Part of the Ridge

Over the ridge I looked down, down, down. A few lone stones bounced off the edge and, in their wake, the dust kicked up caught rays of sunlight beaming from overhead. In the sunny Australian desert, it was easy to feel the heatwaves shimmering up from underneath as my sunglasses threatened to fall off my nose and slide into the gorge below. But still, I pulled myself back and turned to face the bulldozer.

‘Out of the way, mate!’ came the driver’s yell.

‘In your dreams!’ I retorted.

The chains that held me to the tree clinked against my shirt and reflected that penetrating sun overheard, creating a sunspot on the window of the bulldozer in front of me. To my right, just metres away, the upper half of the red cliff-face towered like a stern god, watching and judging the puny humans below, one of whom was trying to threaten His domain, one trying to save it.

‘Inimitable progress,’ the driver shouted at me.

‘Inimitable splendour,’ I whispered back.

I remembered playing marbles under the shade of the tree when I was eight years old. In the uneven dirt track filled with cracks, Abby would dance around below me as I scampered up the trunk to the branches, grabbing pears and throwing them at her as she would nimbly dodge and laugh upward at me. Even the memory of the tinkling of her golden laughter as she caught some of the pears and ate them cheekily below me was making me smile now and remember what I was fighting for.

If they wanted to tear the tree down to build a highway, they’d be taking me with it.

‘This tree is as much a part of the ridge as everything else you see around us,’ I yelled at the driver. ‘You start mowing down everything in your path and then what?’

‘Then we cut twenty minutes off an outback drive, mate,’ said the driver. ‘Approval’s gone through. Money’s been paid out. What else d’you want?’

There was Dad, rolling the tubes up the hill so we could jump in, launch off the ridge and go barrelling down the side. There was Barry and Sheila, toasting beside me while the moon stretched out above us as we celebrated finishing our apprenticeships. There was, also, at least three kangaroos that we scurried up the trunk to hide from.

There was another reason, though I didn’t want to say it. I remembered vividly, as Abby, now grown up as was I, approached me slowly as I stood paralysed below the branches. That twinkling laugh emanated from her again as her lips parted and came to meet mine …

‘Oy!’

The yell ripped me from my reminiscence. I watched stoically as the driver returned to the dozer, strapped himself in and revved the engine.

Then, at last, the glint of the sun off a window in the distance.

‘Here come the press, mate!’ I yelled at the driver. ‘What are you gonna say to them?’

At least three black sedans came trundling over the slope and rocketed toward us. Hanging off the side of one of them was a cameraman with his equipment out, already recording us from a distance as a familiar figure sat in the front seat.

‘Abby,’ I breathed.

The call I had placed that morning to her studio had finally gotten through. Now that the media had wind of the story, it was a chance for the forces of artificial nature to take their course. The sedans pulled to a stop and out came at least four reporters brandishing questions at the poor dozer driver.

But behind them all I watched her approach me, supremely unrushed. She came close with her stilettos expertly handling the rough surface. Near me, she bent and picked up a pear.

‘Gave him the old “part of the ridge” spiel, did you?’ she said casually, taking a munch.

I reached up heavily through my chains to doff my sunnies and give her a cocky glance. ‘Worked on you,’ I smiled.