Big M
I have never seen anyone’s ashes before and I find myself wondering about the minutiae. What colour are they? How big will the container be? I am standing outside my house; it is a little after five o’clock in the morning on ANZAC day. The Southern Cross is visible in the clear sky, which bodes well for our trip.
Although Simon and I haven’t climbed for a couple of years the road to Mt Arapiles is still very familiar. We notice small changes- the public toilets in Beaufort have been moved, there’s some funny graffiti on a sign just outside Horsham. We talk a bit, but not much, about some of Simon’s climbing trips with Morgan.
The only time I ever met Morgan was on a weeklong climbing trip to Mt Buffalo. He’d bought a big new tent and christened it the Taj Mahal. Simon and the others who knew him from school in Sydney teasingly called him ‘Big M’ (little organ), a schoolyard gibe that they all enjoyed.
On our first day there Morgan, Simon and I climbed Maharajah on the Cathedral, topping out in the afternoon sunshine as below us a storm raced down the Ovens and Buckland valleys. Later in the week we got up early and tackled Where Angels Fear to Tread, a stunning 300 metre crack climb up the southern wall of the gorge. Morgan’s climbing, like his humour, was effortless.
I would hear news of him from time to time over the years that followed- the writing, the surfing, the awards, but we didn’t ever meet again.
We get out of the car at the Pines campsite at the base of Mt Arapiles just before nine o’clock and start to rack up. We decide on a Joe Simpson-style ascent, keeping the weight down to maximise ease and speed. The ashes are in a little film canister in Simon’s pocket.
Amazingly, given its popularity, we are the first group heading up the Bard today. A guy on his own wanders up and asks if we mind him watching. He’s visiting because someone he knew died climbing here last year.
Morgan died in a plane crash in Indonesia.
Simon uses his knee while leading the first pitch, an uncharacteristic and unsettling display of nerves and poor style. I’m OK seconding but already feeling edgy about the lead. If Bard is the jewel in the crown for easy climbs at Mt Arapiles, the second pitch is a black diamond- a short traverse across a cramped but beautifully exposed ledge. I make my way out onto the ledge and get a couple of pieces of gear in. My mouth is dry and I’m breathing hard as I squeeze past the under-cling, but still a part of my mind is calm and confident. Physically I know that this is well within my range. I lean out and reach up to find the holds above the ledge and complete the pitch smoothly.
Simon comes across and joins me at the belay. We’re both still a bit freaked but have settled into our routine now. He runs the next two pitches together, giving me time to sit back, take in the view and reflect on why we’re here.
The beautiful duality of climbing is that you spend a lot of your time alone yet always responsible for, and trusting your life to, someone else. A bond is formed.
I join Simon on the ledge at the top of the Bard. The panorama before us takes in Mitre Lake, a vast curve of the Wimmera and the distant Grampians. This is the place we have chosen to say farewell.
Morgan’s ashes are a greyish brown dust. The wind carries them away.
He was a friend and climbing partner. We were lucky to know him. We will miss him.
Vale Morgan Mellish.
Back to school: Week one in prep
Like a couple of other occasional contributors to this site I too have gone back to school. For me it’s a much-anticipated and oft-postponed foray into the world of primary teaching.
After several weeks of sitting at my computer or table reading textbooks and journal articles (I’m studying by correspondence with an interstate university) it was good last week to spend a couple of days in the prep room of a local state school- my first of what will be 96 days of teaching rounds this year.
Highlight- reading ‘The Gingerbread Man’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ to the kids just before home time on Friday.
Lowlight- am already on very good terms with the photocopier.
Open letter to Kevin Andrews MP, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
Dear Mr Andrews,
Please do not allow the 21 unprotected Afghan asylum seekers on Lombok to be forced back to a war zone.
It would be inhumane to force the return of Hazara Afghan asylum seekers at a time when the United States of America and Australia are planning to send more troops to Afghanistan to curb the violence of the increasing Taliban insurgence. The Taliban is notorious for persecuting the Hazara minority.
The 2006 Edmund Rice Report established that a number of asylum seekers who had been coerced into returning to Afghanistan had been killed or had to flee the country again after being tortured and otherwise mistreated. One Hazara Afghan deported after 16 months in Australian detention, despite his pleas that he and his family would be killed, lost his two children, aged six and nine. A grenade was dropped on their house four months after they returned to Afghanistan.
The families and single people presently threatened put their lives in the hands of people smugglers to escape the torture and killings of the Taliban. They arrived in Ashmore Reef in 2001 but were forced back to Indonesia by the Australian navy then taken to Lombok.
They have lived there for over five years without the basic human rights of work, travel, family reunion or study. For unstated reasons, these 21 people were not granted refugee status and are now illegal immigrants in Indonesia; a country which has not signed the Refugee Convention. They are now vulnerable to arrest and have been threatened with quarantine, where families, including babies, have reported being locked up in a single room without a mattress, on starvation rations, for an indefinite period of time.
I ask that the 21 women, men and children, who have suffered uncertainty and deprivation on Lombok for over five years, be allowed to share their culture and work skills with the Australian society as they are fairly assessed for refugee status and become valuable, contributing members of our community.
Yours sincerely,
rhinocerotic
Rhinocerotic is my favourite word and sadly it is a word that is not used very often.
My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (only 2 volumes or 2,672 pages) offers the following definition:
“Rhinocerotic a. of, belonging to, characteristic of, or resembling the Rhinoceros.”
So for example you might say, “Have you seen the latest model Humvee? It is absolutely rhinocerotic.”