Here is this morning’s “nice” dream. I thought at last a dream with no politics or intrigue in.

The dream opens with a small convoy of three or four Land Rovers leaving a bitumen road and heading off down a dirt track. The cars have cargo rails on top and are laden for expedition. I am driving the rear car. We head down a track into an increasingly dense rain forest. The wet dust becomes more muddy. We reach a car-park staging post and must yomp to the residence huts. We load up with as much as we can carry. Leaving more stuff for future retrieval. We have enough to set up for the night and a few days. But we will be here for weeks so there will be more trips needed.

The footpath is pretty good but needs clearing on occasion. We approach a small compound which looks like a scout hut / ex-military training facility. It is arranged around a quadrangle. It is sometimes used for team building purposes. Because we are relatively few in number we will bed down in the main hut which has bunks for us all. There are several floor to ceiling curtain divides to make rooms. The last users have not tidied up after themselves. I put my pack down in the end “room” and a very young Pierot takes the bunk next to mine. The party is all young, twenties and thirties. They are students on an archaeological dig from university. The woman in charge is a slight small white woman of mid-thirties with freckles and light brown hair. It is her dig. They all want to go and see the dig site before dark. I stay at base making it ship shape and Bristol fashion as is my want. I make the beds and check the mosquito nets. I reattach the curtains. I put two pots of stew on to cook, one veggie one meat. I check the supplies.

They all come back excited from the dig site and Pierot wants to take a group photo which he does. In the creek below we can see serval canoes filled with Australian army “diggers” they have exited on the river out of a cave system and are proceeding downstream on a training exercise. Because of the state of the world the military is on alert. In a cliff on the other side of the creek I can see a command and control post cut out of the cliff. There are a couple of officer types in there.

The gang gather for food and I take the woman lead to one side. Her hair has gotten frizzy from the intense humidity of the place. I tell her that I used to do team training events like for UK GRAD. I organised these. I say that I am happy to organise the logistics of the stay. It is for her to say what she wants. She is very happy for me to do this. I am much older than everyone else. In one sense I am my current biological age and in an other many thousands of years old. It is because I am there that the aboriginal elders have allowed access to the dreamtime site which they are going to explore. This is because I am dreamtime too. Night falls suddenly, we eat and retire.

The next morning we all head down the trail to the dig site under the rainforest canopy. The sounds of the jungle are magnificent. We reach a descent through red-brown mud arches made out of dirt which look like we are going through an earth ribcage. The pillars on either side are a bit reminiscent of huge termite mounds.  I am completely at home here. The feeling is mysterious, dank and damp.  There is a kind of portent to the structure. The “rib cage” extends for a hundred metres or so downhill. The path is wet underfoot and we must be careful. As we near the bottom two of the young females are to one side of the path. They are a young white woman in a white t-shirt, khaki shorts with open shirt and a brown woman similarly dressed with a red t-shirt. She has jet black hair and is mixed race. They are both damp from humidity and sweat. They are young and hormonal. I pause by them in shorts and shirtless. I am lightly sweaty among my chest hair and on my biceps. They both look at me in a quasi-erotic lusty way. There is a kind of a spell. They are still prone to these feelings. I hold their gaze for  a while and the spell is broken. I know them to be from the “South”. I pass and they fall in following me further down towards the site.

The path veers down and flattens out. We are now next to a large plunge pool for the creek. The creek flows to the right of the pool which has depth and reeds. The water is crystal clear. Above the creek at the edge of the rain forest I can see kangaroos. Theses are unusual in the terrain. I gesture with finger to lips for silence and point at the kangaroos. I explain that they are a very rare type of wallaby found only here in the tropical northern part of Queensland. The wallabies have come to observe who is approaching the site and what they are doing. The wallabies are “chatting” amongst themselves.

The party continues on to a clearing near the river bank within a quasi-ring of eucalyptus which was a meeting place. There are burn sites there and the site extends in all directions. Here the rain forest is sparse because of the human use over the many years.

I look into the plunge pool and throw out a line. I pull in a big clump of weeds. I know that there are fish there especially near the margin of the creek flow. I should need to fish at the edge of the deep away from the weeds and near the flow. I know that Barramundi the fish is there. He is there with his family. Barramundi will let us have sustenance to add to our pot. But only I must fish for Barramundi in this spot. I see Barramundi the dreamtime. I see Barramundi  the river fish. I know Barramundi and he knows me.

I will feed the party and care for them over the weeks ahead.

The dream ends and I am happy that I have had an uncomplicated dream.

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