Thank God the ibuprofen had kicked in. The head she had woken up with that morning would not have coped with the dirt road. She hadn’t been able to see the potholes in the dappled light so she’d bashed and bumped her way along the crumbling dirt road to the summit. Forget her head, had her compact four wheel drive coped with it? It had made a horrible crunching noise as it bottomed out, and there was no mobile phone reception to call for help once she’d entered the forest.
Ibuprofen or not, she felt like shit. How many hours had she slept? Three, four at the most? And how many drinks had she downed at the Bar on the Hill? The last couple of hours before she’d staggered home to her flat were a blur. Note to self, Jessica Weston: no more than three drinks in one night. It was a vow she had made and broken many times. There was a bloke who had pestered her, she remembered, and she’d been irritated when he wouldn’t take no for an answer, but he must have done eventually given she’d woken up alone.
She’d been out for the count when the alarm rang at 6.30 a.m.
When she’d collapsed on her bed the night before, she had forgotten to turn the bloody thing off. She’d set it yesterday afternoon, so she’d wake up in time for her field trip into the Barringtons. My sober self getting the jump on my drunk self, she thought. Bloody birds, I hope they appreciate the efforts I am making to aid their survival.
The branches of the hide were digging into her back. She folded her rain jacket into a cushion and leant against it. It helped— a little. Fortunately, field work wasn’t particularly taxing.
It could be exciting if she caught a rare bird in her lens, but in the meantime, all she had to do was let the camera positioned just outside the entrance to the hide do its job. She was well prepared for a long wait. She had a blister pack of painkillers, a packet of sandwiches, lollies, some chocolate biscuits, a thermos of hot coffee and nothing to do but wait.
The day was warm for July, and the forest alive with birdsong.
Despite her hangover, it was lovely to be completely alone in this beautiful place. Alone except for the abundant wildlife. She closed her eyes and listened to the ecstatic sounds of the forest.
At least, that’s how it always sounded to her — as if the world was bursting with joy. Yes, she knew nature was red in tooth and claw, but every time she went out into the bush she felt this bliss. This was how the world was meant to be, and she was going to do everything she could to keep it that way. But she was increasingly worried about the birds; that was why she had studied ornithology and was now researching her PhD at Newcastle Uni, where she also worked as a tutor.
The track she’d followed to get to the hide wound through the rainforest to Burraga Swamp, the highest hanging peat bog in the southern hemisphere. The forest was still beautiful, but Jessica’s expert eye saw the deterioration that had followed the cuts to the National Parks and Wildlife Service budget. Tracks were no longer cleared regularly, for one thing. Weeds were encroaching, and if trees fell and blocked the path— and they fell all the time— they often weren’t moved for months, meaning walkers had to find another way around, trampling more of the forest’s undergrowth.
A rustle in said undergrowth caught her attention. The camera was still recording and Jessica wondered what she might catch on video. She was counting and recording the birds, of course, but she also had her eyes and ears open for illegal commercial logging or locals felling the odd red cedar or white mahogany for fence posts. She sat forward, on the alert, but the rustle stopped just as suddenly as it had started and she assumed whatever had caused it had moved away. She looked at her watch; not yet 10 a.m. She’d have at least four hours of good strong daylight. The birds were always more numerous and more vocal in the sun. With a bit of luck, she might even see a lyrebird.
Recording one of those doing its spectacular mating dance was number one on her bucket list. She settled back against her makeshift cushion once more and passed the time by testing her ability to identify each bird from its song: the chortling of fairy wrens, the long notes of whipbirds with their staccato ending, the harsh cries of yellow-tailed black cockatoos. Scrub wrens, shrike-thrushes, willie wagtails, grey fantails, magpies, butcherbirds, lyrebirds . . .
Jessica’s eyes snapped open. She must have drifted into sleep.
The sun was much higher in the sky, and she needed to pee.
She straightened her stiff legs and crawled out of the hide.
It was a relief to stand up and stretch. She headed back towards a fallen cedar she’d had to clamber over earlier and crouched behind it, slightly off the path, so she would be out of sight in the unlikely event another human came this way. She pulled down her shorts and squatted, positioning her butt at the top of a small rise so her wee would run downhill and away from her feet, as her mother had taught her. As always, the thought of her mother caused Jessica a pang. She still missed her.
She was rebuttoning her shorts when a sound froze her blood.
A woman. A woman screaming in pure terror. Screaming and sobbing — begging — out here, in this desolate place.
Jessica’s instinct was to turn and run to the car and get the hell out.
But she could not abandon the woman…
Nice
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