Reverend Hellfire's Sunday Sermon

A Madman Laughing in the Rain.

PART 2; DOWN TO DEADMAN’S BEACH

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My Meditations at edge of the Wallaby Death-Trap complete, I turned around and wandered for awhile in a generally downwards direction, down through the thickest thickets of Bush & Scrub, where the black & dripping trunks of trees stood sentinel-like in the mist, their gnarled and wind-twisted limbs seeming to strain towards you, reaching out to clutch you with arthritic, wooden fingers..

The rain had died off, carried elsewhere by the wetly whistling winds, so I found a likely spot to run through a few Sets of my Tai Chi, where the path broadened into a small clearing, level with good footing, & aesthetically surrounded by the gracefully twisty trunks of trees. Thanks to the weather I was confident that I wouldn’t be interupted by slack-jawed tourists, startled at the sudden sight of me manifesting in the middle of the stormy woods, ritually wheeling through the graceful motions of Repulse Monkey, or the sinuous, sinister Snake Creeps Down.

Indeed no-one disturbed me but Barry the kangaroo.

I had chosen my spot well; it was a place of Natural Beauty throbbing with Chi. As I slipped into theZone of Expanded Awareness that Tai Chi can elicite, the Clearing came alive with Life, throbbing, clicking, dripping, the currents of Chi swirled around me, the wind-twisted trees ranged around me like dancing dryads, awakened by my dance, their graceful curves echoing the ancient movements. (Did not the Old Masters spend years in the Wilderness, perfecting their Art and their Understanding of the Ways of the Chi Force?)

I was just finishing my 3^rd Set when I sensed I was being observed, and looking around I saw a large male kangaroo a little further up the path studying me thoughtfully as he chewed on a cud of grass. It was my old mate Barry, Point Lookout’s resident Alpha Male Kangaroo. We’re always bumping into each other when I visit the island and I always courteously give him right of way, which is the best policy to follow

when confronted with a large, muscular Alpha male Roo

in the woods.

“How’s the Family, Barry?” I asked. He scratched his belly and appeared to consider my question before remembering he had things to do and bounded away in a leisurely fashion. A man of few words our Barry.

Continuing my journey into the green and black woods, where ferns unfurled in the fertile damp & fungi grew in bright colours and an old engine block lay abandoned , emerging from the damp mulch of leaves in a rusting lump of iron, the same colour as the rocks around it. It was slowly merging with it’s environment, indeed for a moment I thought it had gone truly organic and started sprouting leaves. But on inspection the shoots proved to be small saplings that had grown up thru the engine cylinders.

Later I found myself ankle deep in the tiny, Wallum Swamp-Froglet Designated Conservation Zone. It is possibly the World’s smallest Conservation Area, for in practise it proves to be no more than a bit of a gully where a tiny rivulet widens out into a sludgy patch of ground before plunging down the cliffs to Deadman’s Beach, where it trickles across the sands to meet the Sea, a tiny rivulet stained brown by Tea tree leaves.

The other point of interest to this tiny patch of Officially Designated Environmental Significance is that it also plays host to what is surely the World’s Most Inconveniently Located Sign!

Picture this; Bordering the swamplet is a clay cliff rising up a few metres above the swamplet. A path runs along the top of the cliff providing a view of the swamplet. But the sign faces the swamp, not the path and is erected at the very edge of the cliff. So the only way to actually view it is to descend to the swamp itself and scramble through the brambles below the cliffs edge, there to cran your neck and squint as you labour to decipher the faded lettering.

But that is not the most inconvenient sign.

Oh no! That was further on.

The whole area was flooded due to the recent rains, and way over on the far side of the soggy, swampy ground I spotted another sign. It was so ludicrously & inconveniently located that I was seized by curiosity to read it. I waded determinedly on as the water & mud got deeper. When I lost my thongs to the mud I almost turned back, but no..  I was committed now!

Locating my thongs with the aid of a pointed stick to probe the mud, I then continued on thru the fen & fog. (shades of Grendel!) Eventually I got close enough to read the weather faded lettering, but my triumph was muted as it proved to be merely a replica of the first sign.

I didn’t see any frogs but I did have a tinnitus type of ringing in my ears the whole time I was there, a subsonic buzzing & chirping on the edge of hearing, which I put down to my exertions. Later I realised that the place was probably full of the lurking little bastards, and that was them happily singing in the rain. They should have called it the Tinnitus Froglet, I thought, but that probably wouldn’t help it’s popularity, and it’s already endangered.

It was time, I decided, to go for a swim at Deadman’s Beach, and take my chances in the stormy suck & swirl of the big breakers bashing the sands.

The idea kept me laughing all the way to the beach.

Deadman’s Beach, as it’s name forebodes, is not the safest of beaches at the best of times. Isolated, hard to get to & rock-strewn, it remains unpatrolled and few choose to swim there. The Authorities have merely put up a couple of big red warning signs suggesting easier ways to kill yourself. Legal liabilities resolved they wash their hands of the whole business, until it’s time to fish the bodies out of the Sea.

I laughed even more as I read the signs and continued to cackle as I stumbled on to the waters edge, largely because I could hear my Personal Assistants’ sensible voice in my head, scolding me for my foolishness all the way as I crossed the sands.

But I didn’t die. The water was warmer than the air as it turned out and I happily slithered & dived like a big seal in the channels amongst the rocks as the returning tide surged all around me. Even better, I realised as I was getting out that the wind had changed direction and as a result the water was filled with poisonous armadas of stinging blue-bottles but I hadn’t noticed! Hundreds of their corpses had been washed up at the waters edge,  but I’d not been stung even once as I blithely floated & flopped in the treacherous waters! Lucky me.

Yes it was a glorious day in watercolours of grey but soon the sun would set so I damply dried myself as best I might & smoked another smouldering joint in a sheltering grove of she-oaks & weather worn rock before reluctantly making my way back, taking the quick route via the roads. I passed Barry on the way back. He’d caught up with his Missus & Young One and paid me no mind. Just gave me a nod and went bounding off. The birds were doing their end-of-day roll-call as the shadows emerged and lengthened and the smell of cooking rose above the Island.

Soon the Stars would emerge in the clearing skies, and there would be no City lights to obscure them.

*

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Postscript; My Personal Assistant claimed Victory when I did in fact end up with a bad cold a couple of days later, but I maintain I picked it up in that touristy coffeeshop where she made us have Brunch the next morning.

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***The Reverend Hellfire is a practised Performance Poet

and an Ordained Minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

Now available in three flavours.

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Tags: alternate realities, Forest walks, humour, Minjerribah, poetry, prose poetry, stories, Tai Chi, the Bush, the environment