Patagonia

The bark met three converged currents in approaching Nguthungulli; the peaks to become Juan and Julia, then eventually Julian.

The week post-Rivers Run, paddlers Johanna Brebner and Elliot Foote, with foiler Zane Westwood, approached the rocks no different to Cook; same course downwind, by the lee from the Cape for the far point, in this case cut to Hastings Point and a 50km length then further cut to Black Rock. They had befallen Nguthungulli's trap. Nothing if not driven, it was the second time running that Brebner in particular had felt Nguthungulli. As a backyard challenge starting in docile early spring setting for what would normally be a 10-hour ultra marathon, latter legs wore spectacularly biting change.

“If you think in your mind that you can do something and you feel in your heart that it's possible, then the only thing left is to do it. Think it, feel it, do it.” – Dennis Rastovich

“Rivers are magnets for the imagination, for conscious pondering and subconscious dreams, thrills and fears.” – Mark Twain

To a student of all things marine, the look of the water was as good as it got. The vibe never lied to David Rastovich. It was the end of a winter of solid rains. The creek in front of Dave’s house was clean, despite the height after the flush-throughs. Here, at the very headwater of Upper North Creek, a veritable meandering river ran. The last time such weather swept over the Far North Coast was 1892 and the record was about to go. in plain sight from his balcony, Dave watched a phenomenon as common as crows back then but a first in his time living here: two platypuses seemed to be shopping for habitat.

A friend in Riley Marcon got the call of his young career with the creek still rising. "Come up. We're having a go at it," said Dave, or words to the effect. Marcon's prime qualities: youth, fitness. He worked with one of the river care groups in the Richmond River from Woodburn through Ballina and the Brunswick River from Brunswick Heads to Mullumbimby. Riley got to the gate at Dave’s on this tempest of a day and waded a clunker-paddler to the house. Dave awaited with a derigged old sailboard drifting at the bottom of his stairs. They set off down the swollen creek, on the route that maybe gave rise to Lennox-Byron Bay.

A novel could be shaped on the remains of this day. Twenty-eight kilometres into the unknown, part Twain, part Conrad, perhaps part Dave himself. The creek was a spirit tendril at times above fence line, under main to minor road, straight down the barrel of a mighty plain, into the hidden forest of North Creek mangroves as tall as old figs still far from the Richmond, dodging old wharf stumps, rock walls and punt lines, visceral attachments to depth of place now and then, and past fringes of the once-pristine Arakwal island homeland to the sea. Doubtful if the entire creek system had been properly traversed in a hundred years.

Dave’s trip was unknown to me, stopping by a week later. I was also oblivious to gazetted fact of Dave's stream having importance. I was there for food, or to talk about it. He had a “backyard ultra” on the go and I was apparently in charge of catering. Driving in, there was no sign of might of stream, just hill to valley, bush to meadow, bush, bush. At the gate a dry track fed in. A creek appeared to end in two ponds either side. The North Coast could be this way. Part comedian, part dead set, Dave thought I might cook up a mess of base sustenance in homage to our Chile trip back in October 2002 with Jack McCoy, where oats had been key.

Whilst there, physically just standing on his track, Dave’s beaming mood seemed tied into offbeat cinema. It was the look of a marvel. The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster came to mind, 1968 Hollywood stabbing post-McCarthyism in introspection. Google the one-line synopsis: “A prophetic modernist fable set in a fading Eden.” So too The Seven Faces of Dr Lao, same era, Tony Randall; both tied to a child's eyes in finality, the latter in a dry desert creek bed, willing the waters to rise. Dave's orchestrations, dogged in purity if not quixotic in application.

"The river was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise." - Mark Twain

The Rivers Run – Dave's backyard ultra – appeared part celebration. Six months later, local rivers had bounced back from the blackwater marine life disaster of Cyclone Alfred. That monster four-day swell; the singular tidal nature of these swells pushing up-river, the Richmond double-swollen from up-river run-off unable to empty to the sea. Alfred's sou’-eastern arm producing wind and rain peaking directly up North Creek from 11pm to 7am to decimate flora, all to drain into the Richmond estuary. It set the severe hypoxia to follow from the autumn heat. The Mighty Richmond, jammed at the mouth, putrefied for months.

The Rivers Run – Ballina to Brunswick, Nyangbal to Durrumbil. It was supported by those river groups who got stuck in the most in the wake of Alfred – OzFish Unlimited, Revive the Northern Rivers, Positive Change for Marine Life and Richmond Riverkeeper. It was no race, yet the run (Richmond River mouth to Lennox boat ramp), the paddle (Lennox boat ramp to Broken Head), the run (Broken Head to Wategos), the swim (Wategos to Byron Main) and the paddle (Byron Main to Brunswick River mouth) totalled a 10-hour commitment to serious physiological taxation. Some, like Dave, couldn't run a step due to ligament damage leading in. Forced to engage saltwater the entirety, the weather would wreak havoc.

