Running with the Mobs

The drive from Honeysuckle took barely twenty minutes, the road winding deeper into Namadgi's bushland before delivering Anth to his second destination. Orroral Campground lay empty on arrival, not a single vehicle occupying the cleared sites scattered among the trees. This solitude felt like a gift, the freedom to circle slowly and select the perfect position without negotiation or compromise.

With only one night planned here, solar orientation mattered less than usual. A fortunate thing, since Ghost Gums dominated this campground too, their pale trunks and spreading canopies creating dappled shade that would challenge any panel's efficiency. Anth chose his spot for aesthetics rather than practicality, positioning the bus where morning light would filter through white bark and eucalyptus leaves.

A walking track led toward the local waterhole, and curiosity pulled him along its winding path. The bush closed in with the particular intimacy of Australian scrubland, visibility limited to metres rather than horizons. Then, cutting through the birdsong and wind-rustled leaves, came a sound utterly out of place: metal striking metal, an intermittent clang that echoed through the landscape with industrial insistence.

Anth paused, orienting himself toward the source. The sound carried no rhythm, no pattern that suggested human activity, yet it persisted with mechanical regularity. The mystery deepened with each step until a bend in the track revealed its source. An old windmill stood among encroaching trees, rusted to the colour of dried blood, its mechanisms seized by decades of neglect. Yet the wind still found purchase on its broken blades, spinning the remnants just enough to produce that haunting percussion. Nature reclaiming machinery, using it as instrument in her own composition.

Through the afternoon, the campground's solitude gradually eroded. Vehicles arrived in ones and twos, their occupants claiming sites with the particular care of those who'd driven the distance. Yet even at its busiest, Orroral remained manageable, nothing like the overwhelming crowds at The Cotter the previous week. The benefits of driving further made themselves apparent in the space between camps, the quiet that persisted despite increased numbers.

Late afternoon brought restlessness. The kind that settles into muscles too long unused, demanding release. Anth consulted his digital map, tracing a walking track that promised to emerge onto open flats. Perfect terrain for a run. He set off as the sun began its descent, legs finding rhythm on the narrow trail.

Twenty minutes of steady effort, lungs working, sweat beginning to bead, and then the trees parted. The open flat stretched before him, golden in the late light, and grazing upon it were eastern grey kangaroos. A few at first, heads lifting from their feast to regard this sweating intruder. Then more, and more still, the numbers multiplying as Anth's eyes adjusted to the scale of the scene. Hundreds of them, mobs merging into mobs, stretching toward the distant tree line in an unbroken sea of grey fur and watching eyes.

He ran among them, maintaining enough distance to avoid startling them into flight. The kangaroos tracked his progress with alert curiosity, only bounding away when he veered too close. The urge to continue, to run until the mobs ended and some boundary revealed itself, pulled strongly. But the sun had begun its final descent, painting everything amber, and the prospect of navigating back through unfamiliar bush in darkness held no appeal.

The return journey proved trickier than anticipated. The turnoff back into the trees looked different from this direction, and Anth overshot it entirely, adding frustrating minutes to his backtrack before the correct path revealed itself. Eventually the bus emerged through the foliage, a welcome beacon of home amid the Ghost Gums.

He arrived back covered in sweat but thrumming with the particular exhilaration that only physical exertion in wild places provides. More vehicles had gathered during his absence, but none had encroached too close to his chosen spot. A quick rinse stripped away the salt and dust, simple food satisfied the hunger that running had awakened, and sleep came easily that night. The kind of deep, dreamless rest earned through honest exhaustion, surrounded by Ghost Gums and the memory of hundreds of kangaroos watching him run through their evening grazing grounds.Read more