Exit Next Left

Exit next left

27 December 2001

On Christmas day we drove along the Western Highway to my Brother’s place out of town. The freeway is a well-worn path for me, having travelled on it for many years with work.

As the freeway leaves the city, it climbs into higher country, through a spur of the Great Dividing Range known as the Pentland Hills. During spring, the hills are verdant and alive. In summer at sunset they take a spectacular golden glow against sombre thunderclouds. The hills are cleared as farmland, but are very steep and littered with gorges, valleys and crannies. They seem to lead into scrub which becomes heavy forest and low mountains in the distance. They are windy, wild, stunning – and enticing.

Every time I speed down the freeway, I spot the Pentland Hills Road exit. The road is tiny and meanders as if carved unwillingly from the hills. From there it quickly disappears to parts unseen. For many years, I’ve felt the itchy desire to “just once” take that turnoff and explore its path. I imagine small hamlets, one-pub towns, farms clinging to windy, unforgiving cliffs. I see the possibility of a pristine jewel of a creek feeding a small waterfall and spilling into a hidden pond. Perhaps a special winery, restaurant or Bed and Breakfast hides away from the thousands of cars roaring down the path most travelled. Other times I see it as a lonely path struggling through the hills, leading to nothing of consequence but withering to “Brown’s Lane” and other farm tracks. Undaunted, I would not be disappointed in that. Just taking the turnoff as a flight of fancy would be enough.

Sad to say, Christmas day, like every other, I flew by that exit again. Each time I pass I promise myself; “One day I will…” A little voice whispers “Pierre, you are middle aged. You’ve looked at that road for the better part of 20 years. Follow your instincts and take the turnoff!”

Another voice interrupts with reasonable rationality; “You ARE a middle-aged man with commitments; you can’t just drop everything and go. What would happen if every time you had a whim, you took it?”

What would happen, indeed?

Back home it is easy to get busy and forget until next I head down that highway.  It would be a mistake to believe this whim is not important enough to me. On my death bed, the Pentland Hills Road exit and the lost opportunity to find what lies beyond may be my one regret

Is it true life gets too busy to be curious? It was not always so. While on shift work years ago, at the end of a bitter winter, I felt the lure of a whim and headed to the Dandenong ranges for the day. At the foothills, a sign to Ferntree Gully National Park branched off the main road. I wondered why I had never seen it before and turned in. It was a weekday and the car park was deserted. Armed with a warm jacket and the camera, my constant companion, I trudged the benign walking tracks in sweet solitude. I found hidden brooks fed by snow-melt, early spring flowers in fern groves shielded from the main road only metres away. My ‘discovery’ was crowned by a magnificent old gum tree standing proudly in a clearing. At its extremity, it touched the tips of trees that leaned towards it in awe. Its scale, silence and scent of eucalyptus stunned me into stillness. My photo did not do the scene justice, but it stands framed today as a reminder of the joy in giving into a whim.

I didn’t matter that this little forest stands on the edge of suburbia. I paved my own journey and that was enough. It will live with me forever. 

Of course I won’t mention the times I followed my nose and ended up bogged in a flooded creek out the back of Werribee, covered in mud and thumbing a lift home. Whims can surprise in more ways than one, such is their attraction. I did something I thought I would never do. If the outcome didn’t turn out quite so wonderful, a good story lives forever.

It annoys me when some prat at a party or dinner demolishes these memories with; “Oh yes, that bit of scrub, we go there every year, get drunk and pee on that tree.” Or, “I know old Leakes road. Council sealed it and diverted the creek bed through a pipe last May.” Some folk have no romance for discovery.

I am famous in my family for unplanned wanderlust - it is the source of many laughing memories and groans. It has been too long between discoveries. Something is calling the man that takes those turnoffs once in a while. I suspect the Pentland Hills Road exit is waiting patiently for him.

Now to find those few hours.