Season to be Jolly

We have all survived the excitement, the hassles and cheer with friends and family in the special ritualised way that the Xmas and new year season has acquired.  At Possum Valley, I did not have any family present, but the very warm and convivial company of friends and guests who are one and the same was heartwarming.  Thank you dear people who shared your family Xmas with me and Charlotte who was far from home and family. You, wined and dined me, then paid me for the privilege.  I was invited to dinner several days with roasts vegies, salads and sauces, with crackers and silly paper hats.  How lucky can you get?  Even luckier.  For the last few weeks I have had the company of an American PhD biology student staying with me at the homestead with the charming name of Charlotte studying the latitudinal distribution of species.  A Berkeley student, with assistance from ANU, she thought Possum Valley might be a nice quiet place to do some serious work on the thesis.  She had not realised the perils of having her ears talked off by a dialogue deprived old man.

Charlotte is an outdoors person, and has some physical goals as well as intellectual.   A daily jog to the main road in the rain is part of her routine (about 8km).  It has been raining ever since she came to PV.  She has done some field work in the PNG highlands with lizards to test their tolerance to temperature ranges.  She loves PNG, its people and environment, but not the leeches.  I understand that.  I have had a long term intimate relationship with leeches and wish there was some way I could get a divorce.  But Charlotte had somehow, through great diligence and attention I suppose, managed to avoid even a single instance of being bitten.  I think this indicates a phobia for that level of viligance to be maintained.  Charlotte intends and desires to continue studies in PNG, grants permitting, and had some desire to overcome the leech phobia with a cathartic experience.  Always prepared to take the hard road of confronting ones fears, her chosen method was to climb Bartle Frere in the wet season.  To get the full effect, she decided to protect the upper body and most delicate parts with ‘goanna salve’ around the thighs, but leave the lower legs unprotected.

I dropped her off at the Tablelands end of the Bartle Frere walk at 8 am.  It was reckoned to be a 2 day return trip by National  Parks, but she is fit and reckoned she would hit the summit in just 5 hours and return in 3hrs.  I had no reason to doubt that.  I got a call from her mobile at 2 pm to tell me she was on the summit.  For the second time, as in the clouds she had overshot the summit and gone down towards the coast for a very difficult scramble of 1km amongst the boulders.  Arriving at the heli-pad for emergency evacuations she realised her mistake and came back.  On a cloudless day, you could look around and see there was no more up, the highest point in Queensland, but in the fog it is not obvious you are on the summit.  The descent down took her longer than expected as the issue isn’t strength, but traction, as the wet slippery rocks and mud can more likely cause injury than on the way up.

A leech scrum

She emerged from the rainforest at about 5:30 pm.  She had taken no precautions or considerations of leeches since 8 am.  She took off her boots.  I have never seen so many leeches in my life.  She took off her socks that were writhing with hundreds of leeches.  Blood was dripping everywhere.  She started to de-leech her legs by flicking them off, but the situation was well beyond that.  I assisted her by grabbing handfuls of them, knotted in balls, and flinging them off into the bush a dozen at a time.  We eventually got control of the situation and Charlotte started to calm down.  Her legs were running with blood.  The boots, socks and trousers still writhing with leeches were thrown in the tray of the ute.

I have never met anyone with a phobia so prepared to charge it head on.  She was bitten hundreds of times.  I hope it has the desired effect of having faced the ultimate challenge so now a slight leech infestation of a dozen or so can be shrugged off.  You have my admiration Charlotte, but kids, don’t try this at home.