687_Sharples1987_TheLostRiver-split

ecame a part of my aspirations. I had
dreamed and schemed for years, until a
final momentous effort had taken me
there. There was no thought of turning
back; these were the great days.
We had climbed a scrubby, rarelyvisited
ridge, stumbling under 40 kilogram
packs, then descended again through a
tangled hell of intertwined pandanni and
ti-tree to finally drop steeply and perilously
to the river, whose tortuous rocky waters
greeted us at the bottom of a narrow
defile.
The strange familiarity of the reality
which greeted us after all those years was
a sensation difficult to describe. For me,
the river had always held an aura of
ultimate mystery and unattainability. And
yet, here we were, with sunlight streaming
through green trees on to normal water
and solid rocks. There was no otherworldliness
in the place. The exotic could
still be felt, however, in another sense. The
place was remote, primeval. Being there
was the mystery, the core of our yearning
for experience. I had fantasized how it
would be to finally reach the ocean after
a journey down such a river. At last I was
doing it.
To our knowledge, only three parties
had been through the gorge of the river
before, and their cryptic stories only
heightened the aura of uncertainty and
difficulty surrounding the place. Few
people had any desire or notion of going
there.
The mysterious, remote, and littlevisited
hold an irresistible fascination for
me. I had dreamed of precipitous crags
and wet misty forests that had never
known humans. Above all, carved deep in
my imagination, there flowed an
archetypal river in a timeless journey from
a shrouded misty hinterland, through
terrifying gorges and cataracts, then
winding through a vast sea of lowland
forest before emerging at last on a lonely
coast, lost between sand and seagull.
There occasional travellers might cross its
mouth, trailing their fragile thoughts and
purposes unknowingly across the shadow
of the tremendous secret that was the
dark and silent river.
For four days we struggled down the
eight kilometres of gorge, two ephemeral
beings delicately balancing our existence
against the awesome indifference of the
river. Every step of the way was a trial, a
contest with rock and water. There was
always the fear of a final impassable
obstacle, but there is a determination
which comes of having no means of
turning back, and we always succeeded
in continuing our journey.
In the upstream part of its gorge the
river flows through a tight slot roofed over
with fallen boulders. We could not see
whether this tunnel was passable, but to
carry on we had to leap over a small
cascade into a pool below. We did so, and
were relieved to find that we could
proceed; we might not have been able to
climb back up the cascade had the tunnel
been blocked.
34 WILD
A treacherous slime coated the awkward
rocks. We would wade through pools
clutching our inflatables (a Li-Lo and a
small rubber raft) before us until we had
to clamber wetly over the boulders,
delicately balancing and creeping from
rock to rock with our 40 kilogram packs
on our backs, all the time trying to avoid
slipping on the frictionless slime. Only
rarely were the pools big enough to float
across on our inflatables, but when they
were, the vertical rock walls enclosing the
river generally made flotation the only
method of progress.
In the event of flood the vertical walls
of the gorge would make escape
impossible in most places; a hapless
person caught here in high water could
spend days cramped on a tiny wet ledge
somewhere above the torrent.
Several times we tenuously negotiated
drops up which we could hardly have
returned without climbing gear. Each
irreversible move strengthened our
downstream momentum.
One drizzling morning we stumbled
upon a small clearing in the wet forest at
a point where the river banks flattened out
beside a still, dark pool. The faint
impression of an old campfire told us that
this was a campsite used by one of the
parties which had preceded us down the
Sharples contemplates the tranquility of his
surroundings. in the second gorge. Dixon. Right,
dreamlike, precipitous crags soared to misty heights.
Sharples
gorge. it was the only sign of previous
human passage we saw in this remote and
forbidding place.
Further downstream the entire river
flowed for some distance beneath a bed
of gigantic boulders. over the top of which
we clambered. it was eerie to walk along
the floor of the gorge with no sight or
sound of water.
Finally, on our fourth day in the gorge,
we reached the portals through which the
river flows out on to the flat lowlands. A
final high ridge is cut by a deep and
dramatic chasm. After wondering about
this place for so many years it was almost
a shock to touch the reality of being there.
With a kind of reverence we entered the
chasm.
The day was a madness of continually
alternating periods of pelting rain and
brilliant sunshine. As we entered the
chasm itself, the sun emerged, shining
brilliantly from the rain-drenched rocks,
and creating a glistening El Dorado. We
basked on rocks, soaking up a few
minutes of warmth before the rain closed
in again.
The actual chasm was a relatively
straightforward passage, but below it the
river continued to drop steeply for a
kilometre or so before reaching the
lowlands. The remainder of the day was
a delirious hell of rain and sunshine,
cascades and giant slippery boulders.
Several hundred metres below the main