In the spirit of Dave's minimalist lifestyle, costings of my Rivers Run catering budget – 1.25kg oats $3.50, salt $0.30, oat milk $2 (on special), crock pot and ladle $1.20 (tip shop), coconut sugar $1.50, water no charge. Total $8.50, bill waived. Oats; slow burning, long lasting. Few know Mel Gibson owed a career to oats. Braveheart. Bannockburn. The battle was fought over an oat field; oat pouches and small metal cooking plates were taken into battle. The romantic translation of Battle of Bannockburn: Bloody Oat Feld by Brook.

The Bannock – residue oat biscuit – kept the Scots at work in the industrial revolution. Scottish miners, wee children or old men before their time – oats. Seventeen-hour days from 3am. Standard morning of a mother of the 1860s of 10, 12, sometime 15 working offspring four years and up: 10pm stoke stove, soak oats, wash sooty clothes/11pm wring clothes, hang above stove/midnight stir oats with spurtle (wooden club)/1am stir oats/2am stir oats. Key to miner/minor oats: salt to stop cramping. Traditional dining posture: oats ladled into the hands, consumed in fixed standing position or when walking to the mine after the first shift horn.

To the 47 people who tackled some or all of the Rivers Run trek, salutations. And to the four who may have stuffed the date, one salutes the thought alone. Dave's Sergeant at Arms and post-DvS performance board builder, Gary McNeil was site administrator. Application to the matter at hand as clipboard administrator took exhausting diligence. Five stages, four pages of entrants, five boxes each, a three-letter word 'OUT' if unable to proceed. No chat with front runners storming in, just a tick followed by lonely sequential wait for battlers, not to mention Captain Luke of the SS Minnow at rear, the safety boat doing one knot against the current.

I knew the timing for stop one at the Lennox boat ramp, but as lost in zen goes I couldn't stop stirring the oats. I reached the sand as support crews were enjoying a brilliant morning. Watercraft, however, were 50 metres off the beach, heading north. With nothing to do but muse, I was four years old again. The school bus was coming down the hill. First time. I held that little threepence coin given by Mum so close to my eyes and nose that I had an epiphany. "It just might fit up there." When the bus pulled up the man said, "Where is your fare?" I yelled back, "It's up my nose!" The children laughed and the bus left without me.

The paddlers weren't going to beat me to Broken Head. I had my dog with me as I drove in. I blatantly broke the law by risking the fine to set up down front. With two planks of wood on steel racking, my gleaming pot of oats warming in the sun, I left to secure my pal's distant happy place in the shade. I started walking back and a traveller said, “Hello” like he knew me and asked the question (I mean, truly). "What was it like paddling out at Bells that day?" Well, like a threepence up my nose, this changed things, but rather than me talk about my story I asked his take on that day – Big Bells 1981.

At Broken there was the imagery of the Thorburn father and son left behind at the end of Seven Mile Beach with the wind now picking up. They called it quits on their proud, if cumbersome double ski in valiant discretion. Had they proceeded into a building frontal wind, trouble. Their long walk back to salvation hung in the wind. Another involved 10 seconds of Dave. The look in his eyes as oats – 23 years in the making – were ladled into his hands then down his throat. Oh, the gastronomic delight of the long-distance paddler, but then his eyes widened further. Brownies, fresh, and cut bite sized.

The party split beyond Broken, to Wategos, choice of sea or land. For most, land. For some – led by Dave – water all the way, by far the harder yard. Reaching Broken, the nor’-wester was up. By the Cape, Nguthungulli was pulling the remnant of a southern blizzard off the range straight at them. Into the butt and eventually around to normally placid Little Wategos took last vestiges of energy. Yet, as related by Brebner following her longer paddle the following week, "The first surprise of reserves in the lungs at times like these taps a small new world.”

At Big Wategos, the gathering reunited. The stuffed and buggered and the stuffed and willing. The willing were set to take a brutal flogging.

The gale was now west-veering-sou-west, gusting to storm force. It was a swim taking minimum 90 minutes to Byron Main, each stroke being into the teeth of severe chop. The distant safety launch eventually came into view like a fat detached tick unable to crawl. The swimming remnants should've packed it in, treading water for 10 minutes, trying to get into The Pass. I think of Sunset Beach 1990, eventually won by Nick Wood after the final was pulled, hit by gale force kona. One imagines Des Renford caked in grease in English Channel conditions like this, but not the Saturday punter. Marshallier Gary duly sought last leg masochists at Main, west wind now 25-knots-plus, sun dropping low.

Back in the hills feeding the animals, it was getting late, gusts still trying to prove winter's end wrong. Those snow clouds up from Guyra way still hung around on this otherwise blue-sky day. I drove on up to Brunswick-Durrumbil at 5.15pm to find Dave coming over the railing at Torakina beach, inside the river. He'd paddled the inside line on the bend. Still pulled seaward. Zane the foil maestro took the straighter line but needed final assistance from the SS Minnow. Up the south leg of the groyne a diehard crew of about 20 were gathered, somehow still in good fettle, chowing on pizza in the fading light. Those who somehow stuck at it mostly ran the beach, outrageous fortitude in itself.

Not such a climactic ending really; unless just the beginning.

Photography by Liam O'Brien, Dominic Sullivan and Mark Isaac.

This story features in Roaring Journals, Edition Two:order your copy here.