children watching).
We also listened, many times, to a Rolling Stones cassette that was in someone's possession. "Sympathy for the Devil", in hindsight, seems a bit out of place in a church hall.
The camp ended. So, eventually, did my friendship with Weary, although not for a little while longer, and even then perhaps not forever. I never heard from any of the other participants again, nor have I ever met another person called Robert Luff. Two is probably enough for one lifetime.
