Well it’s taken me longer than expected to get around to this, and I’m still not sure what I going to say but I’ll let it roll and see where it takes me.

When I first thought about including this section I’d imagined sitting by a fire in the outback somewhere, gazing at the stars and contemplating the meaning of life…and all that.

The reality is that I’m sitting in the most unexpected and wonderful campsite, by a creek, in a rainforest up in the mountains behind Mackay. I never expected to end up here, it was pure serendipity – a random act at the end of a daisy chain of unrelated events. But here I am and I couldn’t be happier!

I’ve been on the road now for about eight weeks and whilst I’ve spent quite a lot of time on my own for whatever reason I haven’t felt inclined to introspection. Up until now I’ve been to preoccupied with planning where to go next, meeting people – old friends and new, writing my other journals and keeping up to date with what’s going on in the World. Keeping busy is a good way to save you from yourself!

So what changed today….

I stayed at Cape Hillsborough last night and decided to get up before sunrise and walk to Andrews point. I know for sure I was the first to walk this track today because of the spider webs I kept walking into, but that didn’t seem to matter. For the first time on this trip I was in a contemplative space.

I was by myself and aware that it was just me and the birds, and lizards and wallabies and…the place I was in, the place we were sharing. Another new day in this special place – a place we call earth!

And that got me thinking, this moment in time, this unique set of circumstances that happen every second of every day for every living thing…

Unlike most of the places I’ve been so far this trip this part of Australia feels new, the landscape is still sharp and raw, and the rocks and caves feel like they have only recently been cool enough to touch. Yet even though this is new earth, in relative terms, in human terms, in living terms it is incredibly old, or alternatively we, all the living things we share this time and place with are fleeting, we know this but we don’t often feel it.

But this time for me it felt different, I was at peace with the World and felt a great communion with everything around me, and appreciation of this unique moment in time.

Which got me to thinking about time, which transported me back to a moment exactly fifty years ago, sitting on the main staircase at Wesley College with a couple of new best friends at about 2 or 3.00am, feeling the intellectual liberation that only a nineteen year old approaching the end of first year at university can feel. And thinking about my father, who had probably sat on these same stairs about thirty year before me…who’d died six years earlier. The strange thing was that being the age I was at the time, thirteen, I never really missed him or thought about him too much, but now, and here, I felt somehow connected.

So this was the background to what seemed like a profound thought that occurred to me then, fifty years ago: What if time ran on a vertical axis instead of what is generally thought of as a horizontal plane? What if we moved through time rather than our perception of time passing us by – a moment in time being lost forever as the river of time flows ever onward? What if there was no future or past, just one eternal present and everything that has or will happen was happening now, in this instant like the colours of a rainbow, perfectly graduated and blending into each other but ultimately making up the full spectrum of every colour imaginable? Infinite like the universe itself!

Maybe this was my way of trying to understand the connection I felt then with my father, maybe it was a result of too many late nights and all the mind expanding things that happen in first year at university, or maybe it was just another way of looking at things…a way I was feeling again here on this mountain, watching the sunrise, alone and feeling a powerful sense of peace and connectedness.

So this was the start of this special day and having filled it with unplanned and unexpected delights here I find myself in another very special place. Not only is it one of the most natural and peaceful places I have ever stayed the fact there is no connectivity with the outside World is a blessing and I’m sure one of the reasons why I was able to reflect on this perfect day, and find time to put a few words together.

I’m not so sure about the undergraduate philosophy anymore, but it was an amazing experience to revisit my younger self and remember the feelings I had back then when I realised we had the power in our minds to think about things differently and let our imagination wander.

And now as I get closer to the edge, wouldn’t it be nice if it was true and there was no end to it, just an ongoing adventure.

Maybe?