“What time is it Jock?” Rod Buick asked Jock Brien as he came into the hut.
“It’s 9:30,” said Jock, longing up from the three-day-old newspaper he was reading.
It is February 16, 1994, and we are out in the Andrew Stream hut, midway through the Blue Mountain weaning muster. It appears that the circle is indeed small. When we left New Zealand on September 3, 1988, I swore that I would never be a musterer again. But circumstances have led, somehow, back to this little hut beside this chattering stream beneath the hills. Circumstances, too, have led us back out into the world, as later this year, on or around May 20, we fly out from Christchurch bound for England again.
Auckland, Sydney, LA, Detroit, New York, Amsterdam, and on and on and on… The siren call of travel has beckoned, and we have fallen spellbound at its feet. The call of the road, of adventure, of discovery, of the vagrant gipsy life, and the peregrine life. How could we resist?
FELICITY FELICITY, HOW SHALL I SAY IT, IS QUAFFED OUT OF A GOLDEN CUP IN EVERY LATITUDE. THE FLAVOUR IS WITH YOU, WITH YOU ALONE, AND YOU CAN MAKE IT AS INTOXICATING AS YOU PLEASE.
– Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
While I write in my diary, the other musterers drift off to bed in the bunkhouse. As the daylight fades, I sit alone reading by the light of a single candle. It illuminates the book’s pages and a corner of the scarred, wooden table, which is then lost in the shadows of the hut. In the blackened fireplace, the last embers of the fire crackle beneath a selection of cast iron pots and a kettle. Outside in the gathering dusk, the river leaps between the rocks of its bed with a noise like a distant cheering crowd. The merest breeze stirs the leaves of the trees overhanging the riverbank. All else is silent. My eyes move back and forth across the page, words and phrases telling a story of far-off places, languid afternoons, and sultry evenings. I close my eyes and drift slowly out into the seas around Java.
CurseOfTheTraveller 