The rain seemed to get still harder as soon as I turned on the engine. It fell heavily and steadily and didn’t look like letting up. By the time we reached the Princes Highway the gutters were overflowing and my windshield wipers were only just coping. I turned on the radio and caught a news report about a low out to sea that was bringing the rain and throwing four-metre waves onto the eastern suburbs beaches. It was expected to last for twenty-four hours or more.
‘Great,’ Geoff said. ‘Shit, that escarpment cops it hard. It’ll be twice as bad as this down there.’
I said, ‘Maybe not,’ but feared he was right. I decided that it was a plus: if Talbot was holed up in a, shack under the escarpment, the rain would keep him there. With any luck he’d be so busy trying to stay dry he wouldn’t notice anyone coming up on him. I told Geoff this and he almost sneered at me.
‘Know that Clint Eastwood movie where he says to the crim something like, “It’s a question of luck and what you have to ask yourself is do you feel lucky?” Well, do you feel lucky, Cliff?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Punk.’
He laughed and his mood lifted.
My biggest worry was that the coast road from Stanwell Park would be closed and that I’d be forced to go on to the Bulli Pass and cut back to Scarborough. Of course there was always a chance that the road would be damaged in more than one place, and that the villages along that stretch – Coalcliff, Scarborough, Wombarra – would be isolated completely. I told myself it’d take more than a few hours of rain to do this but I wasn’t convinced. The further south we went the heavier the rain got and we started to pass cars stalled alongside the road or sitting it out. Some hope.
At Engadine the road was awash and we had to plough through water axle-deep. The car in front of me didn’t make it but I did. I waited for the fatal feel of water in the electrical system that’d bring this enterprise to an abrupt halt, but it didn’t come.
‘Good car,’ Geoff said. ‘Mine’d be stopped a couple of Ks back there.’
I grunted something in reply, but I was concentrating on just seeing and steering. The light was bad and the rain was like a gauzy curtain across the road. South of Engadine, the wind got up and the rain was driven against the car with a force that made you think you were out to sea in a twenty-knot gale with ten-metre waves. Even young, cool Geoff got alarmed.
‘What’s your visibility?’ he asked.
‘Poor to zero.’
‘Shouldn’t you stop?’
‘Probably.’
He said nothing more and my admiration for the kid continued to climb. I turned on the radio again and found that the National Park route to the Illawarra was closed at the weir. I pushed on at a snail’s pace to Stanwell Tops and was relieved that the rain and wind seemed to have eased slightly as we ran up to the junction that brings you down onto the coast road.
‘Ever been here before, Geoff?’
‘No.’
‘Great view from the top here on a good day.’
But this wasn’t anything like a good day; in fact it was more like the worst day. Instead of being able to see the indented coastline all the way down to Wollongong, all that was visible was sheeting-down rain and a surging, seething sea that thundered against the rocks as if it was determined to bring the whole escarpment down.
‘Jesus,’ Geoff said, ‘that’s wild.’
He had the right word. It was as if the forces that keep nature in check had suddenly let go and the pent-up energies of air and water were released in an assault upon the land.
‘We’ll never find anyone in this; Geoff said as I began the winding descent to the coast. Cautiously.
‘I told you. Look at it this way,’ I said. ‘If they’re here, they’re stuck here.’
‘I guess. It was madness to put a road and a railway through here. It should’ve gone inland.’
‘Tell that to the coal tycoons.’
He was right. The road clung to the very edge of the continent as if it had been stuck on with inferior glue. The sheer rock wall to the right in spots was crumbling and the signs that read FALLING ROCKS DO NOT STOP were a standing joke. ‘Of course falling rocks do not stop,’ people said. ‘Unless they hit something.’
It was no joke now. The cyclone fence that protected the road to some degree from the falling rocks had been breached in several places and there was muddy debris across the rain-slick surface. Nothing sizeable so far, but it made every twist and turn in the road hazardous. The failing light and the increased velocity of the rain and wind didn’t help.
‘How far?’ Geoff said and I could hear the fear in his voice.
‘Not far. A few more turns. This is Coalcliff. The most vulnerable bit. Get past this and we should be right as far as the road’s concerned.’
‘What about houses and that?’
‘It gets worse. Shut up and let me drive.’
We got around the last of the turns that had the rock wall threatening it and I could just see the ‘Clifton’ sign by the side of the road ahead. I heard Geoff breathe a sigh of relief and I didn’t blame him. I hadn’t said anything about it, but there hadn’t been another car in sight during our descent and I strongly suspected that motorists had been warned to stay clear of the area.
The villages of Clifton and Scarborough seemed to be huddled down against the rain. The waves breaking on the rocks below the road were throwing up a spray that was blending with the driving rain. I crawled along until I found the road that crossed the railway line and led up to the flats below the escarpment. Mud was washing down the road and several large cracks had already appeared in it.
‘Whole sections of this road are going to go,’ Geoff said. “The water undermines the road base which was probably pretty crappy stuff to start with. Jesus, look at that!’
I almost stopped and squinted through the downpour. People in yellow slickers were gathered around a fibro shack built on a steep slope. The shack was teetering. I crept past and over the drumming on the car roof heard the crack of timber and the sound of iron ripping away as the house left its moorings and slid towards the sea.
‘Christ knows what it’s going to be like in that slip area,’ I said. ‘If we can get there.’
A gust of wind tore several small trees from the ground and sent them spinning down a slope. Some larger trees were bent double against the gale and I felt the car rock several times before we turned a bend and were sheltered by a high rocky outcrop. The visibility was getting worse by the second as the light faded and the rain intensified. Suddenly the bitumen was gone. I skidded around a muddy bend, slid off the track and came to rest in a clump of sheoaks. The car stalled. I started the engine with some difficulty and gunned the motor. The wheels spun. Bogged.
My eyes had been adjusting to the murk and suddenly they didn’t need to. A lightning flash momentarily lit everything as bright as day. I could see the slushy track to our left that was like a running gutter, the sodden bark on the dripping trees. The light glinted on a cyclone fence that told me we were near the old mine entrance and not far from where the slip had demolished the cottages years ago. Further ahead I could see a torrent pouring across the track. Another flash showed me the dashboard of the car, my hands locked to the steering wheel and Geoff’s young, pale, stressed face. Then the thunder rolled in and there was no point in saying anything as the rain hammered on the roof.
When the thunder eased to a steady roar, I leaned towards Geoff and shouted, ‘I know where we are.’
‘Great.’
‘And we’re staying here a while. Go out there and we’re likely to be heading towards New Zealand.’
‘Are we safe here?’
It was as if night had fallen, suddenly and early. I could hardly see a thing a few metres from the car, it was rocking but not sliding and the sheltering and anchoring presence of the sheoaks was a comfort.
I waited until a gust of wind had passed us by, shaking the trees but not moving the car. ‘Nowhere’s safe in this,’ I shouted. ‘But this’s as good as anywhere.’
He rolled a cigarette and at that moment I knew I wouldn’t object to the soothing smells of tobacco and marijuana in the car. Hell, I might even take a drag.
‘Try the radio,’ Geoff said.
I turned the ignition on and hit the radio button. Static, lots of static, then nothing at all. I tried the interior
