The pathway South

A Heysen Trail story

So close now. So close. It’s so tangible I feel I can literally reach out and touch the end of the lockdown. But no excitement. Not yet. It’s all too tenuous. Like fairy floss on a hot day. These hopes could all sink to nothing. The precipice between success and failure is a knife edge. And all you can do is drift…And get a vaccine. Go and get a bloody vaccine!

Well. I’ve now completed the four directions of the compass. The pathway South a mix of concrete businesses, cozy suburban streets, railway lines and parkways.

I love the little sandstone and rock houses of Adelaide. So neat, solid and natural. Each defined by the differences in stone type, garden display, lead lighting, and often, artwork.

At the 2.5km mark, I am surprised again by a group of Norfolk pines. There really aren’t many of them here in the city streets. So finding them at the limit of where I am able to travel over the last couple of days feels like a sign. Just for me.

I walk through pathways next to a railway line. A carpet of yellow flowers pops bright on a sunny rise. I enter an interpretive indigenous walking track called “Wirranendi”. A poem catches my eye.

“Look up into silhouettes of branches

Where magpies sing tidings

Cross the dry plains

Travel between rocks

Witness the abyss

Follow yourself in

Close your eyes

Still your mind for a while

Moon floats high in a white sky

Swallow memory and learn

The wind chases spirits through here”

Kimberley Mann

Back to the room to wait out the rest of the day.